New Cover and Formatting Issues

The new cover for Shadowland - thanks Jussy, much more dark n moody:)




Formatting Issues.
Like many authors I am on a big learning curve when it comesto formatting and promoting my ebooks.
Uploading to the kindle program on Amazon was painlessenough, that was until I wanted to update some of the text and change the cover. All of asudden, I had to become some sort of computer programmer, or so it seemed it tome.  I managed to work my way through so I thought I would share a few of thelinks and programmes that have helped me so far on this blog.If you are looking to offer giveaways or send copies of yourebook anywhere, you have to be able to offer several different versions to potential readers and reviewers. I offerpdf, mobi for kindle and epub for most other e readers.To make a pdf from my book, which was written in 'Word,' Ican highly recommend a free programme called PDF redirect. Even for a completecomputer fool like me it was easy to do.Most people are going to ask for a mobi file and the easiestI have so far found is MobiPocket creator, another free programme that doesexactly as it says on the box. I tried several other programmes that did help me createa mobi file, but they all had various issues with formatting, more about formatting in a moment. To finish on programmes, the last I recommend authors checking out is Calibre. Calibrewill change the format into epub or kindle, but do watch out for formattingproblems if you haven't done a perfect formatting job.
Which leads me into formatting - so important, so boring andyet so necessary. KDP at amazon and Smashwords have great articles and there is a great article here showing what needs to be done. Justdiscovering there was a formatting show/hide button in word was a revelation tome! How was I to know that there is all kind of code going on in the backgroundthat means stuff and gives strange commands when you come to make up yourebook. Page breaks for instance, wow, you need to instruct where to break thepage? Yep!
Oh, and how to put in your table of contents! You can findthat stuff here, and you really do need to do it yourself.
So, once we've done all that were finished? ... well did youthink about a cover? I have been very fortunate to find a fellow member of thegoodreads community, Jussy who has helped me turn my lame cover intosomething far more likely to sell a few books – thanks Jussy!So now I have done all that, Shadowland is up and ready tosend out and sell again ... editing is nearly finished on Flight of the Griffin .... but I needto make up a cover ..ahhhhh, here we go again!