Four Ways of Getting a Haircut...or Formatting a Book
Let's begin with your hair, since we all love our hair but are often driven nuts by it. You have four basic choices for cutting the stuff:
1) You can cut it yourself.
2) You can go to the cheapest spot in town.
3) You can go to an old school-style barber who's mastered all the basic cuts and charges only a few dollars more.
4) You can go to a salon and pay designer prices for a more individual and expressive look.
With electric shears, you can mow your hair down to a respectable buzz cut. But for anything other than that, you really do get what you pay for. If you want something special, prepare to pay more.I don't expect much disagreement on that. But the same principles apply to formatting an ebook. Yet here's where voices start to rise.
That's strange, considering that readers can help sink a book with complaints of sloppy formatting. In fact, cheap 'production values'--sloppy formatting, editing, design--are as common as gripes of poor writing. And Amazon will unpublish a book if enough complaints weigh in. A reputation for shoddy work isn't something that's easily shaken.
Now, I know several good writers who all do their own formatting. To a man and woman, they're all technically adept. And they keep their manuscript design very clean and simple. Even so, formatting isn't as easy as these writers seem to think. Let me take that one step further: formatting isn't as easy as some formatters seem to think. And dollar price alone doesn't guarantee results.
I submit the following as proof of that, based on my experience in the last two years.
1) After paying $25 to have my first (38,000 word) ebook formatted. I was alarmed to see the text on Kindle's online previewer. There wasn't much that wasn't wrong. The formatter insisted that the text would be perfect in the published version--my previewer was to blame, she said. Still, I pointed out, the formatted Word document she'd sent back to me showed exactly the same errors. Long story short: I spent hours trying to get the formatting corrected, but whatever she changed caused new problems. End result: the published book was readable and earned some fine reviews...but it looked like free verse with the faulty indents and line breaks. It needs to be reformatted.
2) I paid $75 for a second formatter, who did my next couple of books. I learned, right off, that I'd been right: the formatted text does reflect what I will see on the previewer. The formatter did a fine job, but one that still required a good deal of fine-tuning, lots of emails back and forth. She made the changes cheerfully and quickly. The next book required even more fine-tuning. I enjoyed the salon treatment--she helped me line up some reviews and touted my work on her website. But she was determined to retire in France by age forty--and she raised her prices dramatically while becoming less accessible and flooding me with form emails offering other services. (I've since learned that she's stopped formatting altogether.)
3) The third formatter charged the same $25 as my first formatter. But her credentials looked rock solid, and I liked the way she worked: she lined up her projects a month in advance...then devoted herself to the project at hand. She did three books for me--with next to no fine-tuning. She did old school barbering at its very best. A consummate pro. Yet I had to move on again for my new book, Red Champagne, for I now needed 'extras' that #3 couldn't provide. So...on to a salon with a difference.
4) Formatting of the new novel cost me $60--and, all in all, I couldn't have made a better investment.
Red Champagne contained a slew of typographical choices I did not want to abandon. In a tricky story involving different time lines, I'd chosen several strategies for making it clear for the reader. To give you one example: I needed to isolate some sections of dialogue so that readers would know at a glance that a playwright was doing the talking. Decision: I wanted the dialogue in bold with 'stage directions' between her quips in underlined regular type. Formatter #3 had told me this wouldn't work because Amazon's automated what-nots would override the underlining--or, just as bad, underlining would like unprofessional. But formatter #4 insisted that saving the text in MOBI would prevent Amazon from overriding--and that underlining would look fine, far better than italics.. End result: for $60 I received exactly what I wanted...with a handful of glitches (all my fault) that were fixed in a matter of hours.
SUMMING UP EBOOK GOOD HAIR DAYS
1) Yes, it is true: you can format your own ebook just as you can cut your own hair. And I salute the few writers I know who do the job themselves. Even so, though, with all due respect: what is the real price in terms of the hours and energy expended? Let's say the entire process takes at least 12 hours (for a shorter novel). Are your freedom and time not worth the money it would cost you to have the job done by a pro?
2) Price is no guarantee in itself of quality. For $25 the job can be botched or look like a million. Correspond with formatters. Take a close look at their clients. And examine work they've done (easily, and freely done, if you look at Amazon's opening pages.)
3) Your odds of success at a discounted price are best if your text's style is basic: font: regular, bold and italic...none of Red Champagne's extra double spacing to set off important clues, etc....
4) Even if you need to keep the cost down at this point, keep the salon option open. What you'll want to know, going in, is if formatting is something the salon owner does on the side or if it's something s/he rightly regards as an art. Next, you'll want to know if s/he can assist in other ways. For example: I have three remaining horror novels, written as Kelley Wilde, that I'd like to issue as ebooks. Unfortunately, they were not saved on discs. I couldn't bear the thought of retyping each from scratch, as I did with The Suiting. But my new formatter, Yvonne Betancourt, has the equipment to scan the actual book, converting it to Word. And she is willing to do this at an affordable price.
So, here's to our good hair days...and perfectly formatted books.
1) You can cut it yourself.
2) You can go to the cheapest spot in town.
3) You can go to an old school-style barber who's mastered all the basic cuts and charges only a few dollars more.
4) You can go to a salon and pay designer prices for a more individual and expressive look.
With electric shears, you can mow your hair down to a respectable buzz cut. But for anything other than that, you really do get what you pay for. If you want something special, prepare to pay more.I don't expect much disagreement on that. But the same principles apply to formatting an ebook. Yet here's where voices start to rise.
That's strange, considering that readers can help sink a book with complaints of sloppy formatting. In fact, cheap 'production values'--sloppy formatting, editing, design--are as common as gripes of poor writing. And Amazon will unpublish a book if enough complaints weigh in. A reputation for shoddy work isn't something that's easily shaken.
Now, I know several good writers who all do their own formatting. To a man and woman, they're all technically adept. And they keep their manuscript design very clean and simple. Even so, formatting isn't as easy as these writers seem to think. Let me take that one step further: formatting isn't as easy as some formatters seem to think. And dollar price alone doesn't guarantee results.
I submit the following as proof of that, based on my experience in the last two years.
1) After paying $25 to have my first (38,000 word) ebook formatted. I was alarmed to see the text on Kindle's online previewer. There wasn't much that wasn't wrong. The formatter insisted that the text would be perfect in the published version--my previewer was to blame, she said. Still, I pointed out, the formatted Word document she'd sent back to me showed exactly the same errors. Long story short: I spent hours trying to get the formatting corrected, but whatever she changed caused new problems. End result: the published book was readable and earned some fine reviews...but it looked like free verse with the faulty indents and line breaks. It needs to be reformatted.
2) I paid $75 for a second formatter, who did my next couple of books. I learned, right off, that I'd been right: the formatted text does reflect what I will see on the previewer. The formatter did a fine job, but one that still required a good deal of fine-tuning, lots of emails back and forth. She made the changes cheerfully and quickly. The next book required even more fine-tuning. I enjoyed the salon treatment--she helped me line up some reviews and touted my work on her website. But she was determined to retire in France by age forty--and she raised her prices dramatically while becoming less accessible and flooding me with form emails offering other services. (I've since learned that she's stopped formatting altogether.)
3) The third formatter charged the same $25 as my first formatter. But her credentials looked rock solid, and I liked the way she worked: she lined up her projects a month in advance...then devoted herself to the project at hand. She did three books for me--with next to no fine-tuning. She did old school barbering at its very best. A consummate pro. Yet I had to move on again for my new book, Red Champagne, for I now needed 'extras' that #3 couldn't provide. So...on to a salon with a difference.
4) Formatting of the new novel cost me $60--and, all in all, I couldn't have made a better investment.
Red Champagne contained a slew of typographical choices I did not want to abandon. In a tricky story involving different time lines, I'd chosen several strategies for making it clear for the reader. To give you one example: I needed to isolate some sections of dialogue so that readers would know at a glance that a playwright was doing the talking. Decision: I wanted the dialogue in bold with 'stage directions' between her quips in underlined regular type. Formatter #3 had told me this wouldn't work because Amazon's automated what-nots would override the underlining--or, just as bad, underlining would like unprofessional. But formatter #4 insisted that saving the text in MOBI would prevent Amazon from overriding--and that underlining would look fine, far better than italics.. End result: for $60 I received exactly what I wanted...with a handful of glitches (all my fault) that were fixed in a matter of hours.
SUMMING UP EBOOK GOOD HAIR DAYS
1) Yes, it is true: you can format your own ebook just as you can cut your own hair. And I salute the few writers I know who do the job themselves. Even so, though, with all due respect: what is the real price in terms of the hours and energy expended? Let's say the entire process takes at least 12 hours (for a shorter novel). Are your freedom and time not worth the money it would cost you to have the job done by a pro?
2) Price is no guarantee in itself of quality. For $25 the job can be botched or look like a million. Correspond with formatters. Take a close look at their clients. And examine work they've done (easily, and freely done, if you look at Amazon's opening pages.)
3) Your odds of success at a discounted price are best if your text's style is basic: font: regular, bold and italic...none of Red Champagne's extra double spacing to set off important clues, etc....
4) Even if you need to keep the cost down at this point, keep the salon option open. What you'll want to know, going in, is if formatting is something the salon owner does on the side or if it's something s/he rightly regards as an art. Next, you'll want to know if s/he can assist in other ways. For example: I have three remaining horror novels, written as Kelley Wilde, that I'd like to issue as ebooks. Unfortunately, they were not saved on discs. I couldn't bear the thought of retyping each from scratch, as I did with The Suiting. But my new formatter, Yvonne Betancourt, has the equipment to scan the actual book, converting it to Word. And she is willing to do this at an affordable price.
So, here's to our good hair days...and perfectly formatted books.
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