120 OCTOBER 2019|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE 380
WhateveryourPC,hardware, software,officeapplication
or macroissues,SimonHandby isheretohelp
Send [email protected]
HelpHelpfile &
BusinessBusiness Help
Irecently suffered abig theftwhere many
things, including my PC systems, were
stolen. The thieves have long been caught
and charged, but the case has been
proceeding very slowly.I’m told this isn’t
unusual here in Spain.
Meanwhile,I’m ready to publish the
fourth edition of my book,Motoringin
Spain.I’m trying to prepare it on anew PC,
to publish as an ebook rather than in print.
Idon’t remember if you’ve published an
in-depth article on how to do this, but I
could do with some help.Mymain
questions concern how Ican sell the book,
how Iencrypt it to prevent it being copied,
and the easiest waytoget the book into
the hands of readers. Can you help?
Brian JDeller
Sorry to hear about the theft. It’s not clear
from your mail whether you lost an earlier
draft of the book on your stolen PC, but
when you’re creating original content it
pays to have abullet-proofbackup strategy.
We recommend regular backups to aUSB
or network-attached drive,which you should
keep in adifferent part of the house from
the computers –that waythere’s more
chance your data will survive afire,and less
chance that thieves will discover both.
We also recommend that you use an
online backup service such as Google
Backup and Sync, as acloud backup gives
you even more resilience.
Hablaustedebook?
Foracouple of years, I’ve been using
Google Drive to back up and synchronise
my Documents folder between my two
PCs. It works very well, but Irecently
received an email letting me know that a
promotional offer was coming to an end
and that my storage space would revert
to the standard 15GB, which wouldn’t be
enough. Before rushing to take out a
Google One subscription, Iwondered if I
could free up some space.
By creating alocal archive of my
oldest files Iwas able to get the size
of my Documents folder down from
19GB to 11GB, which ought to be fine,
but when Icheck Google Backup and
Sync it tells me I’m still using 19GB. Am I
missing astep?
Martin Gilbert
Google Drive has arecycle bin, just like your
PC; you’ll need to empty it before you get your
missing 8GB back. Visitdrive.google.comfrom
abrowser and log intoyour Google account.
Now select Bin from the links in the left-hand
pane and, when the page loads, click Bin
above the main contents window and select
Empty Bin. Within asecond or two,you
should see no files or folders in the Bin;
however,inour experience the contents are
likely to resurface almost immediately,and
your storage usage will be unchanged.
Don’t worry: if you’re deleting many files the
process can take several hours.
Notethat your Google account’s storage
space is shared across all Google apps, so
your mailbox and photos mayalso account
forsome of your 15GB storage.Ifyou still
aren’t within the limit, check them both and
deleteany mail or content you don’t need.
Blockeddrive
Self-publishing can get quite
involved, and we haven’t the
space to do it justice here,but
forease of distribution and
audience reach, it’s hard to beat
Amazon’s Kindle Direct
Publishing (KDP) platform.
Created with the launch of the
original Kindle,KDP lets authors
publish their work intothe
Kindle ecosystem, comprising all
Kindle readers and apps. The
service is free,allows authors to
earn up to 70% royalties, and
works in territories including the
UK and Spain. Youcan even
print to paperback.
KDP lets you retain your
rights and modify your work, but to qualify for
its higher royalty rateyou’ll have to agree to
additional conditions, including an exclusivity
clause.You can read more about the service at
tinyurl.com/380helpfile1.Ifyou want to
experiment, you can turn aWord or PDF
document intoanebook with the Kindle
Createtool attinyurl.com/380helpfile2.
⬆Tidy bin, tidy mind –but Google can take hours
to purge deleted files
⬆Kindle Createlets you format abook forpublishing to Amazon’s
Kindle apps and devices
