New blog series: publishing in print (PIP) via LSI/Createspace
Over the past month or so I've blogged about editing, polishing, proofing and publicity for the self-pubbed (or indie-pubbed) writer. One thing I haven't really covered in detail is ... getting your work into print. As in generating the PDF you have to upload to Createspace and/or Lightning Source so they can generate printed copies of your work.
I realise the world is hurtling towards ebooks, but there are still segments of the market where paperbacks rule. One of those is middle grade fiction, and since that's the genre for Hal Junior, I had to generate a hard copy as well as an ebook.
Warning: I'm going to be talking about yWriter in this series of posts. It's freeware, so you don't have to pay anything, but it is Windows-only. (You can also run it on Linux and on the Mac, using the Mono runtime library, but it's not bulletproof.)
The second part of the puzzle is a collection of software called the ProTeXt TeX distribution (also for Windows. Sorry, no idea about Mac and Linux.) This is a 750mb download (yikes!) which contains a whole bunch of programs and addons which you don't actually have to do anything with. Just download and install the thing for now.
If you've just installed yWriter5 and don't have a project to load, follow these instructions to import a work in progress.
Once you have a project loaded, press Ctrl+Alt+X on the yWriter main screen. yWriter will instantly generate a TEX file of your project. Double-click this TEX file to open it in TeXnic Centre, and press Ctrl+Shift+F5 in that software to generate and view the PDF.
The result is a very basic book block, not ready for uploading yet, but I thought it would be good to show the process before we delve into the fine detail. We're not going to use TeXnic Centre for much - all the hard work will be done using yWriter5.
Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock Series and Hal Junior: The Secret Signal. By day he's a computer programmer and author, and by night he's the same only sleepier.
I realise the world is hurtling towards ebooks, but there are still segments of the market where paperbacks rule. One of those is middle grade fiction, and since that's the genre for Hal Junior, I had to generate a hard copy as well as an ebook.
Warning: I'm going to be talking about yWriter in this series of posts. It's freeware, so you don't have to pay anything, but it is Windows-only. (You can also run it on Linux and on the Mac, using the Mono runtime library, but it's not bulletproof.)
The second part of the puzzle is a collection of software called the ProTeXt TeX distribution (also for Windows. Sorry, no idea about Mac and Linux.) This is a 750mb download (yikes!) which contains a whole bunch of programs and addons which you don't actually have to do anything with. Just download and install the thing for now.
If you've just installed yWriter5 and don't have a project to load, follow these instructions to import a work in progress.
Once you have a project loaded, press Ctrl+Alt+X on the yWriter main screen. yWriter will instantly generate a TEX file of your project. Double-click this TEX file to open it in TeXnic Centre, and press Ctrl+Shift+F5 in that software to generate and view the PDF.
The result is a very basic book block, not ready for uploading yet, but I thought it would be good to show the process before we delve into the fine detail. We're not going to use TeXnic Centre for much - all the hard work will be done using yWriter5.
Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock Series and Hal Junior: The Secret Signal. By day he's a computer programmer and author, and by night he's the same only sleepier.
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