JW’s Comments (group member since Jan 24, 2013)

JW’s comments from the Help with Book Formatting group.

Lea wrote: "As usual, I'm late to the party, but at least I think it's the right party. I've been googling book formatting programs and I'm not sure google knows what I mean. Perhaps one of you knows of a pr..."

I am assuming you're talking about print on demand, such as Createspace or Lightning Source. Word is NOT the best program to use. It's clunky and the font rendering isn't the best. Lightning Source rejects the pdf files it produces. But that said, with some care and careful attention to details, you can produce something really good (though not great). One low cost solution for DIY is to use templates. Createspace offers them for free. Joel Friedlander (the book designer) sells them for under $50 (google bookdesigner pod templates).

For the best results (and to use Lightning Source) you'll need a program such as InDesign. It is not a load and go program, though. The book will still have to be designed and laid out properly, and ID has a fairly steep learning curve.

I know of no programs that are load and go--but do be wary of services who claim they will convert your Word file for you. Garbage in, garbage out.

My best advice (if you're determined to do it yourself) is to get a free template from Createspace and play with it until you can see what's going on. Once you see how it's supposed to work, you'll know how to do it yourself.

Jo, I just ran a Word file through MobiPocket. It converted fine with no misreading the ASCII characters. Of course, my version is several years old and I have no idea when was the last time it was updated, if ever.

Go to your character panel in Word and check to see what type of characters your document is using. See if setting it to Normal Characters helps.

I just tried to get into the MobiPocket site. Got a File Server Not Found message. I wonder if the program has been deadlined.

The problem is with the UTF-8 coding. Mobipocket might have had an update (haven't used it in a while) to bring it into compliance with KF8 and Mobi7. In which case, it's not recognizing some of the characters that Word is using.

Whatever you do, don't use straight quotes. You could end up with unwanted page breaks, font changes and interference with the user interface.

Hey, Max,

I wrote a post on some of the ways Kindle books get "broken." The comment thread has some good insights.

http://jwmanus.wordpress.com/2013/03/...

Ellie wrote: "I'm currently formatting a non-fiction ebook which contains a table with information that would fit on a printed book page. For the ebook, I was thinking of adding it as an image, but I'm afraid th..."

This is easy. Make your table in Word (or whatever word processor you use) and take into account that the ereader screen is smaller so you need a slightly larger font. Take a screenshot of the table and import that into your paint program. Crop the image and save it at as a jpeg. Adjust the size until is 256kb or less. When you insert the image into your ebook, set either the width OR height at 100% (whichever is greater). That way, no matter what sized screen the reader is using, the image will "fill" and it won't get cut off or shrink to an unreadable size.

html will look like (add brackets, of course):

img src="../images/table.jpg" width="100%" alt="Description of My Table"

Tim wrote: "Jo wrote: "Can anyone suggest any good books which provide real formatting help? I've downloaded a few in the past which haven't been that good to be honest.

If you have some which you recommend, ..."

I will second the value and usefulness of Paul's book. He knows his stuff. He shows you how to build an ebook from the inside out. You need to know some basics of html and css, but I'm a novice in that regard and had no trouble figuring out the instructions. Plus, he offers templates and other useful goodies on his bbebooks websites.

I just finished an ebook for Lawrence Block:

Keller on the Spot http://www.amazon.com/Keller-on-the-S...

Two of my own:

Dark Reflections http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Reflection...

Light Embraced http://www.amazon.com/Light-Embraced-...

I have a blog where I discuss ebook formatting geared toward the do-it-yourselfer:

JW Manus Ebooks=Real Books http:///www.jwmanus.wordpress.com

I offer formatting services for custom ebooks. I also proofread, clean documents (to prep them for formatting), and proofread.

Formatting Services: http://jwmanus.wordpress.com/ebook-fo...

Graeme wrote: "Hey all :)
I write entirely in Scrivener and completely swear by it. I can edit and move stuff around so much faster than Word.
When it is finished, I export it to Word, remove all formatting and w..."

I love Scrivener. I don't use it to make ebooks anymore, but I do love it. Here is what I wrote on my blog in answer to a question similar to yours:

Scrivener DOES have the capabilities to make good ebooks. A caveat, though. First, What You See Is NOT What You Get. That is the biggest problem with using any word processing or word processing type program. We SEE what is on the screen instead of what will end up in the ebook. The program can lull you into thinking you are building one thing while its inner works are busily building something else altogether. You have to be meticulous about your styles and the special formatting and make sure you don’t inadvertently do something that works AGAINST the ebook devices. Plus, while Scrivener handles graphics well, it does have a tendency to bloat the files. That’s something to keep in mind when making a Kindle file for Amazon (big files cost money!). Also, it is really really important to split your file. If you use the Inserted Page Break command there is a good chance you will lose your intended page breaks and the device navigator won’t work.

The real beauty of Scrivener is that it is user friendly and it’s fast. It takes less than a minute to compile a mobi or EPUB file and load it up on a device or in a previewer to check it.

One big downside I have found with Scrivener is that it is grabby to the max. For instance, if you discover you did something to lock the fonts so the user can’t customize their screen view, it makes sense to go back and fix what needs fixed, right? Except fixing the problem doesn’t seem to erase the problem. It just covers it up. So all that old coding is still in the ebook and that can cause some weird NEW problems. If that happens, the best thing I can recommend is to ditch the broken file, and start over from scratch. ALWAYS have a clean source file on standby.

Hi everybody! This looks as if it will be an interesting group.

I convert anything I'm handed (doc, txt, rtf, scans) into a text file on Notepad++ to make a clean source file.

I hand-code ebook files in Notepad++ (one for mobi, one for EPUB), compile them into zip files, then run them through the EPUB validator. Then I convert the Kindle specific file into mobi format through the Kindle Previewer/Kindlegen. I use FreeOCR to convert scans, Paint.Net for graphics, Word for Smashwords, and Scrivener for my own writing and to make pdf files. MobiPocket Creator is too out of date for making pro-ebooks, but I love it to convert documents for proofreading on my Kindle (fast!). I use Calibre to check EPUB files for layout, toc.ncx, nav guide and links. I check Kindle books on my Kindle devices (don't fully trust the online previewers).

Whew, too many programs. :)