Preparing Ebooks
- It has been an interesting exercise, preparing many of my older novels for publication as electronic books.
- It's been a family affair. The ones written in the 70s and 80s were not on a computer, so Chris, my husband, scanned them.
- Converting these scanned pages to text produced odd symbols, with incorrect letters such as rn coming out as an m, and a figure 1 instead of letter l. So I had to proof read the files and correct them.
- While I was doing this I took the opportunity of editing, improving the text, and updating where necessary.
- I have been told that when a book has been edited and published it should need no further editing, but this isn't always so.
- In the early books, to avoid confusion for younger readers, I have removed references to people or occasions being 'gay.' (How I hate the way this useful little word has been hijacked!) Now they are merry, or lively.
- I wanted my contemporary books, set in the 80s, to be contemporary now, which has meant changing the fashions, calling nurses by their new titles, and instead of people having to find a telephone box they all have mobiles – even if when occasion demands it they forget them or the batteries are low!
- Editing done, I needed cover pictures. I could have bought them, but I preferred not to risk duplication with other authors, so I used my own photographs or some my daughter Debbie or her friends had taken. Then Debbie designed the covers, producing the transparent oval on the big pictures to enclose the title, and the circles on the rest.
- Next came the process of loading the books onto sites such as Amazon and Smashwords. Chris, who is far more computer savvy than I am, and keeps my website up to date, took this on. With over forty books to deal with this has been a huge task, especially as he found the occasional glitch when the format appeared differently from what had been uploaded, and had to be changed. So if you have bought one of my novels, and received an update, you know why. For more technical information on this, see below.
- And Chris has also added all these new Ebooks to my website, provided links, and all the other technical details.
Ebook Formatting
- There is excellent advice on formatting and uploading Ebook files on Smashwords and Easy As Pie, but we found a few wrinkles the hard way.
- The easiest file to upload is a MS Word doc file, which distributors and retailers convert into the formats they sell. Sometimes conversion programs don't work as expected. Html files may be uploaded instead, but if the book file includes pictures these have to be bundled with the html into a zip file. It is easier to save the doc file as "filtered html" (not just "html") and then convert this html file to a mobi file, using Calibre, a free program. Mobi files upload without problems.
- The style guides need to be read carefully – Ebook files must conform fully to the styles required by the distributors.
- Ebook files must also be free from anything which can – and will – lead to formatting errors, such as headers and footers, page numbers, tabs, double paragraph breaks, double spaces, spaces before/after paragraph breaks, field names.
- Set up a blank document in MS Word with the simple formatting and styles needed. Use 'page-setup' to reduce the size of headers and footers to zero (deleting the values seems not to work). Turn off widows and orphans. Ensure the changes apply to the whole document and that under 'layout', 'section start' is set to 'continuous'.
- Set up styles in this blank document so that it looks right in Ebook readers. Experiment with some Ebook readers to see what the reader actually sees. Most Ebook reader sites offer free versions of their reader programs for use on the PC.
- General advice is not to clutter and confuse the reader with many changes of style. The usual style for printed novels has the first line of each paragraph indented, but not the first paragraph of each chapter or section.
- Current Ebook formats require either first line indent for all paragraphs, or no indents anywhere, with a space between paragraphs. The choice is yours, but spaces between paragraphs require the reader to turn pages more often.
- Probably the only other styles needed are one for Chapter headings, and a centered style for front matter and section breaks.
- When hyperlinks are inserted, for example a link to your website, Word automatically styles them.
- The text from the book manuscript can now be copied and pasted into the blank document. Tabs, double paragraph breaks, line and page breaks, etc should now be removed. The text should be continuous – unexpected spaces are confusing. Then the chosen styles to the document can be applied, using the drop-down options in the 'find and replace' window.
- If each chapter starts with "Chapter x", where "x" is a figure, a table of contents will be set up automatically by the retailer. Otherwise you're on your own!
- Save the document as a '.doc' file with the title of the book as its file name, but adding a version number. You might be lucky, but several versions may be needed before the format is right!
- Then save again as 'filtered html'. This save will show if the document is ready. The message saying some information will be lost should be ignored. But if there is another message about frame sizes there is a problem. After uploading a file with frames, unintended symbols will appear in the file for sale.
- To clean up a faulty file first check and double check all the formatting rules noted above and in the style guides and on-line advice.
- If that doesn't work try the following: save the doc file as an rtf file. Then open this rtf in OpenOffice (free). Save as another rtf, then open this new rtf in MS Word. This usually works. The styles for text, chapter headings, etc, will then need to be reinserted.
- When the doc file is clean any cover picture can be inserted at the beginning. Inserting a paragraph break and then a page break before the book title, and then inserting the picture before these, will prevent the picture flowing uncontrollably into the book's title.
- The cover picture is uploaded separately from the book file, and must conform fully to the distributor's pixel and file size requirements. But reduce the height of any picture inside the book file to not more than about 19cm (7.5"). This should ensure the book opens in all readers.
- Before uploading the book file it is worth while preparing the other matter needed on the distributor's upload page: book description, which might be more than the blurb; tags or keywords; and prices.
- And, of course, account details, so you can get paid!
- Good luck!
