Thoughts on November Writing Part One

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by
Pumpkins

These pumpkins are a little late, but I didn’t quite manage to hit the Hallowe’en deadline for this update. [Image: Depositphotos, standard licence]

November has rolled around again and usually I would be doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which I first did in 2012 and apart from that year had ‘won’ ever since, either completing at least 50,000 words or, when being a ‘rebel’ and editing an existing draft instead, putting in 50 hours or more of that. But towards the end of last November it came to my notice (I was using the forum less and less since they went over to the horrible interface they now use and a lot of my writing ‘buddies’ had left) that a very unpleasant controversy had emerged concerning the site. I won’t go into it as I’m sure there’s plenty online about it still, but I didn’t want anything to do with their site after that.

Their well-publicised decision earlier this year to fully support writing with Generative AI was the last nail in the coffin. This decision is supposed to be in support of people with neurodivergent conditions as if they can’t write for themselves. NaNoWriMo was originally set up to encourage people to do at least some writing in November; it wasn’t necessary to “win” as they called it, an unfortunate term in my opinion. This announcement ignores the fact that the challenge is a struggle for most people for a variety of reasons, including chronic illness, family and carer responsibilities, work and other issues. To say that neurodivergent people can produce their 50,000 words in a generative AI system is not only patronising, it completely does away with the point of doing NaNo at all, since if you can get a machine to write your work for you, why bother? It’s the equivalent of having a ghost writer do it, except you’d have to pay a ghostwriting human. NaNoWriMo is meant to be a stretching goal. If you don’t even try, what’s the point?

Anyway, given all this I’m doing my own challenge instead. I’ve already put in a full day yesterday of about nine hours, revising about 15,000 words of my Mageborn sequel, written in the past month so that I could send that instalment to my critique group. I also revised a 800+ word homework assignment for another online writers’ group I’m in and sent that round. I don’t envisage writing every day in November but frequently enough to establish good habits as it’s all too easy to be sidetracked by other things. But I have been making good headway on the sequel during the last few months and continue to find Scrivener a good tool. I can export from it in Word for my critique group and it only needs a bit of tidying up: if I can get time to explore the export options a bit more I might even be able to cut down on that.

I finally got round to having a play in BookBrush and creating a QR code today. I think these will be useful for putting in the back of paperbacks under the ‘Also By’ type page as an easy way for a reader to go direct to my website and see all the books currently available at any one time. I also want to try out the A+ content template to add to my book page on Amazon. I always seem to have a lot of to-dos around the marketing side of things and struggling to find time to tackle them. I did manage to get a free extension working from Kindlepreneur, the people who produce Atticus and Publisher Rocket, and that flagged a change to The Reluctant Hero on amazon.com (the only site it works on at present) which when I checked it revealed that the categories of the book, previously along the lines of what I’d requested in the book page on Amazon, had completely changed to New Adult & College Fantasy categories and War & Military Action Fiction for reasons best known to themselves. The UK site shows no categories at all. I’ve been doing a fair bit of online training about Amazon categories and keywords but it didn’t prepare me for a radical change like that. Hopefully, it will be a move for the better in making the book more discoverable.

Goals:

  • Complete homework assignment for face-to-face group next week
  • Work regularly on Mageborn sequel
  • Complete latest keywords/categories seminar
  • Create a series description on Amazon for the Chronicles of Namista based on afterword in The Reluctant Hero
  • Explore A+ content for The Reluctant Hero

Working Smartly?

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by
laptop on a desk with notebook, pencil, banana
DepositPhotos, standard licence

I haven’t posted for a while but have been working behind the scenes. Recently, I embarked on the first draft of a sequel to Mageborn. Some years ago, I’d started what I thought was a short story, set in that world, then got stuck. But when I went back to it three or four months ago, I realised it was really the start of a novel and what’s more, one that would come between Mageborn and what was then the second in the series, a book I’d written the beginning and a synopsis for but had been forced to park while trying to complete The Reluctant Hero.

I started ‘feeling my way’ into the book and then hit an issue: I’m in an online novel critique group but had run out of things to send around. Two members had already seen Mageborn and two longer novels, and all of those need work to incorporate previous feedback. So I’ve been doing something I’ve never done before: sharing a first draft in progress. A bit scary as usually I would have a completed first draft as an absolute minimum before offering it for critique.

Another way I’ve changed my writing practice with this novel is to finally take the plunge and attempt to master Scrivener. I’ve tried in the past and been boggled with the learning curve required, plus there were a couple of deal-breakers as far as the compile process went (the function that allows you to export your book to Word or other formats). I wrote about this back in 2016 but had to wait for Scrivener 3 for Windows to be released. The two points were:

  • the ability to keep centred text centred rather than having it move to the left margin in the compiled version
  • the ability to have the first paragraph of a chapter or scene flush against the left margin (blocked) rather than having it indent itself in the compiled version

The second one is now working fine when I export to Word, which I do every session, sometimes multiple times during the day if I’ve done a decent chunk. I haven’t checked the first point yet as I haven’t needed to centre any text so far (headings are generated automatically by the compile from the chapter names), but it’s looking promising. Having the book in Scrivener is making a lot of things easier. I’m using a free template from Oliver Evensen (https://ojevensen.com/about/) who used to work for Literature & Latte, the company behind Scrivener, and now provides training and other services. I’ve been watching a number of Oliver’s free webinars, available via L&L’s website, and downloaded his template which is already set up with a useful hierarchical structure for a series in the binder, plus templates for elements such as part, chapter, scene, character sketch, setting sketch and so on (the last two are for the Research area of the binder). So far I’ve set up three books, though haven’t yet had time to import the whole of Mageborn into the first, but I have brought the first chapter of the original sequel in (now book three). With the middle book, I imported the beginning and have been writing the rest directly into Scrivener. It’s not as feature-rich as Word and has a few quirks, but I’m managing though I have the odd interruption where I usually end up googling to find out how to do something. You don’t apply formatting to the text in Scrivener; that’s all set in the Compile. Some people say they’ve had problems with Scrivener projects corrupting and losing work, so I’m saving frequently as well as exporting to Word.

One thing I’m finding very useful with this set-up, based on Oliver’s template, is – because there are scene templates for two different lengths and Scrivener tells you when you’re under target and when you’ve achieved it – it’s allowing me to judge the length of my chapters. I’ve decided they are too long in Mageborn, part of the reason why I’ve only imported the first few as I’m trying to find good places to split them into shorter ones. But with the new book, the scene templates make it easy to keep each chapter to about 1500 – 1900 words maximum and build in good chapter endings from the get-go.

So all-in-all, this represents a departure for me in my writing routine. It remains to be seen how it will pan out, but so far I’m finding it quite freeing. Watch this space!

Strange Times Part Two

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Things have been very busy and I’ve kept meaning to post something here but then time gets away from me.

tailor's tools including chalk, threads and shears
DepositPhotos, standard licence

Since my last update, I’ve been working on a number of books, at different stages, mainly those that were completed years ago, had revisions then and were parked while trying to become traditionally published. Since making the decision at the end of 2014 to go the self-publishing route, I’ve been re-editing all of those multiple times and circulating them to an online crit group, so have been accumulating lots of notes on further updates. I’ve also finally published the first novel under my pen name, in a supernatural/paranormal genre which could be described as dark fantasy. Back in 2020 during lockdown, I thought I should publish it for charitable purposes, probably benefiting the UK National Health Service (NHS). However, I didn’t appreciate how long it would take me to edit, so for business reasons had to adjust my plans and if it does make a profit, which is probably unlikely, I’ll donate 10% to charity.

Anyway, I’m now able to direct more attention to a couple of short novels that I hope won’t pose such a delay in reaching publishable quality. Mageborn is the first in a fantasy series and History’s End is a science fiction dystopia set in the future after an ecological and plague-related collapse of civilisation. As well as getting those ready for publication, I’m going to be working on another fantasy novel, Goddess, which is undergoing a second circulation around my online critique group.

In the last couple of years I’ve been attending a writing group where we do ‘homework’ based on prompts drawn at random for e.g. character, setting, theme. It’s been a lot of fun and has got me back writing short stories which I hadn’t done for years. In the last month or so I’ve joined a similar online group though the brief there is to write to a theme in 600 words or at least well under 1000, so that’s a good discipline too.

Recently, I was greatly shocked to discover that the NaNoWriMo site – the novel writing challenge I’ve participated in every November since 2012 and, apart from the first year, managed to ‘win’ by either writing 50,000 words or putting in at least 50 hours of editing – is in meltdown following very serious allegations about misconduct by certain staff members and one or two of the unpaid moderators, particularly in conjunction with the young people’s writing programme. As a result, the whole forum has been locked down, and the NaNoWriMo Board of Directors have hired a consultant to advise them on how to drastically overhaul the site. I won’t go into the issues any further, but I doubt whether I’ll participate in future. I’ll put the winners badge on my side bar – due to the forum becoming a ghost of its former self after the website update in 2019, I hardly ever went into it any more so was oblivious until near the end of November that anything was wrong – but unless there’s a total clean up (and even then) I won’t want to associate myself with a site where such appalling behaviour has gone on.

AI is the big controversy at present, of course, and as things stand I’ve decided not to use it for writing, editing or having covers done. A few respected cover designers have gone over to using it, but you now have to declare on Amazon if you’ve used AI, and I’m not comfortable with the way at least some of the Large Language Models have been built. There are various lawsuits going through where artists or writers have had their work used without permission or recompense. As I want to support other creative people and don’t want to risk using sites that could have used work without permission, I’m steering clear, though I know there are one or two which apparently have stuck to limited data sets which have been sourced ethically. I might in future be tempted to use it for the marketing side of things, but it would have to be when there’s no risk of infringing the rights of artists or other writers. I know AI-assisted is in a different category, e.g. using ProWriting Aid or similar tools for editing, but I’ve never been tempted by those. I had the opportunity to trial an early version of Grammarly at work back in the day and it was terrible: no doubt it’s a lot better now, but I’m sticking to resources such as Hart’s Rules and the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers & Editors.

I am making a change to my writing practice though, because I’ve started using Scrivener for Goddess, which is a lot more manageable with a big book, and I used Atticus to format my pen name production and will be using that going forward. It’s not perfect and I wouldn’t use it for editing since it stores everything on the cloud, and I had severe broadband problems a couple of months ago so wouldn’t risk being sideswiped by that, but it can produce an ebook and a PDF for printing from the same project file. You just have to create alternative versions of certain pages, e.g. copyright page to allow for different ISBNs, which you specify to be used in the appropriate format, plus you set up templates to govern things such as font, justification etc and print-specific items such as page headers for the print version. I did all that manually for The Reluctant Hero, but once you have everything set up it is soooo much quicker when you need to produce yet another version because something was missed out. Having one version of the text is so much better and you can download a Word docx version as a backup so on the whole I’m finding it very useful.

Back in October, I embarked on a free course by Bryan Cohen which he runs every quarter to help authors learn how to do Amazon adverts. I did the first few days’ challenges but fell by the wayside as some of the later challenges took so long to do the research. However I do intend to have another go.

Current list of todos:

  • Yet another edit of the next segment of Goddess to go onto online group circulation by tomorrow
  • Do homework for writing group meeting (online one done yesterday)
  • Start going through the feedback on Mageborn and implementing
  • Start blogging regularly again
  • Do Bryan Cohen’s Ads for Authors course again and try to get further this time

Strange Times Part One

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

public domain, Pixabay, by MabelAmber

Well it’s been a while though I have been working on a number of books which are at different stages. Until October I was busy with researching and then producing the print version of The Reluctant Hero which was published then on KDP, using the print service which replaced CreateSpace. (Link to the UK edition here.) I also had the cover slightly updated to include the series title. During lockdown it occurred to me that a book I wrote back in the 1990s, Green Magic, had been overtaken by events – not only does it include the issue of mass migration and refugees trying to escape from disaster, it also deals with a worldwide pandemic, though I hadn’t called it that, which has a lifechanging result for those who survive. I decided to restore it to the original 1990s setting (I had updated it for technological and other changes over the years) to make it clearly an alternative history. I have been working on that over the last few months. I believe it is now possible to publish to Apple without an Apple computer so need to investigate that. As well as that, I’ve done some work on a couple of other fictional works that I’ve been circulating around my critique group for feedback. I also did an online interview on the E-Author Resources site – my thanks to Vincent Lowry – you can find this here. So the revised list of to-dos is as follows:
  1. Complete the re-edit of Green Magic – partway through
  2. Publish on KDP (Kindle version)
  3. Publish on Kobo and possibly Draft2Digital unless another platform offers itself for the other platforms especially Apple.
  4. Get some ISBNs for my pen name, as Green Magic is one of my contemporary supernatural novels – will need one for the epub format version.
  5. Continue to circulate another novel to the critique group.
Those nice people at ROW80 are now posting updates on the Facebook group here.

Reaching the Finish Line

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Front cover of The Reluctant Hero

Cover design: Fantasia Frog

For too long I’ve been quiet but nevertheless I’ve been busy. After overcoming some last minute technical hitches, I finally published my novel, The Reluctant Hero, on both the Kindle and Kobo reading platforms a few days ago.

Countless revisions and umpteen readthroughs, but I finally got there with a huge sense of relief though I know that in some senses, the hard work starts now: that of trying to market and promote the book. Plus I have further learning curves to work out how to get it onto other platforms and produce a paperback.

I think I have overcome some technical hitches I experienced a couple of days ago with the distribution platform, Draft2Digital. Possibly it is easier if you just upload a Word file to them and let them handle all the formatting, but having used my own epub file for generating the Kindle version and to upload to Kobo, I wanted to maintain consistency, especially since I have used one of my recently purchased ISBN numbers for the epub version. A workround recommended for the Kindle caused an issue where D2D could not see my final chapter, so I have had to tweak it a little and I will need to incorporate those tweaks into the standard file so that it is also the same on Kobo.

I’ve also had a quick look at the paperback setup in KDP, since CreateSpace has now been pensioned off and all printed versions must be made through KDP. There is some complexity to overcome, mainly to do with how big the book turns out to be when laid out in a KDP template, as until I know I can’t have the wraparound cover made – the book cover template screen requires the book size before it will let you download a template for that.

Exciting times – I have created an author thread on the Goodreads UK group where I am active, posted about the book on my Facebook author page and told a few friends who have kindly put out links for me. I now need to ramp up the publicity for the book. Blowing my own trumpet doesn’t come naturally, as with a lot of writers, but it needs to be done.

And I now need to get back to one of my other almost-ready-to-go books and start the process again, which should be a lot quicker since both of those books are a fraction of the length of The Reluctant Hero and have a much simpler linear plotline with far few characters.

To summarise the last lot of goals and progress (those with no annotation are not yet commenced):

  1. Complete the latest read through so that am happy to do final upload to KDP and finalise the book, e.g. pricing info etc. – done
  2. Publish on KDP (Kindle version) – done.
  3. Investigate what is needed to publish on Kobo and Draft2Digital to cover the other platforms. – done, and published on Kobo, part way through process on D2D
  4. Investigate print process – CreateSpace still? Seems as if everything is now moving towards KDP – done, it must be KDP
  5. Get some ISBNs – done
  6. Publish the print version

Those nice people at ROW80 are now posting updates on the Facebook group here.

Creeping towards the Finish

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Cross country runners

farmama, pixabay, public domain

Despite good resolutions there has once again been a lack of blog update posting. However I have been working on the edit and have completed several more readthroughs. Just when I think it is all done, I spot something else. However, it is down to small changes for ease of reading etc now.

As NaNoWriMo is looming, I shall work on what I hope will be the final edit during November, using NaNo as a goad to get through the last few hurdles in the way of self publication.

 

To summarise the latest goals and progress (those with no annotation are not yet commenced):

  1. Complete the latest read through so that am happy to do final upload to KDP and finalise the book, e.g. pricing info etc. – part way on the latest, up to chapter 28 in making changes
  2. Publish on KDP.
  3. Investigate what is needed to publish on Kobo and Draft2Digital to cover the other platforms.
  4. Investigate print process – CreateSpace still? Seems as if everything is now moving towards KDP.
  5. Get some ISBNs

 

Those nice people at ROW80 are now posting updates on the ROW80 blog – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

The Road Goes Ever On…

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Road winding through countrysideWell, my good resolutions about posting more regularly on the blog went a bit by the wayside, but a few other things have also been parked lately as I attempt to get through yet another couple of read throughs. The trouble with a long book like this is there are countless small bits of continuity that slip by, but eventually jump out in yet another read through. Just spotted one where someone stands up who was already standing in the corner of the room …. ho hum.

With all this, never got organised enough to join Camp NaNo to do the edit under their auspices; didn’t have time to ask people if they wanted to share a cabin etc. Maybe will sort that out for the next Camp which is in July.

Otherwise, the only writing related thing is that I’ve continued to do my reviews of whatever I’ve been reading – link on the side bar to Goodreads page if anyone is interested. Most of them are old books I got secondhand years ago and am now finally reading them and passing them on to charity shops etc.

To summarise the latest goals and progress (those with no annotation are not yet commenced):

  1. Complete the latest read through so that am happy to do final upload to KDP and finalise the book, e.g. pricing info etc. – part way on the latest, up to chapter 20 in making changes
  2. Publish on KDP.
  3. Investigate what is needed to publish on Kobo and Draft2Digital to cover the other platforms.
  4. Investigate print process – CreateSpace still?
  5. Get some ISBNs

 

Those nice people at ROW80 are posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

Slogging to the Finish Line

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

bicycle wheels

denzel, pixabay, public domain

A while ago I was asked to sponsor a family friend who was in training to ride from London to Brighton for a very worthy cause, Myeloma UK. I was very glad to do so, and followed her progress as she trained, did a shorter cycle ride a couple of months back, and ran a countdown to the big day. On the day itself, her dad posted updates on Facebook as he followed her progress on an app.

I’m not equating the hard slog of riding a bicycle, let alone up the big hill that came just before Brighton, to writing and publishing a novel, but there are some aspects which both have in common.

The months of training runs, of building up first to a shorter challenge and then to the final event, the anticipation, the making sure that your equipment is all in good working order, that you have the right nutritional snacks and fluids to keep you going …. and on the other side, the editing of the book and taking on the input of your editor, then the follow-up read throughs to spot the small continuity errors in a 162K manuscript, or the infelicitious repetition of certain words, especially too close together. The feeling that you are never going to get to the end. Due to that, and various life events, a few things have drifted over the last six months, including this blog – sorry about that!

But the end is now in sight and getting closer. In the last couple of months, I have formatted the book into a Kindle compliant epub file and uploaded it to the KDP site. I’ve added metadata and description after investigating what was needed for those, uploaded the high quality cover file, sorted out the words flagged as spelling mistakes, checked the book’s navigation against KDP’s tools, and downloaded the file three times, to read through again. I’m about to embark on what I hope is the third and last read through before publication. I have a ‘vanilla’ version of the ebook which can go onto Kobo once I work out what is required to do that – KDP treats the cover differently so the epub file has to be tweaked for that.

As a side event, I went back to Fantasia Frog who produced the cover a while back and requested book marks which I’m pleased with.

Once I publish on Kindle, I need to investigate the process of getting the vanilla epub onto other platforms via the industry leader, Draft2Digital. And I need to master the print process. Up to now, CreateSpace has been the first choice for that, but Amazon are steering self publishers towards its own Kindle print process as shown by their recent introduction of proof copies.

To summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Produce a fourth e-book version and play it through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Completed.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – done, and proven by successful upload to KDP.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the revised shortlist of pro editors to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’. Done – editor engaged, feedback implemented.
  4. Finalise the back of book text and add info to the copyright/dedication page such as the book cover designer’s and editor’s credits. Completed.
  5. Consider if further tweaks are needed to the ebook conversion process in light of advice in David Gaughran’s book and linked articles. Haven’t had time to progress this and will probably park it for now, as KDP has been ‘happy’ with the formatted book three times now.
  6. Arrange to print book marks. Done.
  7. Complete the latest read through so that am happy to do final upload to KDP and finalise the book, e.g. pricing info etc.
  8. Publish on KDP.
  9. Investigate what is needed to publish on Kobo and Draft2Digital to cover the other platforms.
  10. Investigate print process – CreateSpace still?

 

Those nice people at ROW80 are posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

Hopeful Signs

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

hand writing in notebook

pexels, Pixabay, Public Domain

I realise I’ve said little for the last two months although quite a bit has been going on behind the scenes. I  ‘engaged’ a professional editor at the beginning of June, and things are in the early stages, but so far I’m pleased.

I’ve done more work on the ‘back matter’ of the ebook, and also overhauled my stylesheet document before I approached my editor as there were a few small inconsistencies in it.

I played with Gimp again to come up with a transparent cover image that includes the title, author name and the publishing imprint logo. Graphics are not my forte and it takes ages to accomplish what someone else could no doubt do in an hour or less, but I got there eventually. I think I have the image sized correctly now for the ebook.

I contacted Fantasia Frog who have produced a few covers for me already, including the one for the WIP, to check what format their book cover credit should be in, and also to enquire about a possible bookmark for sale on the FF site. After some back and forth, I now have image files for a bookmark which shows information about the forthcoming book on one side and some fantasy images etc and my website link etc on the other. I can use that generic side on future bookmarks. The FF designer very kindly went the extra mile and did some investigation for me re online printers, and we identified one to use. I should already have sorted out the printing, but have been sidetracked with other things since.

While corresponding, I also asked about a premade cover for a novel which I’ve only written part of – and ended up buying it.

I also made a start on editing the second book I intend to self publish, though I’ve only managed the first chapter so far. It is, however, a much shorter book and more straightforward, being a first person narrative, so I’m hoping it will need a lot less time and effort to get it in a state where an editor can look at it.

To summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Produce a fourth e-book version and play it through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Completed.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – Pretty happy with the process I’ve documented, apart from the continuing issue with the title page image which has the text too small possibly because of making it responsive and sizing for the screen (not including actual figures for width and height). Need to try again with text title/author name and the logo image and see if they still split across ‘pages’. Need to create a short dummy ebook to find out if the trial attempt at a transparent graphic works, as none of the preview tools are any use for that. Done – seems OK as far as I’ve been able to check from putting the dummy book onto Kindle and also Kobo.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the revised shortlist of pro editors to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’. Done – and engaged an editor. Now awaiting feedback.
  4. Finalise the back of book text and also remember to add info to the copyright/dedication page such as the book cover designer’s and editor’s credits. More or less done – contacted designer and ascertained form of credits they wanted, and added that to the draft front matter. Overhauled the back matter text.
  5. Consider if further tweaks are needed to the ebook conversion process in light of advice in David Gaughran’s book and linked articles. Haven’t had time to progress this.
  6. Arrange to print book marks. Again, haven’t done this yet.

 

Those nice people at ROW80 are posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list again – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

 

Learning Curves

Pam Baddeley, Writer Posted on by

Blackboard slate with 'Learning, Schooling' written on it

geralt,pixabay,public domain

Funny how you can read the same thing over and over again, re-edit it for the umpteenth time and suddenly have an epiphany – well, fancy term for something that happened when the latest text-to-read runthrough reached a particular conversation. I won’t say what deficiency it highlighted, at risk of major spoiler territory, but suffice to say I’ve been adding new material to a couple of chapters much later in the book to address it. The need for the extra work has bogged down the progress of the edit somewhat, and also raised the word count again when I had succeeded it getting it below 160,000, but without those changes there would be a major believability gap.

Phew! Does make you worry and think “What else might I have missed?” I’m hoping the professional editor I want to engage will catch anything else, though I haven’t yet approached my shortlist as the ‘final’ edit is taking longer with these additions, and I don’t know exactly when I’ll finish.

As an added incentive, I’m doing CampNaNoWriMo this month, with an initial goal of 35 hours editing, though the plan is to exceed that.

As light relief, I wrote another 200 word short story for the latest competition on one of the  Goodreads forums. This time the brief was to include five particular words chosen by last time’s winners. I’ll post that on my short shorts page once the result is announced later this month.

I’ve been reading parts of David Gaughran‘s book “Let’s Get Digital” which has lots of interesting info and also links to other articles on the internet, some by him and some by other writers. I may have to slightly revise my ebook formatting process in the light of some of this advice, mainly along the lines of swapping out e.g. emdashes in favour of substituting the html codes for same. Will need to consider that as soon as I have any time.

Anyway, to summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Produce a fourth e-book version and play it through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Part way through chapter 29 of the latest.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – Pretty happy with the process I’ve documented, apart from the continuing issue with the title page image which has the text too small possibly because of making it responsive and sizing for the screen (not including actual figures for width and height). Need to try again with text title/author name and the logo image and see if they still split across ‘pages’. Need to create a short dummy ebook to find out if the trial attempt at a transparent graphic works, as none of the preview tools are any use for that.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the revised shortlist of pro editors to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.
  4. Finalise the back of book text and also remember to add info to the copyright/dedication page such as the book cover designer’s and editor’s credits.
  5. Consider if further tweaks are needed to ebook conversion process in light of advice in David Gaughran’s book and the linked articles.

 

Those nice people at ROW80 are posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list again – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.