Format It Yourself! (Book 2 of Publish It Yourself!): The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide for Authors. A Master-Class with over 60 Screenshots. (Volume 2) by Jo Roderick
The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide for Authors. A Master-Class with over 60 Screenshots. Format It Yourself is a Step-by-Step guide, specifically written and illustrated to help authors format their books. Whether you are publishing through CreateSpace, Kindle, or any other outlet, one of the greatest challenges is preparing and typesetting the book. This formatting manual is an in-depth typesetting Master-Class with over 60 Screenshots for guidance. This logical, sequentially presented handbook teaches readers exactly how to typeset according to traditional convention. Speed up your normal workflow, and reduce frustration. The information will lead you to a quicker and smarter way of writing. Would you like to spend less time wrestling with formatting gremlins, and more on penning your next novel? This book doesn’t promise the impossible. It delivers on what can be done by the reader. You cannot typeset your book in sixty minutes, or in an afternoon — if you want to do it properly. Learn all the tips and secrets straight from a professional. Let me walk you through the right way to Format It Yourself! Let’s face it; if you knew how to code a proper e-Book, you wouldn’t need a formatting ‘bible’. Discover how to implement simple tweaks in your electronic book’s HTML code. Familiarise yourself with the most common and frustrating formatting errors, and how best to avoid them. I will warn you about which elements will fail to convert properly. I find these same issues with many of my clients’ manuscripts. While Format It Yourself focuses on Microsoft Word, the theory and solutions can be applied to any word processing software. Numerous links to free software and useful websites will assist you in finalising your book. Here are just a few of the topics * The word processing document; * Custom Shortcuts; * Smart Styles and Rogue Orphan Styles; * Widows, Orphans, Columns, and Rivers; * Page Breaks; * Hyphenation; * Table of Content; * The NCX TOC; * Images and Inserts; * Hyperlinks; * Indexes and Footnotes; * Macros; * Automated Chapter Numbering; * Common Punctuation Errors; * Traditional Front and Back Matter; * The Conversion Process; * The ePub and Mobi/Kindle Formats; * Page Setup; * Copyright; * Headers and Footers; * Page Numbering; * Typesetting; * How to Proof your final PDF print format. Other Books by the Author * The Book of Life * Recycled Thoughts (FREE Book) * Six For Seven (A South African Dinner) * The Scandari Saga - Aeonosphere * Publish It Yourself! (Book 1 of Publish It Yourself!)
Jo Roderick is believed to be human — although there is no conclusive evidence — and born in 1969! He proceeded to interpret and analyse the world around him, but never quite grew up.
He was told at an early age he couldn't write so he did anyway. He claims that he can follow the plot of your average dictionary but further admits that he has an odd sense of humour.
He is an architect, amongst other things, and currently resides in Cape Town, South Africa. Toffee, the neighbour’s cat, brings him fresh allergies every day! ________________
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Okay, so let's get the hard stuff out the way first. Hi, my name is Grant and I'm a man. As a man, I have only one real belief in life - if all else fails, read the manual.
It was therefore with some trepidation I came to read Jo Roderick's Format It Yourself. I have published four books so far and what I learnt in formatting and getting a manuscript ready for Kindle or Createspace was done the way all men do these things - by trial and error. What could a know-it-all like Jo Roderick possibly have to offer to contribute to my creative process?
Quite a lot it would appear. Unlike many books of this type, Roderick has approached this subject right from the very basics and leads you through the entire process with lively prose and a great set of screenshots etc to help out the novice author. The writing is light-hearted, if not occasionally a tad patronising, but hey! Us men need that patronising voice sometimes if we're ever going to listen to an expert. Much of what Roderick covers in this book are things I have already learnt (usually the hard way), but there are some real gems in this that I can adapt and use in my everyday writing. I, like many authors before me, have just assumed I must put up with the constant checking and re-checking and tweaking of the format to make sure everything appears in the right place. I think this book would be an absolute boon to a new author starting out, especially one not already knee deep in bad habits. This book could and should be used almost as a "style bible" for new authors. For those of us a bit longer in the tooth, there is still much to be gained from this wonderful book. I have already begun to put some of the basic principles into practice in my work and it is already resulting in time-saving in my writing (which really is what it is all about). I envisage referring to this book often, especially when I am preparing manuscripts for publishing. I can see how much work went into this book and am very impressed by it. I would recommend it to all budding authors as well as those of us who already think we know it all. Good job Mr Roderick and happy to give you four stars for this book.