The must-have items are the manuscript, title page, and copyright page in a Word document and the ebook cover as a jpeg. Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Until you look between the covers. Yep, pun intended. 🙂 Grab a book from your shelf and let's go through it from front to back and identify all … Continue reading What Does Your Friendly Formatter Need to Format Your Book?
How to Preview Your Epub File Before Uploading to Retailers
"Thank you for sending me the ebook files. But, if I can't open the #$%@ things, how do you expect me to approve them?" Lots of writers mutter this under their breath when their formatter sends them their ebook files and asks for their approval. I've said it myself. Lots of writers would cross their fingers and tell the formatter … Continue reading How to Preview Your Epub File Before Uploading to Retailers
How to Preview Your MOBI File Before Uploading to Amazon
As of June 28, 2021, KDP will no longer support the mobi file format for new or updated files. The preferred file format is now epub. To preview your epub file for KDP, follow these instructions. "Thank you for sending me the ebook files. But, if I can't open the #$%@ things, how do you … Continue reading How to Preview Your MOBI File Before Uploading to Amazon
Pixels and Dots and Why They Matter to Writers
"My printer rejected my file because of poor image quality. But it looks fine on my computer. WTF?" It's a common complaint, most frequently solved by accepting the error and crossing your fingers that the proof copy will be fine. It won't. Your head shot will vary from slightly fuzzy to completely blurry. Why? It's … Continue reading Pixels and Dots and Why They Matter to Writers
Would You Like Caps With That?
Small, dropped, raised... add a little something-extra to your print book. Caps, aka capitals or upper case letters, start a sentence. In print books, caps can be added to highlight the first few words of each chapter or scene. Small Caps Using all caps is the equivalent of SHOUTING AT YOUR READER. Not a wise thing to do. Instead … Continue reading Would You Like Caps With That?
Why Your eBook Doesn’t Look Like Your Print Book
"It looks fabulous!" said a client of the print book I delivered. "It makes me happy just to flip through it!" "It's so... um... consistent?" said the same client when reviewing her ebook. "Why don't the two books look the same?" True observations and a common question. As shown in figures A and B, samples of … Continue reading Why Your eBook Doesn’t Look Like Your Print Book
Cheers and Tears
Two events happened within two days with two very different messages. First the tears. The cover conveys a message to potential readers. The font is part of the message; mysterious, romantic, or fun. For some clients, I use the cover font for the title page and chapter headings. It looks really good and gives a consistent experience to … Continue reading Cheers and Tears
What I Learned at My Own Workshop
Have you ever wanted to design your own print books? I did, so I taught myself how. And recently, I led a workshop to teach others. At the most recent gathering of the Toronto Indie Publishing Meetup group, I presented the FIVE MUST-HAVE TECHNIQUES FOR DESIGNING YOUR OWN PRINT BOOKS. An exciting group of authors … Continue reading What I Learned at My Own Workshop
WORKSHOP: Get Word Working for You
Wednesday May 6, 2015, 6:45 pm to 8:15 pm George Locke Library Meeting Room, Toronto Regardless of your path to publication or your genre, all fiction writers have one thing in common--we need to create a clean, error-free manuscript for professional editing, uploading to retailers, and sending to printers. The first step is to get … Continue reading WORKSHOP: Get Word Working for You
