Self-Publishing: Easy as ABC Meredith Bond www.anessabooks.com [email protected]

Self-Publishing Day Five

F: Formatting, an introduction; I: Ideas for making your look professional; L: Layout

Today we’re going to get started on the formatting part of this course. We start by discussing the different ways you can format your book and the different types of formats there are, and we’ll also do the first step of formatting—cleaning your document. tl;dr: • Types of formats: ePub, mobi, PDF, doc and docx • Programs you’ll need to format • L: Layout and I: Ideas for making your book look professional

Details: I’m sure you’ve noticed that a large chunk of this course is devoted to formatting. Yes, it is because I’m a formatter, but it’s also because formatting is something that a lot of authors think they can do themselves and then they end up with either boring or outright unreadable . Personally, I love the design and creativity of formatting. But formatting isn’t all creativity. A lot of it is boring, repetitive work, but it needs to be done. So put on your favorite music and let’s take a look at this thing. Types of formats Before you begin to format, you’ll need to decide where you’re going to publish your work—that will determine which formats you need. There are four different formats that you’ll need to create in order to publish everywhere (what I recommend). ePub: This is the industry standard . You’ll need to create an ePub in order to upload to most e- retailers (Nook, Kobo, Apple iBooks and ) and have the option of uploading to Draft2Digital and (I’ll discuss the pros and cons of uploading an ePub to those sites when we discuss uploading). .mobi: mobi is the name given to that can be read on a Kindle (device or app). It is the file type you’ll need to create to upload to . PDF: You all know —those are files you need Adobe Reader to look at. When you convert a Word doc into a PDF you are setting the formatting so that anyone opening that document sees your file exactly the way you saw it, complete with the same spacing and fonts. It used to be that it was difficult to tamper with a PDF, but unless you deliberately lock it (password protect it), it’s quite easy with Adobe DC to edit them. We need to create PDFs because they are what you’ll need to upload to KDP, IngramSpark, or any other print-on-demand outfit. Note: by Word doc, I really mean a document Self-Publishing: Easy as ABC Meredith Bond www.anessabooks.com [email protected] created and editable in any word processing program. is the one used by most people and so I used it as a generic term. Speaking of Word docs: .doc and .docx: These are actually Microsoft Word extensions (that the letters after the period in a file name. mobi is also an extension—all ebooks for Amazon are “FileName.mobi” which is why it’s called a mobi file). Beginning with Word 2007, files created by the program have the extension .docx instead of the old .doc. (they changed this because docx files take up less space and do a bunch of other good technical things). For some reason Smashwords requires a .doc file to be uploaded when you publish there and can’t read a .docx. Don’t worry, though, you can still have Word create a .doc instead of a .docx just by saving the file slightly differently. I’ll explain how when we go over formatting for Smashwords. The other place where you might want to upload a .docx is to Draft2Digital which will then convert that file into an ePub and .mobi file for you. As I said before, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of doing that when we talk about uploading. One thing I would highly recommend you NOT do is upload a Word docx to Amazon. If you do, you cannot be guaranteed that the book will look right – they say so in their guidelines. If you want your book to look the way you have formatted it you must upload either a .mobi file or an ePub (and you can do either one). So, to sum up, here are your options and which formats you’ll need for which retailer:

Major Retailer Format type

Amazon .mobi

Apple iBooks ePub

Barnes & Noble ePub

KDP, IngramSpark, or any Print-on-Demand PDF Draft 2 Digital ePub or .docx

Google Play ePub

Kobo ePub

Smashwords .doc or ePub

Programs you’ll need to format your book: There are a number of ways to format your book and convert what you’ve formatted into an ePub and .mobi file: Self-Publishing: Easy as ABC Meredith Bond www.anessabooks.com [email protected] You can go the technical route (recommended for people who really like to get into the nitty-gritty of computer programming) and code your book in HTML (it’s the computer language used for creating websites and ebooks) and then convert that into an ePub with (a free program). If you’re going to go the HTML/Sigil route, to work with HTML documents on my PC, I use Notepad ++. It’s an easy-to-use text editing program. For Mac, I use TextWrangler. All of these programs are free, so this is a great way to go if you’re comfortable coding and want to save money. If you’re less tech-savvy, there are two good options for creating an ebook: The Atlantis is a basic word processor (similar to Word but with fewer bells and whistles) that can save your document as an and mobi (if you allow it to install Kindlegen – KindleGen is Amazon’s program that converts documents into mobi files. You won’t have to work with it directly, the program uses it behind the scenes.). It does not create drop caps, but does allow you to embed fonts and is otherwise is a really easy, inexpensive word processor that will also create ebooks for you. It costs $35. The program I recommend more highly than any other is Jutoh. It’s perfect if you want to do anything from simple formatting to fancier things like drop caps and conditional formatting, which allows you to format a book one way for one version, say an ePub, and another way for another version, like a mobi. (I’ll tell you more about the advantages of conditional formatting when I discuss ebook formatting in detail.) Jutoh costs $39 and allows you to download the program as many times as you want to all of your computers (Mac and PC). It also has great support from the developer of the program who has a Yahoo Group where he (and anyone else) will answer your questions. You can use Jutoh as a word processor, but it’s main strength lies in its ability to create ebooks. It will convert your document into a mobi file (you’ll need KindleGen installed on your computer, but the program will provide you with a link and instructions on how to download it so that Jutoh can find it on your computer) or an ePub. For more complicated books (that include lists or footnotes, you can convert into an ePub3, which allows for these. (Note: I have a class on Teachable.com just on how to format with Jutoh that teaches all the ins and outs on formatting with this program.) To look at your formatted .mobi file and see how it would look on various Kindle readers and apps, you’ll need Kindle Previewer (free from Amazon). Kindle Previewer is also what you’ll use to create your .mobi file if you use Sigil to create an ePub. To look at my ePub book file, I use Adobe Digitial Editions to make sure it looks the way I want. This is also a free program. If you want, and have either a Kindle or a Kindle app on a tablet or phone, you can also transfer your mobi file to that to look at it there as well. The same goes with an epub if you have either an with Apple iBooks, a Nook or Kobo e-reader. If you transfer your epub to any one of them, you can see how it will look to people who read your book. L: Layout The layout of your ebook is mostly determined by the e-reader on which it is being read. The hardest thing for some authors to comprehend (especially those who don’t normally read ebooks) is that the reader actually determines a good deal of your book’s layout. For example, font size. You, the author and formatter, can make a font larger or smaller in your ebook, but really you need to leave that up to the reader who may need or prefer a particular size. Generally, in Self-Publishing: Easy as ABC Meredith Bond www.anessabooks.com [email protected] ebooks, font size is a relative number not an absolute. So if I choose 12pt font, the e-reader may interpret that to be whatever size the reader has chosen. For my chapter titles, I’ll choose a larger size, say 16pt. The e-reader will interpret that to be a third larger than the standard font (there are set percentages for every size). Will it show up at 16pt? I don’t know, and it really doesn’t matter. What matters is the relative size—that my chapter titles are larger than the text. Ebooks also flow. This means that the text adapts to whatever size screen the book is being read on. But what this means, practically, is that what is on page 20 on one device may be on page 45 on another. There are no set and the newest version of the Kindle app (not the ereader) even does away with pages completely making the entire book one long scrollable document. By separating your chapters into sections in either Sigil or Jutoh, you are ensuring that each chapter starts on a new page, but that is the extent to which you can determine where on the page the text will fall. For example, when I was designing my self-publishing book (the one that goes with this course), my husband thought it would look nice to have the letter at the top of the chapter take up most of the first page with just a line or two of text underneath. So I showed him, with the help of the Kindle Previewer program just how that would look on different Kindles:

This is on an e-ink device

Self-Publishing: Easy as ABC Meredith Bond www.anessabooks.com [email protected]

This is on a Kindle Fire You can see that there’s a lot more text on the Kindle Fire than the e-ink device. Everything is slightly larger on the e-ink device than on the Fire – the picture and the size of the text. There are some things you can do to manipulate where your text falls, but because you are working within the confines of, potentially, a very small space (you don’t know, your reader could be reading on their 4” iPhone), you need to be very careful about doing something like putting in blank space—if you put returns in before your chapter title, your reader on their iPhone might be seeing a blank page with every new chapter instead of a chapter title. The only book you publish where you will have complete control of the layout is your print-on-demand book, and we’ll discuss how to do the layout of that when we get to “P: Print on Demand”.

I: Ideas for making your book look professionally published Open up any traditionally published book and you’ll get ideas on how to make your book look professionally published. Here are some ideas which I have used to make the books I format look good. Nice beginnings Professionally published books almost always start each chapter with a bang. Whether that’s a nice chapter title font, a drop cap, or the first few words in all caps, depends on the whims of the designer. Sometimes it’s all of the above. Here are some examples I just pulled off of my shelf: Self-Publishing: Easy as ABC Meredith Bond www.anessabooks.com [email protected]

You’ll notice that there are a variety of possibilities here – you can put in a picture underneath the chapter number, above the chapter title or number, start with a drop cap, or just with all caps. Most books do put the chapter number in the center, but you don’t have to, as in the first example—it’s all the way on the right-hand edge and is balanced on the page by the drop cap. But do notice that in every book, the first paragraph is not indented. And that’s true of the first paragraph of each section as well. So, how would you like your chapter headings to look: 1, 2, 3… /Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3…/One, Two, Three… ; Centered/left side/right side; Italic/All caps/underlined, etc? Don’t be afraid to get creative here. You can embed a font for the chapter titles (don’t change the font of the entire text, some readers may need a particular font to be able to read an ebook), but for the title and/or drop cap, you can go a bit crazy. Also, feel free to put in a picture if you want, or shift your chapter header to one side. Gray is also an option (not all e-readers show color) if you want to do something a little different. Of course, in your print-on-demand book, anything goes—although do remember that there are some fonts that are just easier to read on a page (it’s why so many books are printed in either Times New Roman, Georgia or Garamond). I always use the same font for my chapter titles as was used on the front cover (or something very similar). And I’ll frequently use that same font for drop caps, if I’m putting them in. Drop caps are also an option in ebooks, and makes your book look really nice and very professional.

Include Images Images really add a nice, professional touch to a book. As mentioned above, you can put one in near or next to your chapter number—those sorts of images are usually a flourish of some sort. Another favorite tactic that I use is to put in an image as a section break. In an ebook, blank spaces don’t translate very well and are likely to be missed by a reader, so you want to put something in between sections. You can do something simple like ### or ***, and you can even get a little fancy with those such as ~*~. But why not put in an image? Personally, I like to pull an image from the cover if that’s possible. If there is a piece of the image on the front cover that can be cut out and made small, I’ll do that. I’ve taken everything from a Self-Publishing: Easy as ABC Meredith Bond www.anessabooks.com [email protected] magnifying glass, to a shoe , to a lipstick kiss. For some books, I’ve also used images that go with the book in another way – for my romance that’s partially set in India, I used a paisley (a traditional Indian design), for one where a dog was a major character I used a dog collar: .

There are also “wing dings” as well as other symbols available in other fonts. To open “Symbols” in Microsoft Word, it’s at the far right-hand side of the “Insert” tab. Search through different fonts, you might be surprised by what you find – even letters in other alphabets make nice separators. The key here is to get creative while not being too distracting.

Headers Unfortunately, in an ebook, we don’t have control over what goes in the header. That’s determined by the eReader. However, in Print-On-Demand books, we are in control, so why not make it look good? Traditionally, the author’s name goes at the top of the even pages and the book title at the top of the odd. If your chapters are named (beyond just the number), you might have the book title on the even numbered pages and the chapter title on the odd pages. You can put these headers in the font of the chapter title or that of the text. A lot of books have the book title in small caps and the author’s name in italics. But what about page numbers? They can be either put in the center of the footer—a standard place for it, or be slightly more interesting and put it in the outside corners of each page—either top or bottom. The key is to look through a number of books in your genre and decide on the design that you like best. But do remember, that different genres frequently do it differently because what you’re affecting here is the feel of the book. Do you want a more historical feel to it (having a fancy flourish at the top, like in the Philippa Gregory book) or a more modern feel (having the chapter number in the right-hand margin, like in Wool, by Hugh Howey). So, your homework is to look through all of your books—ebooks and physical one and decide on what elements you like and what you don’t like in the way their formatted. Then, you can decide on how you’d like your book to look. And don’t forget to share with us what you’ve found. Merry

Remember I can always be found: General Website: https://meredithbond.com Formatting: http://anessabooks.com Coaching: http://servesyouwrite.meredithbond.com