Large Print, Anyone?

I've noticed something that struck me as odd. Many, if not most, authors don't put out books in large print for those who are visually impaired. I realize many people are using e-readers, which allow control over text size. But I also realize I'm not the only reader who prefers a "real" book in my hands, and I have to wonder how many authors are missing out on readership because their books aren't available in large print format as well as standard fonts.

I recognize that traditionally published authors don't necessarily have a say in what formats their books are produced, but we indies DO. Advice I received recently during a seminar on self-publishing stated it simplest - get your books out there in as many formats and to as many venues as you can. Better to sell more copies.

I'm making my books available in both standard and large print paperback. I use Times New Roman-12 pt for my standard format paperback books (also makes it easier to format for e-books), using 6x9 size trade paperbacks. For large print, I use Times New Roman-16 pt. My novella was fine in the same size paperback with Times New Roman-16, but novels get monstrously thick, so I use 7x10 size paperbacks for large print books.

If you use a print-on-demand venue such as Create Space, it doesn't cost you anything but the time needed to change format/font to make your book available in both standard and large print. So why not do it and make your book available to even more people?

Self-Publishing - Part 3

I've been writing about self-publishing this month. A fabulous tool for those of us who are sick enough to enjoy such things. he he

Last week, I talked about the importance of editing. As in hiring someone else to edit your work for you. If you missed that post, read Self-Publishing - Part 2.

This week, we get to issue #2.

[PLEASE NOTE - This post is specifically with regards to PRINTED self-published books.  E-books are whole different animal, but if you learn to properly format e-books, most of the formatting for printed books will already be done.]

Manuscript Formatting

Multiple things here can cause issues.

1 - Font size. Please, for the sake of those with vision problems, don't use what hubby and I less-than-affectionately refer to as "glorious squinto-vision." If the text isn't large enough to be easy for most readers to read, you'll lose readers. The industry standard for Christian fiction seems to be predominantly Times New Roman 12-point, or the similar font Garamond. I've seen everything from 11 to 13 point font recommended in those two styles. Personally, I use TNR 12-pt to make it easy to read (I'm not a fan of Garamond).  (For large print editions, I use TNR 16-pt.)

If you're using a tiny font to decrease page count, there are other ways to accomplish this than to use a glorious squinto-vision font. Which leads us to the next...

2 - Line spacing. Double or line-and-a-half spacing isn't necessary in the finished product. It's great for editing and such, but it shouldn't be in the final manuscript when it goes to print (or e-book for that matter). Personally, I find it detracts from the professional appearance of the finished book. Single spacing is all you need and is much more professional.

3 - Paragraph style. Issues in this area have been interesting to see as I never thought about or expected it. I use standard paragraphs in my books as I see used in professionally done, traditionally published books. Indented first line on each paragraph. All single spaced. No extra spacing between paragraphs. Here's an example (rough draft, so excuse any grammar/sentence structure boo-boos or bad word choices - this is just an example from one of my MSs for paragraph style purposes):

          “It’s been six days, Lord,” Chase whispered, arms folded across the back of the pew in front of him, forehead resting on his arms. “How much longer?”

Each day, he’d come to the church to pray as evening fell. Each day, he felt the same sense of peace that God had things well in hand. And each day, he wondered how much longer it would be before they received some clue to Jordan’s whereabouts. The answer was always the same.

Be still. Be patient. My time, not yours.

“I’m trying, Lord.” Tears choked his voice. “And I’m trying really hard not to be scared for her. Please, wherever she is, take care of her.”

Here's the above example using block paragraphing:

“It’s been six days, Lord,” Chase whispered, arms folded across the back of the pew in front of him, forehead resting on his arms. “How much longer?”

Each day, he’d come to the church to pray as evening fell. Each day, he felt the same sense of peace that God had things well in hand. And each day, he wondered how much longer it would be before they received some clue to Jordan’s whereabouts. The answer was always the same.

Be still. Be patient. My time, not yours.

“I’m trying, Lord.” Tears choked his voice. “And I’m trying really hard not to be scared for her. Please, wherever she is, take care of her.”

See the difference?  No indent of the first line. To keep the paragraphs straight, you have to add the extra space between paragraphs. This is actually a standard business document paragraph style, not intended for creative uses such as fiction writing. For fiction, it adds extra lines to the manuscript, and thus extra pages. Not necessarily a good thing if you're trying to keep the cost of your book down.

What I see a lot of people doing is combining the two styles, which is distracting and totally unnecessary. Here's the above example combining the two styles as I see in many finished books:

            “It’s been six days, Lord,” Chase whispered, arms folded across the back of the pew in front of him, forehead resting on his arms. “How much longer?”

            Each day, he’d come to the church to pray as evening fell. Each day, he felt the same sense of peace that God had things well in hand. And each day, he wondered how much longer it would be before they received some clue to Jordan’s whereabouts. The answer was always the same.

            Be still. Be patient. My time, not yours.

            “I’m trying, Lord.” Tears choked his voice. “And I’m trying really hard not to be scared for her. Please, wherever she is, take care of her.”

This style makes me cringe as it is not structurally correct for either paragraph type. It's also not professional in appearance and screams "AMATEUR", but MAY only be noticeable to other authors, as well as business professionals like secretaries (such as myself) or any student who has been taught proper paragraph formatting. I'm learning to ignore it (sort of). I'm sure my high school and college typing, business, and English teachers/instructors would have a fit over this one, not to mention how many of my fellow secretaries look at it and, like me, are distracted by a nearly overwhelming desire to fix it.

If you want to publish a book that looks professional, pay attention to how the big boys (traditional publishers) have been doing it for years. Follow their example. If you don't, some segment of your readers are bound to notice. And THAT kind of attention isn't necessarily positive. You want your writing to be noticed, not the unprofessional or problematic formatting you choose for the finished product.

Take a look at your finished manuscript and honestly evaluate these factors. If you intend to do e-books, you'll have a whole different set of formatting criteria to deal with (and paragraph style WILL bite you in the butt when you go to format for e-books if you don't do it right - take it from me). There are some great resources online to show you the dos and don'ts of e-book formatting.

The Passive Guy tends to gather a lot of great information from various blogs on these issues, as well as other aspects of publishing. You might check out his blog, The Passive Voice.

Here's one such article I had to read just because the title made me laugh:

Should You Tell a Writer His Baby's Ugly?

And another one that is rather lengthy but well worth taking the time to go through is Take Pride in Your eBook Formatting. I'm going to have to go through it multiple times myself as there's so much to this series.

I'm sure you'll find lots more, but that should get you started with regards to formatting e-books.

Oh, and something else. For those of you who are trying to save space, one of the things I often see overlooked that can make a difference of several pages over the course of an entire novel is that really annoying "widows & orphans" feature in Word. Do yourself a favor. Disable it. If the MS is already typed, "select all" then go into your paragraph style and turn that feature off. You might be surprised how many pages it saves you, not to mention it gives the book a more professional polish since all your pages will be the same length instead of bottoms looking cut off on some pages.

Anyone else have any tips that might help others avoid the mistakes you or others you know have made?

Self-Publishing - Part 1

Photo courtesy of click on morguefile.com

I read self-published books often these days, as I'm sure many others do. There are some incredible stories out there, and they deserve attention. I've also self-published - one fiction novella to this point, but my first full-length novel is in edits right now (and no, I'm not ONLY self-editing, but we'll get to that later) and will be self-published when it's ready.

The pros of self-publishing are easy to figure out. The biggest one is that you retain all rights to and control over your own work. You can do with it what you want when you want without having to get permission from anyone else. Do you need to revise it? Go for it. Want to pull it from the market for some reason? You can do that, too. No permission needed from anyone. Nice, eh? And if a new format type comes out? You can go straight to publication in that format without having a hassle. (This will resonate with those who traditionally published years ago and are having trouble getting publishing rights from their publishers so they can get those books out in e-book formats.)

You're responsible for your own editing, manuscript formatting and cover design. Those can be pros or cons depending on your personality, areas of interest and skills in such matters. Personally, I consider those pros. Others may not. They don't want to deal with finding their own editors, or document formatting, or designing their cover or hiring someone else to do it. For them, I would suggest traditional publication. Traditional publishers take care of all of that for you. That's part of what you pay them for with a share of your royalties. Take advantage of that expertise.

You will make mistakes as a self-publisher. You will learn some things by trial and error, and you'll find as I have that what works for one book or one author may not work at all for you. Keep reading, learning and talking to others to see what you can glean from their experiences - both good and bad. I find this to be a fun part of the whole publication adventure - talking to other authors.

However, there are things self-publishers really should do with regards to the finished product, and I'm seeing problems in these areas. Two areas are special issues. I'll get into those over the next couple of weeks.

What about you? Have you self-published? What did you like or not like about it? Are your books available as e-books, paperback, or both?

Are you considering self-publication? What's drawing your interest in that direction? What would you like to know that might help you avoid some of the pits others have fallen into?

I SO Wanted to Scream...

Yep. Just like that. I SO understand.
Photo courtesy of slowpoke on morguefile.com

But I restrained myself. Barely. Doesn't mean I wasn't doing a lot of grumbling, not to mention outright declaring MS Word an idiot though.  *G*

Took me nearly 24 hours of working, re-working and re-working yet again, but I finally got "Beyond Hope" properly formatted so it uploaded to Smashwords and worked properly. So, as of Wednesday, December 5th, "Beyond Hope" is now available in all e-book formats as well as paperback.

What took so long, you might ask?

Well, I'll tell you.

Smashwords has a very long, very detailed document ("Style Guide" I believe is what they call it) that explains all the things you need to do to make sure the document format for your book is correct for uploading so it converts to the various e-book formats properly. The step that ended up trying to hang me was the "Normal" versus other paragraph formats.

Smashwords warns that if the "Normal" paragraph style is different from what you overwrite it with (such as highlighting text and changing it to TNR-13), the hidden "Normal" settings may rear their ugly little heads when the file is converted for e-book purposes.

Ain't it the truth!

I was at a loss to understand why I had text popping back and forth between Times New Roman and Arial fonts, as well as appearing in different sizes. I checked everything I could think of, but nada. I finally gave up and went to bed that night.

I woke up the next morning with the answer. Sort of. I tried reformatting the entire document in case I'd missed something before. (Which incidentally is how I started this whole fiasco anyway, so I couldn't have missed anything. But you never know.) Tried uploading again and checked the format of the EPUB file. Doh! Still not fixed. In fact, not a single thing had changed. Argh!

Just as I was ready to give up and call in more knowledgeable reinforcements, it hit me. Of course! Check the base format of the "Normal" paragraph style. Ha ha! Got you!

Unbeknownst to me, and Lord alone knows when or how it happened, the "Normal" paragraph style had gotten changed in my version of MS Word. It was no longer Times New Roman, 12 point. It had shifted to Arial, 12 point.

I fixed that then highlighted the affected text in chapter 1 and selected "Normal" style. Viola! Once I knew for sure chapter 1 was fixed, I fixed the remaining chapters scene by scene (so I didn't have to redo the formats for chapter headings and scene breaks). Now, I was coasting.

Uploaded the new file and checked the EPUB. Doh! Then the entire text of chapter 1 was a smaller font than the entire rest of the book!  How in the world did that happen? I have no clue. So I highlighted the text of chapter 1, hit "Normal" again, and prayed it worked.

And it did! Yes! So, "Beyond Hope" is now available online in ALL e-book formats. Woohoo! (UPDATE 02/06/2015 - e-books for Beyond Hope has been removed from Smashwords and Barnes & Noble. It is currently only available for Kindle.)

Amazing what happens when those hidden things are revealed.

And you know what? It occurred to me there's a spiritual lesson in that. How often do we have "hidden things" in our lives that don't appear in one context (such as a paperback novel) but are revealed in a HUGE way in another (such as an EPUB file)? We try to deal with the outward signs (like those wonky font and text size changes) without actually getting to the root of the problem (like the base format of the "Normal" paragraph style). Until we deal with the root cause of the problem, we end up getting annoyed and frustrated like I did. I've been there, and I'm not just talking about writing.

Hm. God really can use anything to teach us, can't He?

So what kind of frustrations have you faced lately that God has used to teach you something? It could be something new or something He just revealed in a different light. I'd love to hear your thoughts.