Formatting Manuscripts

Finally, I got someactual instructions from Draft2Digital on how to prepare a manuscript to beuploaded for publication! Their instructions are vastly simpler than what I hadto do for Smashwords, but I have made some mistakes that would make thefinished ebook come out wonky.

 

For instance, I placed4 hard returns before each chapter heading, to push it down a nice distance onthe page. But now I know that 4 hard returns in a row will be changed to a pagebreak. I don’t want that, because I already put in a page break to get the newchapter to start on a new page. It would wind up with blank pages before eachchapter if I don’t go through and remove 3 of those hard returns.

 

I also carefullycreated a Table of Contents. But their software will create one for me, so Ineed to yank mine out.

 

There are other placeswhere I’ve got multiple hard returns as I tried to get the front mattersomewhat symmetrical. Now I have to spend a few minutes figuring out how toplace the front matter pleasingly on the page without using a bunch of hardreturns. Because just 2 hard returns in a row will be converted to a sectionbreak, which I don’t want cluttering up my title page.

 

There are 60 chaptersin the book I’m trying to get published. It will take me 2 or 3 days to gothrough and straighten those out. Another day to figure out the title page, andtime to work on a couple other pages that have a picture involved. And I’mstill in the middle of classes that take up far more time than I thought theywould. So, it’s beginning to look like this book might not go on sale untilAugust 1.

 

Still, I’m making progress,however slowly.