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Looking at your book in e-pub
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Heh, no. From an author's perspective, there's always room for improvement, regardless if it's in Word or a physical book. Nothing is ever perfect. Human beings are imperfect by nature. I feel it simply gets to a point when you decide that's perfectly imperfect.Sidenote: when correcting typos, personally, I'm downright obessessive and never stop. The manuscript has to be yanked out of my rigid hands.
Amber, I always convert to ePub to read it after it has been edited/proofread etc because I always find something I couldn't see in words.So yes, I do react differently reading my work in ePub rather than Word documents I don't think I could do it without.
When I get my round of edits on, after the first round on the WP, I get my ePub version for the second round and third round is printed proof. If i hadn't caught everything by then, then that's it. nothing else done to it. on the off chance i read a random page and find an error, i suck it up and accept it, because i even find minor errors in books pumped out by Big 5.
Yeah, I do a minimum of 3 rounds myself, in several different formats. It all helps.
Thanks. This happened to me with my other two books and I was beginning to feel a little obsessive. Not about finding typos--I'm glad to catch those--but about the nit-picking. I'm afraid I'll damage perfectly good sentences.
It's an occupational hazard. You will always find something. The curse of the print book is that you can't fix anything; the curse of the ebook is that you can.It can be very helpful to look at your manuscript a few different ways, even just by changing the font and/or margins, or making the first final draft full justified and the second final draft ragged right. Changing the appearance of the page makes the text a little strange on re-reading and can make typos more obvious. This is what happens when you go to your ebook and see the things that slipped through.
There is nothing wrong with treating your ebook format check as a galley check. If you see some prose you wish you had written differently, you can make some edits. BUT you shouldn't do so lightly. Presumably you didn't upload the file half-baked so there is a good chance you're picking at thread ends that may just make holes in your beautiful book. If you really feel that a change is worth making, make it and then sit on it for a day or two. Then take another look at it before uploading the revised file.
If you find that you can't go near your book without wanting to revise something, draw the line and let it go.
Yes totally! I usually convert it to mobi and read it a few times on my kindle before release day as I often see things that could be tweaked or the odd typo!
Someone on some other post said that moving it into a bigger font or changing the font makes your brain see it differently. This has happened to me as well when converting the book because it's suddenly different to the eyes. Size, font, white space...
For me, reading my own book on my Kindle is crucial to the editing process (and not just for catching typos). When I read it on my computer, I'm in the same mindset I was in while writing it. But when I read it on my Kindle, I'm now in my regular "reader" environment (because I read nearly everything on my Kindle) and that makes it easier for me to notice problems in style, writing, pacing, etc. from the perspective of a reader.For the last 10 or so rounds of editing I did on my book, I read the book on my Kindle -OR- as a paperback proof from Createspace. While reading, I made a list of changes I needed to make back on the computer. I'm so glad I did this, and I'll definitely be doing it again for my next books.
By the way, for anyone who wants to give their book a test-read on their eReader, use this website to convert your computer file to any eReader format (epub, mobi, etc.). Then you can load it on your eReader.http://ebook.online-convert.com/
I find it most useful to listen to my book in text to voice software, since many are using such software nowadays. That will be my third round of proofing. How ir sounds, I find, makes the tiniest typo much more obvious.
Is there a free voice software for either window pic or iPad?????
A friend gave me the suggestion. First time I tried it, and it worked beautifully. Not just with typos either, things like making sure the dialogue sounds natural.
Mod
I'm planning to show the few major revisions of lines or whole paragraphs to my editor before I commit to them.
Justin wrote: "My poetry books were not formatted correctly on Amazon. Lily pointed the issue out to me and I went ahead and fixed it for my new book and then I fixed my first book. it's one of those things I mys..."Glad to help :) That's good to know about PDFs.
I've finished a book. It's been critiqued and revised and critiqued and revised, over and over. It's been edited and then proofread. I've got it formatted for mobi and e-bub for e-books and PDF for paperback, and I'm double-checking the formatting. As I read it word by word, page by page, checking for those formatting conversion glitches that can happen, I find a few typos no one else saw. This is good. I find sentences I suddenly want to revise. This may be dangerous, the urge to revise post-editing, post proofing. And yet I'm sure I can still make the book better before before I publish.
Does the sight of your book in its proper book form as opposed to Word make you react to it differently?