Tag: formatting

Book Interior Formatting: $45

I’m not yet planning to advertise this on other platforms yet because I’m hoping to get one or two takers to see how it goes, but I’m offering professional-grade book formatting for only forty-five dollars, a considerably lower price than you will find anywhere else.

I own the latest version of Vellum book-formatting software. I will use Vellum on your book to give you a professional-looking product for considerably less than you would pay either to buy Vellum yourself or hire a designer.

My novels Jake and the Dynamo and Rags and Muffin are formatted with Vellum. Follow the links and check out the See Inside option to observe their interior layouts. These are relatively simple designs, but numerous others are available, including ones that are more flashy or complex.

I will format nonfiction or fiction. Print versions are available in black-and-white only, but eBooks can feature full color. I can fit the book to any measurements required or allowed by your preferred print-on-demand platform. I will format any kind of book except erotica.

I need:

  • Word Document (or similar) containing the full text of your work. Authors who submit a document with both a semantic heading structure and triple asterisks (***) for section breaks get a $5 discount.
  • Any interior illustrations with directions for placement (optional). See your preferred publishing platform for instructions on size or file type.
  • Any images to be used as chapter headings or section breaks (optional).
  • Cover image (for eBooks), preferably measuring 1800 x 2700 pixels (optional but strongly recommended).

I will provide:

  • Basic typographical formatting (EM dashes, proper ellipses, and correctly oriented apostrophes, if needed). Tell me explicitly if you don’t want this.
  • An attractive, professional layout using Vellum’s templates. I will provide samples for your approval so you can pick the layout and fonts that work best for you.
  • Up to three free template alterations if you decide you need a different layout.
  • Free corrections of any compatibility issues (such as margins not matching a print-on-demand service’s requirements).
  • One free revision if you edit your manuscript or add cover art after submitting to me (additional revisions will require another submission with the same $45 price tag).

I will produce:

  • All eBook formats for all platforms, including optimally sized cover thumbnails if you provided cover art.
  • A PDF suitable for paperback or hardcover print books. (Interior only; all platforms will require you to upload the cover as a separate file.)

Bonus:

  • Additional, smaller documents, such as PDFs of short stories or sample chapters for use in promotion, are $10 each.

Contact me at dgddavidson@hotmail.com.

Return of the ‘Rags and Muffin’ Hardcover

I earlier reported that an Amazon order of my novel Rags and Muffin resulted in a delivery of the volume printed by IngramSpark. I had no explanation for this and still don’t.

I needed some additional copies recently and ordered them, again from Amazon. What I got this time resembled the test printing I originally got from Amazon, which in my opinion is superior to the IngramSpark version.

I do not know why I got IngramSpark books before. I do not know what will arrive in the mail if you order a hardcover.

However, the difference between the two versions might not be noticeable to most readers. The Amazon version appears to have sturdier binding, though whether it actually holds up better over time or whether that’s merely a cosmetic difference, I can’t say. The image on its cover is also clearer, but only slightly.

Rags and Muffin back cover.

I think this is a good-looking book. Amazon only recently began offering hardcovers through Kindle Direct Printing, but the product they produce is of high quality. The printing is clear, the paper is bright but not too bright, the cover is good, and the book overall is solid, with a lot of heft.

It happens that Vellum, which I use for formatting, updated right before this book went live on Amazon, so I was able to give the internal formatting some slight improvements over what I originally planned to release. Because the cover was already made, I couldn’t change the page count, so it was too late to use some of Vellum’s newer, more creative layout options. But you nonetheless get a fine-looking interior with large, clear type.

Rags and Muffin interior.

Vellum is expensive, but it’s one purchase I definitely don’t regret: I can format my books myself without hiring a pro, which means I can instantly correct any lingering typos if I become aware of them. This novel did (yet again) get an additional proofread recently from a generous reviewer, and all he found was a missing quotation mark—which has now been added where it belongs. I can’t claim it’s perfect, but it is a very clean manuscript, unusually so for either indie or tradpub.

The only downside to the hardback is that Amazon forces a starting price that’s decidedly high for an indie book. Naturally, I make most of my sales in eBooks, so I’m debating whether continuing to offer hardcovers for my future titles is worth the expense.

‘Rags and Muffin’ Is Finished

I know I’ve been radio silent again for a while, but that’s because I was again in one of those stages where I have a project I want to complete but it seems to be taking too long. But, today, I have it done—the final edits and formatting for Rags and Muffin, the novel I am planning to release after Dead 2 Rites, which will release after Jake and the Dynamo.

This took longer than expected for several reasons, both related and unrelated to the project itself. One thing that took a while was inserting all the internal links: This novel has a glossary in the back, mostly because, when I was a kid, I thought novels with glossaries, such as Dune or Watership Down, were extra special. But in the world of eBooks, a functional glossary requires hyperlinks in the text. Vellum, my formatting software, has a limited ability to add internal links (though it has fewer options than I would like), and today, I got the links done.

The cover art for this project hasn’t been made yet. However, I uploaded the PDF of the paperback and mocked up a fake cover on Amazon KDP so I could use the previewer to make sure the internal margins are correct.

The chapter headers and section breaks are from Barbusco comics. At the moment, I only have the one chapter-header image, the gun next to a teacup. I’m thinking about commissioning a few more so there isn’t just one image at the head of every chapter, but if I do that, I can get them in the same dimensions so they won’t affect the page count. The complete PDF of the paperback clocks in at 490 pages, including the front matter.

Real Life

The only remaining delay has to do with real-life stuff: The magical girls and I are buying a house. We had been shopping for a while, but a house that met our wants came available suddenly and unexpectedly. We’re supposed to be moving in at the end of next week if all the paperwork is complete on time, and for that reason, after this post, I’m going to go radio silent again for a bit because I’ll be focused on packing, closing, and moving.

Release Dates

Because we suddenly had to drop money on the house to avoid losing it, there isn’t a lot in the kitty for my publication and advertising costs. After we’ve made the down payment, I’ll be better situated to assess our budget and figure out what I can do, but I think we should have enough for some modest promotion.

For that reason, tentative release dates for the books are:

  1. Jake and the Dynamo:

  2. Dead 2 Rites:

  3. Rags and Muffin:

I am also (cross fingers) hoping to have the fourth volume of Jake and the Dynamo out by the end of the year.

Those are tenative, and I might tweak them by a day or three as I learn the business and, for example, figure out which days of the week are best for a release. Some unforeseen disaster or delay may also happen, but since two of the books are ready to go except for minor tweaks, I don’t think there should be any serious problem.

This has, of course, taken longer than I originally, optimistically anticipated. I can’t say I’m surprised because I haven’t self-published before; I’m just glad I didn’t have a Kickstarter because delaying release on a pre-funded project is bad form. I may, however, consider Kickstarters in the future when I’ve got the hang of this.

Jake and the Dynamo, Re:Formatted

I’ve got the cover art farmed out for both Jake and the Dynamo and its sequel, Dead 2 Rites. With fingers crossed, I proclaim that Jake and the Dynamo will see its re-release next month, and Dead 2 Rites the month after. I can’t absolutely confirm that yet because art is the major factor again, and I’m not the one making the art.

The re-release is a new edition with a revised text as well as new formatting. The screenshots here are from Dead 2 Rites, but the J&tD re-release will look the same.

The new edition of the first book will be thicker than the previous one though the revised text is slightly shorter. The second book is a hefty 530 pages, partly because it is a long novel (132,000 words) but also because of layout: The layout of these books is more polished than before with a larger font and wider line spacing for more comfortable reading.

The internal illustrations of the first book will be the same. Roffles Lowell was not entirely pleased with the way his drawings originally turned out in the paperback; however, aside from uploading the biggest and best files I can, I have no real control over the appearance of the illustrations, so I assume they will look the same as in the first edition.

For Dead 2 Rites, however, Roffles produced black-and-white versions that we hope will print more clearly.

Internal illustration from Dead 2 Rites.
Example of an internal illustration.

Both books will feature full-color internal illustrations in the eBook versions. The books will go up on multiple platforms simultaneously, but on this blog and in my social media accounts, I will probably only advertise the Amazon versions since that’s where sales rank really matters.

Print editions with full-color internal illustrations are possible, but there would need to be a strong interest.

I am starting in on the formatting of Rags and Muffin, which is the now-official title of my third book. This begins a separate series. Previously, the working title of this book was written as Rag & Muffin to emphasize the pun, but that would likely cause a lot of grief later on since HTML and ampersands don’t get along. An ampersand will likely appear on the cover, but the official title has “and” in it.

Printed pages from Dead 2 Rites.
Example of printed pages.

Experimenting with Vellum

I am currently in the “completely bewildered” stage of preparing to self-publish my work, with the goal of releasing no less that five (three, absolute minimum) books next year. I’m considering several options, thinking about services I might need, looking at necessary or unnecessary software, and so forth.

I have just finished (?) editing the first volume of Jake and the Dynamo. This may sound like unnecessary fiddling, since the book has been edited and even published previously, but I am treating the next release as if it is the first, a complete start-over, and I want to present readers with the best, cleanest, most professional text I can. This new version is, at present, almost 3,000 words shorter, entirely because of improvements in style and grammar.

One thing I’ve thought I would likely do is purchase Vellum. Although it’s enormously expensive, it is more or less the only software that prepares a manuscript for multiple formats with minimal hassle. Its creators allow you to download it and use all its options, forcing payment only when you’re ready to generate the files.

Thus, I have been sitting here sipping a gimlet (one part gin, one part Rose’s lime juice, and nothing else, as Raymond Chandler explains) while familiarizing myself with Vellum and getting a handle on what it can—and can’t—do.

It is as user-friendly as it claims to be, but that seriously limits its abilities. Some formatting I have in Word, formatting I thought was quite minimal, has been stripped out of my Vellum file. For example, it doesn’t allow lettered lists:

Lists in Vellum.
An unordered list in Vellum.

This is a little disappointing, but I can easily envision a reason for it: The idea is maximum compatibility across readers and file types. I found some software previously that allowed for edting EPUB files in XML, and I originally thought that put me on easy street since editing XML is something I can do, but I soon discovered that editing files by hand was time-consuming and also produced unexpected results in different types of eBook readers.

Vellum, despite the claims in its advertisements, feels very limiting. It offers only a handful of styles with minimal customization, few fonts, and few layout options, but it also keeps you from inadvertently creating messed-up files that don’t work on major platforms. The few layouts it allows look good. Sme things I want, such as handwriting fonts in a few spots, aren’t possible—but then again, that’s the kind of thing that wouldn’t show up on most e-readers anyway, and eBooks are where I can expect the most sales. Kindle, for example, strips out all custom fonts and uses Amazon’s proprietary font in their place.

Also, in this first run, I experimented with Microsoft Word’s styles to produce the cleanest, lightest manuscript I could. A lot of what I did transfered straight into Vellum, and Vellum was even able to intuit some of the document’s features (most especially, its section breaks). Some things, however, did not transfer—particularly, text that was set to be in all caps (rather than typed in all caps by hand). To make sure everything is kosher, I probably need to make a few more tweaks to my DOCX file before I import it to Vellum again.