Question on editing ebook

Status
Not open for further replies.

Chiquita Banana

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 14, 2009
Messages
425
Reaction score
35
Website
libby-mercer.blogspot.com
Ann, I don't have anything useful to offer, I just want to reiterate that you must not hang up. :) I started more than a few threads in the days before my release, and not just on this forum. Check out my catastrophe thread on the Art & Design forum. Or don't. Haha. That was so stressful. Anyway, when things are time sensitive and you need answers and you think people on this board might know the answers, you have to go for it. It's all good.

Hugs!
Chiq
 

stranger

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 15, 2005
Messages
444
Reaction score
61
Anne, do you know how to use paragraph styles, because I think that's what you need to solve most of your problems.

You set a chapter title to be say 'heading 1' style and then you can edit 'heading 1' to make it what you want. So you edit indents, fonts, justification, font size etc. of 'heading 1' and that should adjust all the headings.

Then you set your text to be style 'paragraph format' or whatever. And you should be able to set 'paragraph format' to have an automatic indent. Similarly you change the font etc. of 'paragraph format' until you are happy and you make sure all your text is set to this same 'paragraph format'.

Then if, say parts, of the text needs to be center justified, you'd have a new style called 'paragraph format2' and use that style for those parts of the text.
 

Ann Joyce

It's all about grace
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 1, 2010
Messages
636
Reaction score
37
Location
Minnesota
@Chic - thanks for the encouragement. Hugs right back at ya!

@stranger - I think that's what I'm trying to figure out now. Seems like I read the same thing over and over and over trying to get it to sink it.

There is one decision I made and implemented today that I'm happy with. I took out all of the thingamabobs I was using to separate change of scene or thought. They didn't look good in the ebook (kind of ugly) anyway, though I do like them in the print version. Now I'm being content with spaces instead. I couldn't get them to stay in the middle, so I eliminated that particular problem.

All I have to deal with now is getting the chapter headings to stay in the middle. I'm getting so weary I'm contemplating deliberately putting them all to the left. I don't like that look as well though. I guess I'll see what tomorrow brings. I'll study the guides, etc. again tom. as well as the advice you just gave me and see if I can get it through my thick head. The meds I'm on don't help. Thanks for all of your wisdom and help.
 

Ann Joyce

It's all about grace
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 1, 2010
Messages
636
Reaction score
37
Location
Minnesota
Alrighty then...got the chapter headings worked out. Now I'm going over the whole thing one more time. I'm getting so tired of this book; so ready to get back to working on the next one. I'm pretty sure you can all relate.
 

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
There is one decision I made and implemented today that I'm happy with. I took out all of the thingamabobs I was using to separate change of scene or thought. They didn't look good in the ebook (kind of ugly) anyway, though I do like them in the print version. Now I'm being content with spaces instead. I couldn't get them to stay in the middle, so I eliminated that particular problem.

This is a mistake, I'm afraid.

Those breaks between scenes, line-breaks they're called, need to have some kind of wingding in them. When you're reading a printed book, you usually find just a blank line between scenes, unless the line-break falls at the top or the bottom of the page. Then the book designer would insert a wingding so that readers would know that the scene had changed.

When publishers started converting their titles to e-book formats, they discovered that they couldn't do that any more. Since e-texts reformat on the fly, a line break could appear at any point, including between screens, and, without the wingding, the readers wouldn't know that the scene had changed. This led to reader confusion and a poorer reading experience.

As a result, publishers had to go back and re-insert the wingdings in every line-break.

Exactly centering the wingding isn't important. Having one absolutely is.
 

Katie Elle

Banned
Joined
Mar 13, 2012
Messages
398
Reaction score
31
Location
New England Coast
Extra space will more or less do the same thing and be something far more easily accomplished. Extra credit for not indenting the first line of the new scene.
 

BAY

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 12, 2008
Messages
489
Reaction score
113
Ann Joyce,

Don't be afraid of the Smashwords nuclear option. Download the guide and follow it. There are screen shots so you know you're on track. It's not hard but takes time.

In the course of the nuclear option, there is info to follow to keep you out of the bunker the next time.
icon6.gif


I'd rather nuke it than go through the chain reaction you're having.

Hang in.
 
Last edited:

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman
Super Moderator
Absolute Sage
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 12, 2005
Messages
22,454
Reaction score
4,956
Location
In chaos
Extra space will more or less do the same thing and be something far more easily accomplished.

Katie, I think you must have skipped over some of James's reply. He explained why leaving an extra line or two of space won't do the same thing as keeping in a wingding:

This is a mistake, I'm afraid.

Those breaks between scenes, line-breaks they're called, need to have some kind of wingding in them. When you're reading a printed book, you usually find just a blank line between scenes, unless the line-break falls at the top or the bottom of the page. Then the book designer would insert a wingding so that readers would know that the scene had changed.

When publishers started converting their titles to e-book formats, they discovered that they couldn't do that any more. Since e-texts reformat on the fly, a line break could appear at any point, including between screens, and, without the wingding, the readers wouldn't know that the scene had changed. This led to reader confusion and a poorer reading experience.

As a result, publishers had to go back and re-insert the wingdings in every line-break.

Exactly centering the wingding isn't important. Having one absolutely is.

Those extra lines of space can and do disappear when the text is reformatted (whether that's only visually or not isn't important): without them, it's difficult for readers to work out whether there's a scene break or not, and a second or two of confusion or hesitation there will really spoil a reader's enjoyment of the text--especially when that second or two is compounded by repeats of that experience. And that's more than enough to put a reader off that book and all others that you write, which is exactly what you don't want to happen.

Adding a wingding at that point prevents that happening. An extra line of white space doesn't do the job in a reliable way. Why shoot yourself in the foot by not having one?
 

Ann Joyce

It's all about grace
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 1, 2010
Messages
636
Reaction score
37
Location
Minnesota
@Katie - Thanks for the extra credit...everyone needs some of that.

@Bay - I'm too far gone to even consider going nuclear now. It's almost 3:00 am here and I've put another 16 hours into this baby again today, not to mention the hundreds of hours that have gone before. I'm probably showing a bit of a stubborn streak, but I want more than anything to accomplish this difficult-for-me learning curve, so in the future I'll have some knowledge of what I'm doing. Thanks for your input though and for inviting me to hang in. I truly appreciate every comment and every effort to help me.

No worries, Old Hack. I put wing dings back in today (there were plenty of them), and I even managed to get them to stick in the center. I finished a working ToC, and got a look at my cover in it's now un-pixelated state. I think I'm in the home stretch! :hooray:
 

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman
Super Moderator
Absolute Sage
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 12, 2005
Messages
22,454
Reaction score
4,956
Location
In chaos
Well done, Ann. You're working so hard on this: I'm looking forward to seeing the end result.
 

Katie Elle

Banned
Joined
Mar 13, 2012
Messages
398
Reaction score
31
Location
New England Coast
Katie, I think you must have skipped over some of James's reply. He explained why leaving an extra line or two of space won't do the same thing as keeping in a wingding:

I read it. It's just not accurate. Wingdings are not really any better. You trade losing the space at a screen turn for having widow/orphan wingdings which are really truly ugly.

Don't take my word for it, go and look at some ebooks. They run at best 50/50 using a non-indented paragraph with extra space above it or some kind of wingding.

Looking at the 2012 top ebooks "Look Inside" at Amazon:

Wingdings: 50 Shades, Bared to You, The Racketeer
Spacing: Gone Girl, The Lucky One, War Brides

Then you have some other options. The Help uses spacing, but also puts the first few words of a new scene in small caps which I actually quite like as a solution to end of page issues. How Amazon deals with small caps if you upload doc/docx I don't know and as far as I can tell Scrivener doesn't even support them. It may be something you need to add with Sigil or into the raw html.
 

Deleted member 42

I read it. It's just not accurate. Wingdings are not really any better. You trade losing the space at a screen turn for having widow/orphan wingdings which are really truly ugly.

Don't take my word for it, go and look at some ebooks. They run at best 50/50 using a non-indented paragraph with extra space above it or some kind of wingding.

Looking at the 2012 top ebooks "Look Inside" at Amazon:

You are once again wrong. Macdonald is right.

One reason you're wrong is that you're making books via what professionals call a text dump and it shows.

Another reason you're wrong is that you're relying on Amazon's Look Inside feature as a measure of how a book will display, which suggests a fundamental gap in your understanding of basic text technology.

Look.

There are two basic ways of creating an ebook, of any format.

One is your method; you're converting files from one format to another using software. That's a text dump.

You're giving up what control an ebook producer has over the display to a piece of software. You're relying on generic app css.

And it shows in your books.

There are two basic methods for creating a quality ebook.

1. Using InDesign with custom scripts, and hand-tweaking the HTML/XML, including the metadata files and the CSS.

2. Creating a very vanilla HTML 4.1 file, and then hand-coding the metadata, XML and CSS files. Then checking the ebook with live users on various platforms.

How Amazon deals with small caps if you upload doc/docx I don't know and as far as I can tell Scrivener doesn't even support them. It may be something you need to add with Sigil or into the raw html.

You're using software like Scrivener and you don't even know how to use it? Yes Scrivener supports small caps; the problem is that there are two sorts of small caps, much like there are two ways of generating italics.

And if you don't know that kind of thing, you're not in a position to pontificate and be snide—especially not to someone like Macdonald, or Old Hack.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.