A Few Tips for Formatting Books and E-Books

ROSEMARY HARRIS: I'm about to embark on my first self-published ebook adventure. So many people have done it  - why not me?
Weeeeeelllll - because I'm terrified? Because I'm afraid I'll mess up the formatting and earn a slew of one star reviews because the indentations are too big? Too small? Non-existent? Because I'll click Yes on something that somehow prevents me from doing something else - or worse - mangles the book?

So to give myself a little confidence, I asked one of my more experienced buddies to share his knowledge of self-publishing with me and the JR gang.

VINCENT H. O'NEIL: I’ve prepared numerous books for print-on-demand and e-book production, and there are many ways to go about this. There is also a wide range of publishing sites and services, each with its own advantages and disadvantages, but the most common questions I hear involve formatting. It’s not as challenging as it might sound, and so here is an approach I’ve found useful.

NOTE: Some of the detailed instructions here involve MS Word, but the concepts discussed should translate to other software. My experience with e-readers is largely confined to Kindle and Nook, but hopefully most of this guidance will apply to other versions. The conversion software is steadily improving, and so some of these considerations may soon become outdated.

The basic idea is to create a single book file which will be copied as two separate files that are then adjusted, one for print-on-demand and one for e-book. Here we go:

 Unless the book is going to be very long, use 12 pt font or higher.

1. Single space the entire book.
2. Make sure you include a copyright notice, an Author Biography, your website, and a list of all your other books in a “Books by this Author” segment.
3. Avoid underlining (for example, “Chapter One”) because in an e-reader conversion the blank lines following that underlining sometimes appear with what looks like a dash because the underlining continued past the underlined words. Bold face seems to have no negative consequences.
4. Consider putting a marking symbol (such as a black dot) in the center of the blank line between segments within a chapter; this helps people reading the book on an e-reader to know a segment has ended.
5. In Page Setup / Margins / Pages, select “Mirror Margins”. This will let you see the pages as they will appear in the printed book, as well as create proper margins.
6. In Page Setup / Margins, set the inside and outside margins according to the chart below (Leave the “Gutter” at zero).

Total Pages                                  Inside Margin                                    Outside Margin

 

24-150                                     at least .375”                                       at least .25”

151-400                                   at least .75”                                         at least .5”

400-600                                   at least .875”                                       at least .5”

>600                                        at least 1.0”                                         at least .5”

 

Don’t get overly concerned about this; the “Preview” function in most print-on-demand software is pretty good and you can adjust from there. For a standard-sized book (roughly 220 pages) I use .7” for top, bottom, and outside margins and .8” for inside.

8. I recommend setting the tab / paragraph indents at .3 to save space. Also select “Justify” so that the words on each line stretch from margin to margin.
9. Insert the page numbers, page breaks, and section breaks that you want for the printed book; many of these will be removed by the e-reader conversion, but there are fixes for the ones you want to keep.
10. Once the file is complete, save it as a Print On Demand file and an e-book file because you will be doing different things to each.

For the Print On Demand File:

1. Add a blank page in front so that the book opens on a blank page instead of the title page.
2. Any time you want to leave the page numbers off (for example, the title page and the dedication) add a Page Break, a Section Break (continuous), and another Page Break on the last page before you want the page numbers. Then select “View Header / Footer” and open the footer for the first page that will have a page number. Click inside that footer and then unselect “Link to Previous”. Then move up to the footer above that one (it should show a different number, as in “Footer Section 1” versus “Footer Section 2”) and delete the page number manually. The page numbers should remain going forward.
3. I generally start new chapters on a new page, roughly halfway down.
4. Depending on the service you use, you will be able to preview the final document digitally after it is loaded. The digital review will reveal any glaring errors, but it is still important to get a proof copy and review it thoroughly before putting the finished product on sale.

For the E-Book File:

1. When you load the file onto whatever site you’re using, the conversion software is likely to remove much of the Print On Demand-specific formatting.
2. If you want to keep a page break, enter a Section Break (continuous) where the original Page Break was. I generally only do that at the beginning (title page, dedication, etc.) and let the completed chapter scroll right into the next one.
3. The Page Numbers will be removed automatically; they’re not needed.
4. Different e-reader platforms (Basic Kindle, Kindle Fire, Nook, etc.) emplace indents on their own or fail to recognize the indents in some files. Although it’s a bit of work, here is a fix that has worked for me: I recommend removing all indentation so that every line (including the indented first line of each paragraph) is left-justified. Then highlight each segment in turn, go to Format / Paragraph / Indentation and select Special / First line and set it to .3. All of your paragraphs will indent to .3, which should keep the indentation standard across platforms.
5. The Preview function in most e-reader setup software is usually very good, so once the file is loaded go through the entire book and see if anything looks wrong. Most problems are fixable by adjusting the file, reloading it, and checking it again.

 

ROSEMARY: Vinny will be checking in today to say hello and answer questions. He'll be back tomorrow to tell us all about his latest novel, Interlands AND you can learn more about the writer Marilyn Stasio of the New York Times called "a polished writer with a breezy style." at his website www.vincenthoneil.com 

 

Wow - high praise indeed. To me, he's just fun lovin' Vinny as you can see in one of my favorite pix. That's the two of us at Crimebake's Vampire Ball.

 

 

The Writer's Workout from Christina Katz

I heard about Christina Katz before I met her. The amazing and talented Jane Friedman, then acquisitions editor at Writers Digest Books, told me about this writer whom she'd just signed who was not only a terrific at her craft, she was even more brilliant at creating community, marketing, and promotion.

This was the wave of the future, Jane said. And she's proven absolutely right about that.

Christina (once known as Writer Mama; then Author Mama; and now The Writer's Workout Coach) is just out with her third book for writers. This one, "The Writer's Workout," sees a brave new world for writers.

It's subtitled "366 Tips, Tasks & Techniques" because it offers career advice for every day of the year. She talks in terms of "accru[ing[ creative power in [your] professional careers over time—very much the same way athletes accrue physical power by following rigorous workouts."

I love the idea of framing the daily job of being a writer -- from feeding the blog to feeding Facebook, to answering email and updating my Web site, and on to booking appearances, and oh yeah, researching and writing the books -- as a workout that builds a career.

Here are just three of the things she advocates, with snippets to give you a flavor of her inspirational advice.

Micro-invest in Learning

From Christina:
One of my former students once snuck the payment for a writing class onto a credit card without telling her husband. When she asked me to be complicit, I was uncomfortable. But when a writer understands the importance of micro-investing in her writing career, even when a spouse doesn’t, how can I argue?

A couple years later, this writer has an agent and a book deal on a topic she loves, so apparently the class she secretly took turned out to be a good investment in her writing future.

Christina says a key place to invest in yourself is by staying informed:
• Your topic (whatever your specialty is)
• Your audience (what makes it tick)
• Your field (the latest news)
• Your industry (the trends)
• Business skills (self-publishing and entrepreneurship)
• Technology tools (the latest and most helpful)
• Publications (the top three)
• Associations (for your specialty and your field)
• Conferences/conventions/events (for your specialty and your field) • Blogs (for your specialty and your field)
• Online networks (for your specialty and your field)

Accrue Personal Power

From Christina:
Like the heroes and heroines in so many movies and myths, we need to recognize that we are on a personal power journey and we have our own potential. We can (and should) embrace the fact that we don’t get to fully access our personal power until we learn how to handle the power we’ve already got.

People who are on a personal power quest are patient. They don’t want what they can’t handle. They make the most of what they have right now and they feel satisfied. Take the power you already have and wield it. Use it to volunteer, to teach, to speak, to start a project, to consult, to coach, to counsel, or to train (and, of course, to write).

This is how your personal power grows, and this is how you become a stronger container for the additional personal power that will come through you, hopefully, in the future.

Think Beyond The Book

From Christina:
Say what you like about the old ways of doing things in publishing, there was something reassuring about knowing that you could climb the ranks if you set your sights on it and proceeded wisely. Today there are still ranks, but there are other options, as well.
...
I think what we will see is that the future ends up being not about bending the rules or breaking the rules, but abandoning the concept of rules altogether. The tricky part in all of this will be figuring out in a world where there are no rules what to say yes to.

Coach Christina will be here today to chat about making a successful career. I certainly have questions about how the heck do you get the book written while you're talking and teaching and learning and and and... I'm sure she'll have insights to share.

And Christina is giving away a book of "The Writer's Workout" to one lucky commenter, so pile on! (And I'll be Christina has plenty of ideas for "merit badges" for writers to earn.)

Song of the Open Road

ROSEMARY HARRIS: Today our guest blogger is Rachel Chou, Chief marketing officer at from Open Road Media. I didn't get to hear the presentation from Rachel's colleague at Bouchercon (and maybe you didn't either) so here's what Rachel has to say about one of publishing's newest and most innovative companies.

Connecting Mystery Authors with Readers
While reading is a solitary activity, it is also inherently social. People tell their friends about a book they just loved or that they hated, discuss the latest bestseller at a local book club, or rediscover an old classic on a colleague’s recommendation. So in this day of social networking, online and off, what can a publisher offer readers and authors beyond what they are already doing on their own?

Open Road Media, founded less than two years ago, is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. We strive to create connections between authors and their audiences by marketing their ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.

Open Road has published ebooks from legendary authors including William Styron, Pat Conroy, and Virginia Hamilton, and has launched new e-stars like Mary Glickman. We have a constantly growing mystery/thriller list that includes Ruth Rendell, Jack Higgins, Lawrence Block—and the addition of dozens of authors with the recent partnership with Otto Penzler’s MysteriousPress.com.

Throughout the publishing process, we work closely with our authors—who we see as partners, not clients—and use a variety of new media tools to market our books, including online advertising, social media, and content partnerships, as well as traditional publicity. We want to bring our authors and their fans together, and our “special sauce” comes from the ongoing marketing into and within readers’ social circles. It’s not only about the launch date, but also about ways to connect with readers months and years after a book has been published.

We are often asked what truly distinguishes our marketing. I believe it is the quality and variety of the content we syndicate. Whether it’s sharing five questions with Jack Higgins, hearing from Jonathon King on the occupational hazards of working the crime beat, giving new life to a 1982 article by Lawrence Block, or asking Ruth Rendell about the weird mother-son relationship in A Dark-Adapted Eye, we’re interested in bringing these new insights to readers, wherever they are.

Another example of this content comes from our in-house production team. These incredible producers, production assistants, and cinematographers travel around the globe to film our authors and capture their worlds. Instead of focusing on a single title for a release, hours of filming are conducted and the interviews therein cover a wide-range of topics, from writing to authors’ passions and life backstories.

You can see authors speaking about achieving “thrills and chills” or geeking out for International Geek Pride Day. You can watch a profile about horror master Ira Levin, for which we interviewed contemporary writers, such as Chuck Palahniuk and Chelsea Cain, who were influenced by his work. Based on the above range of videos, it’s easy to see that from serious to silly, inspirational to celebratory, the topics for discussion are truly endless.

There are few genres with more opportunities to engage directly with readers than mysteries. At the end of last year, the Book Industry Study Group released a report revealing that mystery fiction is one of the two fastest growing genres for ebooks. And the digital and offline worlds are filled with dynamic and engaged communities of mystery readers. As a result of the rise of ebooks and online communities, iconic books can, in the words of our cofounder and CEO, Jane Friedman, come “back to the future.” With robust digital marketing, Open Road is paving the way for these incredible reads to be found.

Here's a look at something Open Road created for one of its clients...pretty cool.


Visit Open Road at http://www.openroadmedia.com/Default.aspx