ebook formatting

Manuscript Formatting and the Nuclear Option

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This post by Melinda Clayton originally appeared on Indies Unlimited on 5/6/14.

This past fall I published a self-publishing book. It looked great on my computer screen. The formatting was perfect; my spacing, indents, page breaks, etc., were all exactly where they needed to be, so I uploaded to Kindle Direct Publishing feeling pretty confident my preview in their online previewer would be error-free.

Boy, was I wrong. My paragraph indents were completely off. Some were indented too far, some not enough, and some just plain missing.

I went back to my manuscript and clicked on the pilcrow (the little paragraph symbol on the tool bar that shows all the formatting in your manuscript). Everything looked fine. Telling myself it must have been an issue on KDP’s end, I uploaded again.

I clicked through the various preview screens. On some devices, the formatting was good. On others, it was clearly off. I couldn’t possibly upload a book that was going to have lousy formatting on half the devices that downloaded it.

I knew what needed to be done; I’d even written about it in the book. I needed to go nuclear.

My manuscript was written as a Word .doc, and Word is known for sometimes having hidden code that not even the pilcrow will show you. This is particularly true if you’ve copy/pasted a lot, saved in various places, or emailed the document back and forth.

 

Click here to read the full post on Indies Unlimited.

 

What NOT To Do On CreateSpace

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This post by Laurie Boris originally appeared on Indies Unlimited on 5/20/14.

When you’re getting ready to release a new title, it might seem handy to hop onto CreateSpace first to craft your print version and then hit the big magic button allowing them to format your e-book. Automation is more awesome than videos of tap-dancing kittens, right? Um, in this case, not so much. Allowing CreateSpace to make an e-book out of your print version is asking for trouble, and here’s why.

When you format an e-book directly from the word processing document you used to prepare your final manuscript, you have a good measure of control. Or as much control as you can have over a process in which the user can modify the appearance of the product and you’re trying to satisfy the quirks of a multitude of e-reading devices. If you choose to do your own formatting, and follow the guidelines supplied by your online retailer, you can prepare that document for upload to Amazon or a spin through Smashwords’ meatgrinder with tidy results and few if any formatting errors. (The Smashwords style guide is particularly user friendly, or see Melinda Clayton’s tutorial on how to use the “nuclear” option to zap weird coding errors out of your document.)

 

Click here to read the full post on Indies Unlimited.

 

Publishing: Why You Should Care About Ebook vs Print Formatting

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This post by Dean Fetzer originally appeared as a guest post on Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn blog on 3/25/14.

Introductory note from Joanna Penn: One of the fantastic rewards of writing a book is being able to hold a physical copy in our hands. Regardless of other definitions of success, the thrill never goes away.

I’m a huge fan of print-on-demand, and one of the most popular posts on the blog is Top 10 tips on self-publishing print books on Createspace by Dean Fetzer. Today, Dean is back to share a common question about formatting ebooks vs print.

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I get asked this question a lot: “Can I use my CreateSpace PDF for the ebook version?”

The simple answer is ‘no’. Well, you could, but I doubt you’d be very happy with the finished results — and more importantly, neither would your readers. Frankly, a PDF is the last format you should use to create an ebook from as it does so many things that you just don’t want an ebook to do.

 

Flow vs rigid formatting

With a printed book, you want to control as much as you possibly can, from how the text aligns to the headers at the tops of the pages to where the page numbers sit on the page: that all needs to be exact to provide the best printed reading experience you can for your readers.

Ebooks, on the other hand, need to flow. You’ve no idea what the person reading your book is reading it on, much less whether they use really small text or enlarge it so they can read it easily. Even if all you format your book for is the Kindle platform, each model varies in the way it displays the written word.

If your book doesn’t adjust to that, they’re not going to enjoy reading it.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Creative Penn.

 

Vellum: New Ebook Production Tool Launches

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This article by Suw Charman-Anderson originally appeared on Forbes on 12/19/13.

If you’ve ever tried to produce a nice-looking ebook that works as well on your device as it appears to on your computer, you’ll know that it’s often a nightmare. Although there are several programs that will take your text and create an ebook from it, rarely are they easy to use. This is the problem that Vellum is trying to solve, for Mac users at least.

Vellum is a very good looking piece of software, with your chapter list on the left, text window in the centre and a preview pane on the right so that you can see what your book will look like when it’s an ebook. Whilst the preview pane only provides facsimiles of the iPad, iPhone, Kindle Paperwhite and Nook Simpletouch, it is nice to be able to see what your book will look like whilst you’re working on it.

This becomes particularly useful when you open the styles list and start experimenting with the built-in options. There are eight overall book styles, and then you can also choose from a small selection of options for your headings, first paragraphs, block quotes, ornamental breaks and the paragraph after a break. It is easy to quickly select a series of options that result in a very good looking ebook, which is rather the point of the software.

In terms of ebook output, I sent the sample files over to Baldur Bjarnason, the most knowledgable ebook wrangler I know, for his opinion.

 

Click here to read the full article on Forbes.

 

Why You Should Be Paying More Than $50 For Ebook Formatting & Conversion

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This post, by Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton, originally appeared on her Indie Author Blog on 5/20/13.

I just posted this in response to a service provider who commented on my earlier post, Ebook Madness: Don’t Confuse Ebook Conversion With Ebook Formatting! In his comment on that post, this gentleman said he only charges $40-50 for the typical formatting AND conversion job, and asked if he’s not charging enough.

My answer was an emphatic YES, and I’m reprinting the full response here because I think both service providers and those who seek their services need to get a better understanding of the economics involved. Here’s my response, in full:
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Yes, you are most definitely not charging enough to either do a thorough job or earn a living wage, though I’m sure you don’t realize it.

Let’s assume you begin with an MS Word file containing 300pp, which is the typical length of a typical novel. Let’s say you charge your higher end estimate of $50 to do the formatting and conversion.

You can take $22.50 right off the top for self-employment taxes**, leaving you with $27.50. But you still have to pay income tax on that income, and even if we assume you’re in a very low bracket, say 25%, you’re losing an additional $6.88 in income tax, which means you’re really only earning $20.62 for the job—and that’s before taking out your expenses, as you should be doing before figuring your net income.

**UPDATE – several have questioned my math on the taxes, and since I know math is not my strong suit I’m willing to defer to their judgment. But even if the taxes are only $10 per $50 you get paid as a freelancer (and I’m pretty sure they’re quite a lot more than that), you’re still only earning slave wages by the time you take all the expenses, weekly hours you don’t have booked with paying work, and weekly hours you spend on non-paying but necessary stuff like billing and promotion into account.

Your electricity, internet access and software aren’t free. Neither is the cell phone you probably use sometimes for communicating with clients. But I’m fairly certain you’re not taking these items, or the taxes, into account because if you were you’d realize you’re barely earning minimum wage on each job.

Getting back to those 300 pp…let’s assume you spend two hours reviewing the MS Word file and making your formatting changes. Even if you use a bunch of scripts or other automated processes to do the formatting changes, you MUST at least LOOK at every single page to be sure you haven’t missed anything that needs to be reformatted to be ebook -compliant. Two hours only allows your 120 minutes total for the job, or 24 seconds per page to review each page AND make any additional formatting changes as necessary. If the MS Word file you’ve been given is filled with lots of funky and inconsistent Styles and/or formatting, the job will take even longer but again, you have to at least look at EVERY SINGLE PAGE to know if this is the case.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on the Indie Author Blog.