One Big Scary Monster — Defeated!

I faced a big scary monster this week, and I'm happy to say it's gone. Reduced to a pile of simple solutions and a list of instructions (well, I've still got to make that list, but it's in my head and in a bunch of little notes on a few different pieces of paper scattered around my desk).

So, what was the monster I needed to face? HTML.

Yup. It was, to me, a big hairy monster which I had no idea how to tackle. However, with the help of three wonderful, incredibly helpful blogs, I defeated that monster and I now have a beautiful, publishable e-book all ready to uploaded.

First, I consulted Guido Henkel's amazing blog (in seven parts!) on how to format an ebook in HTML: http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/. It's terrific and got me started on the right foot. For help in doing the actual coding into HTML of my manuscript, I referred to Paul Salvette's fabulous blog, http://www.paulsalvette.com/2011/08/turning-manuscript-into-clean-xhtml.html#c1. He took me from laboriously going through my manuscript putting in little

s and

s at the beginning and end of every single paragraph (which, I am so embarrassed to say I did for about 100 pages) and in a few short strokes, I had all of those nasty little paragraph markers in there. Thank you, thank you, Paul! I then followed his simple directions to format my title page and put in a table of contents — so easy with his clear directions. And finally, I looked at Natasha Fondren's blog which gives lots of great tips on getting that professional polish to your ebook formatting. I think I'll be using her blog a little bit more than the others when it comes to coding my non-fiction text book (I hope to get started on that next week — as soon as I get it back from my editor) because I've got all sorts of funky stuff in there — bullet points and subheadings and sub-subheadings, etc.

But for right now, I'm thrilled. I've got the first book in my YA series ready to go. I've got a beautiful cover (see picture!) and all is set. I've got the second book with my editor and the third… well, I think that'll be next week's blog post. J