Oh the Formatting

First of all, a little sales update! As of this morning I have sold 42 copies of STARKISSED! That's a pretty awesome debut week for a self-published author, or so I am told! 
So today, for those who are interested in the processes of self-publishing, I thought I'd talk a little bit about how I formatted Starkissed for publication online.
First of all, as you know, Starkissed is available at three outlets currently - Amazon, Kobo, and Smashwords. In order to obtain the best view of file creation I created a separate file type for each outlet.
Smashwords requires that all documents uploaded to their site be Microsoft Word .doc files. They then take these files and put them through their conversion system, nicely named Meatgrinder, which then spits out your book in multiple eBook formats such as - ePub, .Mobi for Kindle, PDF, Rich Text, HTML etc.
Smashwords provides a guide on their site for exactly how one must format their .doc document in order for it to be accepted on Smashwords. They indicate that the formatting should only take a couple of hours. I began formatting my document for Smashwords an evening a few weeks ago and it took me about 2.5 hours to get through their guide and apply it to STARKISSED. This involved removing all Tabs, Fixing Chapter Headings, removing Page Breaks, creating a Table of Contents using Bookmarks and Hyperlinks etc.
I left the Smashwords document as I wasn't ready to upload it yet, and then moved on to creating the other documents. Technically in both Kobo and Amazon you can upload just a word document and they will convert your book to the necessary file format for you. However, because I'm doing this as a project for school, and because I actually wanted to learn how to create the necessary files myself, I did so using Adobe's InDesign software.
First I created a new document for each chapter of the book. In order to make sure none of the intrusive formatting from Word came with the text, I copy and pasted each and every chapter into the new documents. The problem with doing this is that ALL formatting likes to disappear, including italics. So any words I'd italicized in word suddenly just became normal text. As I required the italics, I actually had to go through the word file of STARKISSED and place underscores around every word that needed to be italicized - like this  _italics!_. Then once I'd pasted the chapter into InDesign, I went through and removed all the underscores and put the words back into italics. I also had to create paragraph styles for each style of text and apply those. I had to re-centre all of the *** that separated passages in the book, and I had to create new Chapter Headings. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it was very time consuming.
Once I'd done this with all 27 chapters, plus the Epilogue, Acknowledgements, and About Brynna section, I imported all the files into a single BOOK document that essentially made it one file. It's a handy tool.
I had to do other things of course - create Master Pages, merge all paragraph styles, create a Table of Contents style etc. But eventually I had what appeared to be a functioning book. So I started to export it as an ePub to make sure it actually worked. Each time I did this I had to run it through the online validator to make sure it passed. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes when it passed, the cover still didn't show properly in Adobes Digital Editions or something else was wrong. In the end I believe I created about 17 ePub files for STARKISSED until it was finally perfect - or as perfect as I was going to get it.
Then once I had the ePub functioning, I attempted to export the file as a .Mobi for Kindle using the Kindle plug-in for InDesign. Unfortunately this didn't work too well and using the Kindle previewer app I found a handful of things were messed up - primarily the Table of Contents which was about 30 pages long as it would only put a single entry on a page, and then for some reason big gaps were showing up in the text.
The gaps, I figured out eventually, were to do with the fact that I had inset the border for the text frame to make it more visually appealing for the PDF. When I'd exported to ePub it wasn't a problem at all, but for the .mobi it was. I'd inset the text frame in the Master Pages of the documents so it would be applied to every page. However when I went back and removed it from Master Pages, the text didn't fix itself no matter how many times I tried to make it. In the end I had to go through each page and remove the inset frame.
As for the Table of Contents, it turned out it had been applying a Chapter Heading style to the Table, so every entry considered itself a chapter heading and thus gave itself a new page.
I then began exporting the .mobi again to see if it functioned. In the end I think I did this about 11 times until I finally had a working document that functioned as desired in the Kindle Preview App.
I then had all of my document formats ready. Or so I thought, so I started to upload online. I started with Smashwords, only to find that Microsoft Word had been doing nasty tricks behind my back. For some reason when I uploaded the book, the Table of Contents wouldn't work correctly. I'd open the Smashwords produced ePub in Adobes Digital Editions and either some of the Table of Contents entries would be missing, or when I clicked on something like Chapter 26 it would take me to the acknowledgments page.
I went back to work and fixed the ToC, uploaded it again, but still entries were missing, links weren't working. I did it again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Nothing would work. I then completely removed all of the ToC I'd created and made a new one, which was an irritatingly lengthy process. I uploaded again and still it didn't want to work! Finally, somehow, on my 8th attempt, the file I uploaded worked!
Uploading to Kobo (ePub) and Amazon (mobi) was far less horrifying, though I did find I had to fix one or two things on the Amazon file.
In the end, getting all my files formatted correctly and uploaded took about 25 - 30 hours over three days.
I know there are people out there who can format quicker, make their files quicker, etc. But considering I was teaching myself how to do this, and it was all for the first time, I think I did alright! At the end of the day(s) I had created and formatted a number of different documents:
1) The Smashwords File (.doc)2) The InDesign prep file (.doc)3) The ePub book file (consisting of 30+ chapter files) (InDesign)4) The Mobi book file (consisting of 30+ chapter files (InDesign)5) The final ePub6) The final Mobi7) The final PDF
Not the most exciting tale to tell, but for anyone looking to create their own eBooks for self-publishing, I hope this helps on your journey!