Basque culture is focus of second Californian e-book

The Bakersfield Californian has released its second e-book, Louis Amestoy's "Being Basque in Bakersfield." 

The book shares a newcomer's observations about connecting with Bakersfield's large and vibrant Basque community. Amestoy, The Californian's digital convergence manager, is of Basque heritage but had little contact with the culture until moving to Bakersfield in January.

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Good news, bad news about our March Meet e-book

Check out a sample chapter from the Kindle version.I've written previously about The Californian's cool e-book documenting the world-famous March Meet held just north of Bakersfield. 

And here's some good news regarding "March Meet: Bakersfield's Love Affair with Speed, Nitro & Good Times": Amazon and Barnes & Noble are selling versions for $9.99. The Amazon Kindle version is here and the Nook version is here. Buyers of the book will get a link and password to a special web page containing 21 videos and hundreds of photos covering a wide variety of people, events and happenings at the March Meet. 

The bad news: Our enhanced iPad edition of the e-book, featuring hundreds of embedded photos and a dozen videos, remains in queue in the iBookstore. It's been sitting there for more than one month, and Apple has told us several times it's simply backed up reviewing iBookstore submissions. Hmmm, you'd think a company with $100 billion in cash could hire a few extra people to help unclog the pipeline. 

Mad props to BookBrewer, an e-book publishing tool we used to upload the book to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Simple, easy and cost-effective. And less than a two-day turnaround to hit the Kindle and Nook stores. 

Kindle edition in the wild

An index page as seen on the Kindle Touch.The Californian has been trying to launch a Kindle edition of the daily newspaper for months. For various reasons -- some good, some not -- it's taken us way too long to launch a formal Amazon edition to supplement the two Kindle blog feeds we've had available for several years. 

But the good news is we're close. 

Attached are recent screenshots of tests on two different Kindle models and the Kindle app on iPad. 

Our work on a Kindle edition has been slowed by frustrating gremlins in trying to get a clean feed out of our newsroom publishing system that retains acceptable formatting. We're also struggling to figure out how to export black-and-white images for some Kindles and color for platforms like the Kindle Fire and the iPad. 

An index page as seen on the Kindle Keyboard model.

A section index page as seen on the Kindle iPad app.

But as I said, we seem to be in the final stages of testing. I'm hoping we can be live in the Amazon Store within a few weeks. 

Stay tuned.