Getting a book ready for publicaton is like cooking. There’s a formula, aka a recipe. There are steps, procedures, proceesses. These are different for every author and are different if a writer is traditionally published as opposed to a self-published one. This is where I am currently I’ve pulled out my “recipe” and I’m baking up the books–all four of the “new” Moonstruck Wolf books. If I was formatting a new book, I’d begin by copying and pasting from Scrivener to Word. Yes, I can “send” the entire MS from Scriverer to Word but I’m weird. I like to do it a chapter at a time…for reasons. Now, once I’m in Word, here’s my process.
First draft font is Times New Roman, 12 pt., single space. Published is Century Schoolbook, at least 14 pt. (which makes space for heading sizes, section breaks, and makes it easier to read in digital. I also set 3 spaqces for first lines of a paragraph. This changes with first lines after a chapter heading and after a scene break. I manually set those up because that’s what works fot me. Deselect all text and search for your chapter headings to do whatever special you want to do (Heading 1 preset which is centered, font, size and spacing for me).
Next, go to find and replace (and there ae “cheats” for these). Put what you are looking for in the find box, and how you want to fix it in the replace. Then hit replace all and keep doing that until it comes up 0. Always start with your cursor at the very beginning.
- Tabs (^t – shft 6, lowercase t), noting in the replace. You want to remove all the manual tabs. Otherwise, the self-pub aggragators get confused. Set up paragraph indents using the paragrah tab.
- Extra space between words and after a period (delete anything in find box and hit the space bar twice. Replace box cleared, then tap space bar once.)
- Extra space at beginning of paragraph (^p space)
- Extra space at end of paragraph (space ^p)
- Crutch words you know you use.
- Name spellings (and in my case where I’ve changed characters around, I check for the old names as well as the new ones)
There’s more, like ellipses, astericks, underline, enddashes, but I have that already set up for auto format in both Scrivener and Word.
Once that’s done, I create my title page, copyright page, table of contents, and back matter. A lot of this is copy/paste though the TOC is a funtion of Word in References. Once all that is done, I embed the font in the document because 1) I use a specialized fonts on the title page and 2) this keeps the aggrators (Amazon, Draft2Digital, Smashwords etc) from automatically defaulting to their font setting. In word, click on the File tab, click Options, click Save, scroll down to Preserve Fideltiy, check the Embed Font box. I always check for thisbefore uploading.
What’s next? Now, I finally sit down and read the darn book from start to finish, looking for typos and any oops in continuity. I’m especially looking for those oops in these books. Since I’ll be uploading them for a spaced-out release, I have time to fix each one.
Next Tuesday’s Treats and Titles will be back to normal–recipe from a character and a book. RESCUE MOON is first up. Yay. And yes, it’s time for our treat now. Munchies while I’m reading to fix–which means I’m not curled up in my confy chair with Kindle/laptop in hand, drink, and snacks on the side table. Nope I’m at my desk on the big computer so I can fix immediately. Yes, there’s a lidded travel mug with coffee at my left hand. Today, as I’m working, I’ll be munching on Mountain Trail Mix, with add ins. (This is a Wallyworld product)–various nuts, peanuts, raisins, M&Ms, and I add dried pineapple, cranberries, and blueberries because I like to pretend that I’m being semi-healthy. It’s the best of both worlds–salty AND sweet, and no crumbs in my keyboard.
Now it’s your turn. What are you reading and what are you munching on?
This has been a week where my head hasn’t truly been in the ball game. Which sort of makes this missive from the Universe fit. A little background. I was a high school and college athlete. So was Lawyer Guy. There was little doubt that Only (our daughter for those of you who are new around here) would follow. She settled of softball. And she got really, really good at it. She was a catcher and played 18-U gold level tournament ball at 14 and 16. We taught her to be pretty much fearless when it comes to working for what she wants. I also remember spending hours with her on hitting drills and dear lord, yes, I used that horrible old chestnut: See the ball. Be the ball. Hit the ball.
Silver James 