Instructions for digital files

First and foremost, thank you for backing one (or more of my Kickstarters). This page will help you get your digital rewards. The first thing you need to know is that for most of our projects we distribute the reward through BackerKit. You should already be familiar with this software since you must fill out your survey before you can receive any of your files. If you haven’t done your survey yet, you can access your BackerKit data by entering your Kickstarter email at the following form:

backer_kit_sceen_shot_1

To access the form, click on the appropriate link for your Kickstarter in the following section.

Where to find your digital files

Within BackerKit, there is a Digital Download area where all the files are listed, and you can download them from there. If you don’t know how to access your BackerKit area, you can get to it by typing your email into the form that is found at the corresponding links below:

You can also get the link by accessing your BackerKit Survey Invitation which is an email with a subject that looks like this: Response Needed — Get your reward for Fantasy Novel: Age of Empyre by Michael J. Sullivan

Step #1 – Downloading the file.

Once you get the link to your backerKit profile you’ll be presented with an image that appears as follows:

backer_kit_sceen_shot_2

Click on the :Get Your Digital Downloads” button and you’ll be presented with a list of all the digital downloads which you can access.

NOTE: It will take some time for us to populate all your digital files, and you’ll receive an email each time they are posted. You can download them at your leisure, they won’t disappear prematurely.

Step #2 – Unzipping the file.

In order to conserve space (and save downloading time) we “zip” all files to make them considerably smaller. So the first step you’ll have to do is to unzip these files. Most people have some kind of unzip program on their computer, and all you need to do is double click on the zipped file, but if for some reason you don’t have one. There is a free, online unzip tool, which can be found here:

Just choose the file you want to unzip, and then you’ll be able to download each separate file individually.

Now that you have the individual files, it’s time to send them to the device you wish to read them from. If that is your computer. You can just click on the .pdf file and it will open in whatever program your computer uses to read pdf files. If for some reason your computer does not have an installed pdf reader, you can get a free one from Adobe (the makers of the pdf standard), from this link.

Step #3 – Sending files to your phone or tablet

The easiest way to get files to your phone or tablet is to send an email to yourself with the appropriate file as an attachment, then you can just click the file and start reading. If the file you send is a .pdf, then it will open immediately and you can read directly from your device. If you want to use an app (such as ibooks or kindle), you’ll need to click on the correct file, then tell your phone/tablet which application to use when reading it. The two most common are:

  • iBooks – you should mail the .epub file.
  • Kindle – you should mail the .mobi file.

Sending files to your kindle device

If you are reading the ebook via a kindle (rather than a kindle app), there are two ways to get it onto your device.

  1. The first method is to email the .mobi file to the email address associated with the kindle device. It is usually something like xxxxxx@kindle.com – where the x’s are a combination of your email address and some unique characters. NOTE: The email address you “send from” needs to be an approved email address for the device. Finding the kindle’s address, and setting it up for addresses that are approved to send file from will depend on which kindle you have, but this article should walk you through the process.
  2. The other method is to connect your kindle to the computer’s USB port and drag/drop from your computer to you kindle. This article walks you through that process.

If you are having problems with either of the methods above, contact Amazon’s Kindle support. They can give you precise answers given your device. Just tell them you are trying to send a “mobi” file to your xxx kindle and they can walk you through it step by step.

Uploading your ebook to Google Play

If you read your ebooks through Google Play you can upload the .epub (or .pdf) file from this link. NOTE: Google books saves your book to the cloud, so you can reference it from multiple devices, so ignore the next section if you are reading through Google Play.

Reading on multiple devices

Because we send DRM-free files, you can read your ebooks on whatever devices you want, but sending it to one device doesn’t “magically” populate it to all other devices. In other words, you are not sending the ebook to your “cloud library” from which all other devices will gain access, so you will have to repeat the steps above for each device you will be reading from.