Formatting issues 1

Hello everyone. Sorry, I couldn't blog about my writing in more timely manner. For once, it was because there was too much going on with it. I've been busy with getting two works of fiction (Last Chance Lane and Five Stones) formatted and ready for e-book sales.

In progress

Completed

I've decided to sell my e-books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo. Waiting for Appa is already on sale at Amazon (paperback and e-book) and Barnes and Noble (paperback only), so I thought I'd try to get it on Kobo.

But before I talk about uploading to these sites, I want to talk about formatting the manuscript. If you're paying someone to convert your manuscripts to e-book files for you, then this is not going to help you. You can skip this blog.

I don't want to pay someone to covert the files for me, so I've been trying to find ways to convert files myself. I've saved my documents as .doc, and when I uploaded straight onto the site, it imported all types of formatting errors. Too numerous to count.

I've used Calibre to convert .doc manuscript to .epub or many other e-book files. Calibre says it's an e-book management site, but I've been using it as a conversion software for my manuscript. It's met with limited success, but when you spot an error, you have to go back to the original document, in .doc, to correct the mistakes or figure out how to change the format to convert it seamlessly. This is how I formatted the Waiting for Appa e-book file on sale on Amazon a couple of years ago.

This time around, I've discovered that converting .doc manuscripts to .epub file then uploading it to the book sale sites didn't help with formatting errors compared to uploading .doc manuscript straight. However, I discovered that uploading .docx manuscript eliminated a lot of errors (especially font size or bold/italic errors). So, I've been uploading .docx manuscripts straight on to e-book sales sites. 

Even with .docx, indent format problems persists. I think there are youtube videos on how to do this correctly for different sales sites, but I haven't looked around. So, I've had to go paragraph by paragraph to check my indents. Although it's a long and tedious process, I do it this way to make sure I catch all my errors. Of course, there are no guarantees that I'm catching all of them, but I'm trying.

I know this might be little boring and tiresome to talk about formatting the manuscript, but I wanted to share what I've done to get to a certain place. I've been searching online to find a way to help with the formatting errors, but I didn't find anything that helped with my specific problem. So, I'm trying just to get it out there.

Until next time, stay healthy during this winter season.