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 seventy 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 been offered 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, 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.
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.
Blank Ebook Styled Document
It helps to 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 for you 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.
See note below on using styles in later versions of MS Word
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.
Checking and styling your MS
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 need to set up a table of contents with links to each chapter. The Smashwords Style Guide shows how to do this.
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.
MS Word has a useful option to select text and "clear all formatting". Using this to clear formatting from the whole book often works. But this may clear some formatting to wish to keep, eg italics. So note or mark these first, such by inserting "zz" at each location.
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. Especially check for hidden codes, such as Fields, using the dropdown "More" and "Special" options under "Find & Replace"
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 pictures can be inserted. Reducing the height of any picture inside the book file to not more than
about 19cm (7.5") should ensure the book opens in all readers.
The cover picture need not be included in the book file. It is uploaded separately and added by the retailer. Covers must conform fully to the distributor's pixel and file size requirements.
Before uploading the book file it is worth while preparing in advance 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!
Using Styles in recent versions of MS Word
If you have difficulty in setting up and using styles in recent versions of MS Word, this might help, even without screenshots.
In the blank MS Word opening screen notice the window in middle at top of main screen showing pre-set styles - for use if wished. Also notice the "Editing" options of "Find" & "Replace" in top right corner of your screen.
I recommend clicking on the paragraph mark, ¶, to the left of the Styles window, so that all formatting marks are always visible.
Clicking on diagonal arrow to right of the word "Paragraph" in 5th line from top of your screen opens drop-down paragraph style menu.
Clicking on the "line & page break" tab should (for ebooks) show all zero - especially "widow/orphan control"
One option here is to modify this style to "novel" style, with paragraph first lines indented by - say - 0.3", using drop-down menu for "indentation" "special". Then set this as default.
Clicking on the down arrow at bottom right of styles window brings up options for styles, including "clear all formatting" - very useful! But select text to be cleared first! Other options include "create a new style" and "apply style" for a newly created style. When a style is created or modified make sure "automatically update" is ticked: then all text in the document is automatically updated with any changes to that style.
Clicking on the diagonal arrow below the styles window, and to the right of the word "Styles" brings up a list of styles, on the right of your screen. It is useful to leave this window permanently displayed while formatting a ms for ebooks.
In this styles window:-
Hovering the mouse over a style displays the details of that style. Right clicking on a style brings up several options, including to "modify" the style.
Checking the "show preview" box helps, so that each style's name is shown in its own style. Except that the names of new styles are shown in upper case! Pre-set styles, such as "centered" may need modifying before use in ebook mss.
Boxes at the bottom of this Styles window give quick access to "create new style", etc.
The "options" box also at the bottom of this Styles window can be used to display only those styles in use, which saves clutter.
