- Ebook Tune Up Repair Toc Images Line Spacing For Machine
- Ebook Tune Up Repair Toc Images Line Spacing For Mac 2017
Shares 465 I love. It is the best writing tool and I couldn’t imagine writing without it now. I’ve also been using to format my ebooks for the last five years and that has been fine. Until recently.
In the last few weeks, a reader reported that a couple of my books had a formatting issue with the Kindle Look Inside on Amazon.com. I checked and found that the spacing and alignment was screwed up. But in my Scrivener file and my KDP Preview, and even in the ebook itself, the formatting was fine. It was just a problem in the Look Inside Previewer.
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That interacted with the particular way my formatting worked. But whatever it was, I needed to fix it. Because it was costing me sales. Is one option, but when you publish a lot and you like to update back matter and fix typos or issues yourself, then having control is more important. Then I heard about. Pick your book style Their tagline is, and that’s exactly what the software does. Here are some of the highlights for me:.
It’s incredibly easy to use. You just import a Word docx file and you can basically use it as-is. You can also use the various Book Styles to change the look to something funkier.
You can preview the design as it will look in the various ebook readers, within the program. It has template pages like Copyright, About the Author and More Books by the Author which have extra functionality, like areas for social media links and default text. You can import images and it will format them correctly, with extra text and links and resizing. It makes boxsets REALLY easy.
Seriously, if you haven’t done, then check it out. It outputs the various formats for each of the stores and includes store specific book links in the Back Matter It's basically the best tool for the ebook formatting job. Preview the format on other devices within Vellum I use a lot of, and each has one job. By using Scrivener to format, I was trying to make that tool do more than one job.
I'm super thrilled to find a tool that specializes in formatting. There is one downside. It's Mac only. Sorry, PC people. My new formatting process I write in Scrivener and do my own self-edits in Scrivener.
Then I export a Word doc to send to my editor. When I get the changes back, I make them back into Scrivener. Just to be clear.
I still do all the writing and editing in Scrivener. It’s an awesome writing tool and I love love love it. But once the book is done, I export as a Word docx and open in. I use the formatting templates to add the back matter and check everything is beautiful, including adding the Ornamental Breaks to make the book look more professional.
Then I check the formatting on the various devices – which you can do within! Then I export to the various formats and upload to the stores. So right now, I’m currently re-publishing all my ebooks with versions to give them the same look and feel, plus I'm updating the back matter as I go. The content hasn't changed, just the formatting.
If you have my books, you should be able to re-download new versions. (Or you can always email me if you want a new formatted book.) A word on change As I mentioned in the, we are living in a time of exponential change. There are new tools, new opportunities and new markets opening every day.
Things we did even a few months ago might not work any more. We have to be prepared to change our opinions and our practices.
This can be difficult. But it can also be exciting.
I’m learning so much on this business trip that I have a number of other big changes coming in 2017. I’m pretty excited about it, to be honest. I’m a change junkie 🙂 I'll tell you more about it when my thinking is clearer but for now, I'm heading back to my formatting! How do you format your ebooks?
Please leave a comment below and join the conversation. Save Save Save Save Save Save Save. Hey Joanna, Great articles.
Love it, love it, love it. I am a techie junkie who loves tools to make my life easier. After writing and self-publishing a couple of books of my own, I am ready to invest in tools and reduce the amount of what I outsource such as eBook conversions and page layout. I have looked at Vallum and wanted to know whether you have used this for the page design/typeset of your print book to generate print-ready pdf files for printers especially as the amount I paid the typesetter is the same price as the product (yikescan’t keep doing that). If you have, what has been your experience with this or do you outsource this? If you have done or do your own print layouts, do you have any other tools you can recommend to try out before taking the plunge with Vallum?
I am not hot on purchasing templates seeing Vallum has a number of nice ones. This means everything is kept in-house. PD: Did training in InDesign.too steep a learning curve as well as a steep price. I don’t know if you’ve run into this with Vellum or not, but I discovered today that it can’t handle footnotes or endnotes. It strips them out.
Ebook Tune Up Repair Toc Images Line Spacing For Machine
That’s probably not an issue for most fiction writers, but I’m wrapping up my first book, Discovering Love Online: Love May Be Closer Than You Think, which is a non-fiction title and it has many source citations in it. Did you run into this issue with your non-fiction titles and, if so, did you find a workaround? I contacted Vellum and they have footnotes/endnotes on their feature request list, but no timeline. Not very helpful as I’m within weeks of publication. First, let me say thanks for the TONS of helpful info you provide, Joanna. It’s much appreciated out here in sunny SoCal.
Also, love your podcast. Just wondering if you or your audience has any experience with Amazon’s free Kindle Formatting tool called Kindle Create? It seems to offer very similar features to what I’ve seen advertised for Vellum, without the hefty price tag. Plus, it works for both Mac and PC. Take that Vellum!
Yes, I use a PC I’m working on my first book. Started with Scrivener, but don’t care for the overly complicated Compile function, especially with regard to formatting.
So I copied and pasted it over to the free Reedsy Book Editor, which isn’t too bad. The only problem is the formatting options are very limited.
Still better than Scrivener. But nowhere near what Kindle Create seems to offer. Anyone using Kindle Create? Big fan of your blog over the years — you’ve been an inspiration and mentor, thank you. My first six titles were written directly into MS Word using a variety of templates licensed from thebookdesigner.com.
Ebook Tune Up Repair Toc Images Line Spacing For Mac 2017
I know it sounds old-fashioned, but I’m so used to Word it seemed quicker to stick with it — and using the templates helps me get the physical shape of the final book. Once written and edited (extensively), I make a PDF for Createspace and import the Word file into Scrivener (using that little # trick to quickly separate chapters). After various checks, I compile and export a.mobi file which I check using Kindle Previewer and then upload to Kindle Direct. It’s not ideal. It feels clunky — and I’m never absolutely certain that readers will get exactly what I think they should be getting. Which is why your experience with that particular problem — and your solution — is so interesting. Until now, Word to Scrivener has been my workflow.
However, with six titles (including a four-part series) on Amazon I want to go to the next level and begin serious marketing to indie bookstores and libraries. I’m going to use IngramSpark as the wholesaler. But here comes the problem.
Ingrams won’t accept the regular PDF that Word produces they want the exotic PDF/X 2001a file. My solution will be to add an extra step and take the completed novel into Adobe InDesign — which will export the correct PDF. Luckily, thebookdesigner.com offers templates in InDesign format — so we’ll see how it goes, but it’s yet another learning curve, plus a subscription to the Adobe app. Incidentally, from what I can glean from the Vellum forum, Vellum Press does not export PDF/X 2001a so it looks like it’s InDesign for me.
But the Vellum Ebooks version sounds like a winner — if I can justify that $200 price tag. I actually bought a second hand iMac just so I could use Vellum (after getting tired of the draft to digital service mangling my formatting). The only weakness I’ve found is that it only takes a.docx for input this is fine if you write in word or scriv, but I routinely write in open office which can only save a word file as a.doc (native format being.odt In the short term I am using scriv to convert my files, importing from.odt then compiling to.docx, but in the long run i’d like to see vellum accept other common formats (if scriv can do it why not) course i’d also like to see apache open add the capability to save a.docx ( I may have to change to libre which can). I’ve been using the Reedsy book editor and typing right into it. Before I started with Reedsy I was using Word and I pasted the first document into Reedsy. I discovered later that any italicized words in the text stuck together.
As I had several foreign phrases that was an issue. There were a couple of other issues as well, which is why I started typing directly into Reedsy. It’s very easy to use and I love it. However, I’m thinking of buying Vellum for the some of the more visual aspects it would give me.
Has anyone else made this transition, and was it worth the $249? Most of the information on this site is free for you to read, watch or listen to, but The Creative Penn is also a business and my livelihood. So please expect hyperlinks to be affiliate links in many cases, when I receive a small percentage of sales if you wish to purchase. I only recommend tools, books and services that I either use or people I know personally.
Integrity and authenticity continue to be of the highest importance to me. I hope you find the site useful!
Thanks - Joanna.