Formatting... Sick Bastard Cousin to Editing

Anyway, Sunday I said I'd talk about formatting in my Monday post, but then I forgot.  No post on Monday at all.  I blame pre-publication insanity.

So here's the formatting post.

Yeah, formatting isn't really anything like editing.  Except it can make one crazypants just as much as, if not more so than, editing.  I had hoped to remove some of the insanity-making by creating a checklist.

It looks like this:


Formatting checklist
Ebook:
1)  Type THE END 2)  Find and replace all double spacing between sentences with single spacing3)  Remove all Bookmarks.4)  Create Bookmarks: START, TOC, END5)  Make sure everything is 12 pt font, Cambria6)  Format all chapter headings as Headings.  Including THE END.7)  Format all scene breaks for continuity within book and within series8)  Create title page9)  Create Copyright and Acknowledgements page10)  Add in About the Author Page at the end11)  Add in back matter.12)  Create Table of Contents.13)  Scan entire manuscript for continuity.14)  Email book to Kindle and scan through again for continuity and formatting errors.15)  Publish to Amazon
Print:
1)  Type THE END 2)  Find and replace all double spacing between sentences with single spacing3)  Remove all Bookmarks.4)  Make sure everything is the font you’ve chosen for the book.5)  Format all chapter headings as Headings.  Including THE END.6)  Apply print font for Headings to all.7)  Format all scene breaks for continuity within book and within series8)  Create title page9)  Create Copyright and Acknowledgements page10)  Add in About the Author Page at the end11)  Add in back matter.12)  Create Section Breaks after Acknowledgements and after THE END13)  Add Pages Numbers to manuscript section centered bottom14) Verify ‘Link to Previous’ is unchecked15)  Format Page Numbers to chosen look16)  Set to ‘Different First Page’ in manuscript section17)  Delete page number from first page of manuscript section18)  Verify no page numbers in front matter section or back matter section19)  Set page size to 5.5” x 8.5”20)  Set margins to Top .88”, Bottom .88”, Inside .75”, Outside .63”21)  Make sure margins are ‘mirrored’22)  Verify all chapters start on right hand page.23)  Print a few pages to verify it will look how you want it to look.24)  Upload to Createspace
Then I started to format Natural Causes on Wednesday.  Umm, yeah... there are things I forgot and the list wasn't helping and so I formatted the first page of NC and made notes all over it so I would know exactly what needed doing to each subsequent chapter beginning...
That seemed to work.  I had a real groove going on.  Got all of Natural Causes' chapter headings formatted.  Then I made the Table of Contents.  And see up there where I scribbled something out next to the chapter title?  I had made all the chapter titles Headings2.  Which put them all in the TOC.  Couldn't figure out a way to get them out of the TOC, so I went back and made all the chapter titles 'Normal' and formatted each of them again to meet the guidelines I had set.

Then I started to work on the formatting for Accidental Death because I want that book to match this book's formatting.  I decided to start by updating the back matter, because I had all that laid out already from doing NC.  But I couldn't get WORD to let me move a freakin' line, which was making it all farqued up. Which was making me a babbling idiot, so I deleted all the back matter and copied it from one of my other books where it wasn't messed up.  Tada. 

As of typing this post, I still have some things to do, but I'm on track.  This book will be in your hands soon.

I'd still rather do it myself than pay someone else, but if anyone tells you this stuff is easy, slap them in the back of the head for me. (Okay, so maybe it isn't that hard, but it is tedious as all get-out.)