Formatting frazzle

Psychic Toolbox update: It arrived a couple of weeks ago from Lulu. Doesn't look too bad. Cover OK. Matches the first book. Have a feeling that all these covers will be reworked at some point in the future, preferably by someone else! Now for the next stage of re-reading and re-editing. Won't be as bad as the first, Psychic Virgin, though. It is shorter, and less complicated. Writing about one's life in a funny way so one's reader is not bored out of their skull, well, it was a supremely difficult task. 

And I have been putting off further publishing work with PV, and let it dawdle away at Lulu and Amazon, not doing much at the moment but then I knew it would take a time to get going. My stumbling block has been getting to grips with the ebook formula. Lulu will convert the text to ebook format, but you have to pay if you want it go out on a wide range of readers. Anyway, I have got it out on Lulu's pdf reading service, which is free, and I think it can be read on Sony readers now, as well as on PC's. 

And then I found a website called 'Smashwords', which gave a very helpful description of what I needed to do to get the text of PV into the right format for conversion to the various ebook formats. Now all I have to do is undo ALL the formatting I did for the book form of PV. 

Flip me, but that was the biggest of stumbling blocks for me: how to format a book. Which means getting headers running through the book which are in the right sequence, as well as the page numbers. Then there is the Table of Contents to do. And the long task of making sure the script looks right on each page. Using page breaks in the right place. And trying to be very tidy with the general look of the book. 

All that goes out of the window with ebook formatting. I have had to delete all that previous book formatting from the script and start over again. Apparently the text has to float according to the type of reader which is being used to view the book, so there can't be any line breaks, no faddly fonts, nothing fancy, just plain text written in Word. And I can't make the individual pages look tidy by sculpting the text into an attractive shape, which is something which took ages to do when working on the book format. 

Funnily enough, it took quite a load off me, not having to give the page a 'good look'. I felt like I was handing that responsibility over to my reader, who can then play around with the look of the book themself. Apparently the font and the line spacing can be changed on a reader. 

So, I have spent a couple of days reformatting PV into the format required at Smashbooks, who then convert it to formats suitable for a wide range of readers. And it is a free service, like Lulu, and they take commission if you sell your ebook through them. I really like this site, it is easy to follow, and the instuctions clearly given. To be recommended. 

A bit of a shock with PV. On reformatting it for Smashbooks, I realised that the edition I OK'd with Lulu for distribution was not the actual edition I had worked on last. I had changed the first chapter's first page. But I had shipped out to Lulu a previous edit. Ooops! For a moment I felt a chill run up and down my spine! But on reading that original front page, then re-reading my newer edit, I realised that the original was the better one to go with. So, not to worry. But I think some re-edited typos might have gone through as well. Good job I make an apology for this in the preface pages: I say that I am a cottage industry type of book because I have done all the work on it myself, and that I apologise for any errors which might have escaped the net. 

I hope, in the future, to have someone read the books for such errors, but I can't afford the services of such a person at the moment, so I have to manage as best I can. The same as I can't afford a graphic artist for the coverwork, but hopefully in the future that will change. I don't mind doing the editing and graphic work, but it burns up time.

Have nearly finished the formatting for Smashwords, and will upload in a day or so. Meanwhile, on to re-editing PT, and am also writing a 20,000 word ebook, possibly to also go to a book if it is not too small for Lulu to publish as such.

Well, that's all for now. I would have liked to have given more info about ebook formatting versus book formatting, but time ran out on me. I hope you are continuing to be inspired with your own writing, and that you don't give up despite the many setbacks that one can suffer whilst trying to stay on the writing pathway.