Pam Baddeley, Writer http://www.pambaddeley.com Lair of the Purple Dragon Fri, 16 Jun 2017 19:40:52 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Hopeful Signs http://www.pambaddeley.com/hopeful-signs/ http://www.pambaddeley.com/hopeful-signs/#respond Fri, 16 Jun 2017 19:40:52 +0000 http://www.pambaddeley.com/?p=1110 Continue reading →]]> hand writing in notebook

pexels, Pixabay, Public Domain

I realise I’ve said little for the last two months although quite a bit has been going on behind the scenes. I  ‘engaged’ a professional editor at the beginning of June, and things are in the early stages, but so far I’m pleased.

I’ve done more work on the ‘back matter’ of the ebook, and also overhauled my stylesheet document before I approached my editor as there were a few small inconsistencies in it.

I played with Gimp again to come up with a transparent cover image that includes the title, author name and the publishing imprint logo. Graphics are not my forte and it takes ages to accomplish what someone else could no doubt do in an hour or less, but I got there eventually. I think I have the image sized correctly now for the ebook.

I contacted Fantasia Frog who have produced a few covers for me already, including the one for the WIP, to check what format their book cover credit should be in, and also to enquire about a possible bookmark for sale on the FF site. After some back and forth, I now have image files for a bookmark which shows information about the forthcoming book on one side and some fantasy images etc and my website link etc on the other. I can use that generic side on future bookmarks. The FF designer very kindly went the extra mile and did some investigation for me re online printers, and we identified one to use. I should already have sorted out the printing, but have been sidetracked with other things since.

While corresponding, I also asked about a premade cover for a novel which I’ve only written part of – and ended up buying it.

I also made a start on editing the second book I intend to self publish, though I’ve only managed the first chapter so far. It is, however, a much shorter book and more straightforward, being a first person narrative, so I’m hoping it will need a lot less time and effort to get it in a state where an editor can look at it.

To summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Produce a fourth e-book version and play it through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Completed.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – Pretty happy with the process I’ve documented, apart from the continuing issue with the title page image which has the text too small possibly because of making it responsive and sizing for the screen (not including actual figures for width and height). Need to try again with text title/author name and the logo image and see if they still split across ‘pages’. Need to create a short dummy ebook to find out if the trial attempt at a transparent graphic works, as none of the preview tools are any use for that. Done – seems OK as far as I’ve been able to check from putting the dummy book onto Kindle and also Kobo.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the revised shortlist of pro editors to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’. Done – and engaged an editor. Now awaiting feedback.
  4. Finalise the back of book text and also remember to add info to the copyright/dedication page such as the book cover designer’s and editor’s credits. More or less done – contacted designer and ascertained form of credits they wanted, and added that to the draft front matter. Overhauled the back matter text.
  5. Consider if further tweaks are needed to the ebook conversion process in light of advice in David Gaughran’s book and linked articles. Haven’t had time to progress this.
  6. Arrange to print book marks. Again, haven’t done this yet.

 

Those nice people at ROW80 are posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list again – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

 

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Learning Curves http://www.pambaddeley.com/learning-curves/ http://www.pambaddeley.com/learning-curves/#comments Tue, 11 Apr 2017 16:55:13 +0000 http://www.pambaddeley.com/?p=1095 Continue reading →]]> Blackboard slate with 'Learning, Schooling' written on it

geralt,pixabay,public domain

Funny how you can read the same thing over and over again, re-edit it for the umpteenth time and suddenly have an epiphany – well, fancy term for something that happened when the latest text-to-read runthrough reached a particular conversation. I won’t say what deficiency it highlighted, at risk of major spoiler territory, but suffice to say I’ve been adding new material to a couple of chapters much later in the book to address it. The need for the extra work has bogged down the progress of the edit somewhat, and also raised the word count again when I had succeeded it getting it below 160,000, but without those changes there would be a major believability gap.

Phew! Does make you worry and think “What else might I have missed?” I’m hoping the professional editor I want to engage will catch anything else, though I haven’t yet approached my shortlist as the ‘final’ edit is taking longer with these additions, and I don’t know exactly when I’ll finish.

As an added incentive, I’m doing CampNaNoWriMo this month, with an initial goal of 35 hours editing, though the plan is to exceed that.

As light relief, I wrote another 200 word short story for the latest competition on one of the  Goodreads forums. This time the brief was to include five particular words chosen by last time’s winners. I’ll post that on my short shorts page once the result is announced later this month.

I’ve been reading parts of David Gaughran‘s book “Let’s Get Digital” which has lots of interesting info and also links to other articles on the internet, some by him and some by other writers. I may have to slightly revise my ebook formatting process in the light of some of this advice, mainly along the lines of swapping out e.g. emdashes in favour of substituting the html codes for same. Will need to consider that as soon as I have any time.

Anyway, to summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Produce a fourth e-book version and play it through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Part way through chapter 29 of the latest.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – Pretty happy with the process I’ve documented, apart from the continuing issue with the title page image which has the text too small possibly because of making it responsive and sizing for the screen (not including actual figures for width and height). Need to try again with text title/author name and the logo image and see if they still split across ‘pages’. Need to create a short dummy ebook to find out if the trial attempt at a transparent graphic works, as none of the preview tools are any use for that.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the revised shortlist of pro editors to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.
  4. Finalise the back of book text and also remember to add info to the copyright/dedication page such as the book cover designer’s and editor’s credits.
  5. Consider if further tweaks are needed to ebook conversion process in light of advice in David Gaughran’s book and the linked articles.

 

Those nice people at ROW80 are posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list again – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

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Spring Shoots http://www.pambaddeley.com/spring_shoots/ http://www.pambaddeley.com/spring_shoots/#comments Sun, 12 Mar 2017 01:29:45 +0000 http://www.pambaddeley.com/?p=1074 Continue reading →]]> snowdrop

Cocoparisienne, Pixabay, Public Domain

Well, a gap in the progress log again, but despite the lack of blogging about it, there has been some progress since my last post. Firstly, I’ve been carrying on with the ‘final’ edit of the WIP. Secondly, I have to report that I heard back from the Magic Oxygen short story competition I entered some time ago, but sadly, I didn’t make the short list.

However, I was a joint winner of a small, non-prize but just for fun competition run on one of the Goodreads forums – 200 words and a certain line had to be included. I’ve posted it on my  short shorts page.

Apart from editing – some days it’s gone well and I’ve done up to three chapters, though other times I can only manage a chapter a day – I’ve also done some work on my book description/book blurb. Some time last year, I produced three rough ones. Last week I posted the best onto SFFC forum and asked for comments. I posted subsequent versions based on the comments – but then received disparate views which left me a bit confused.

So I tried again on one of the Goodreads forums and had some useful input, e.g. that it’s good to go ‘top down’ from less detailed to more detailed, as you want something with impact to show on Amazon before the link to view more, as only limited text shows. Also, that one of the blurbs I’d done as a result of the SFFC input could be worked on to become a ‘long’ blurb (it isn’t that long as such, just has more detail). As a result, I’ve now put something together which has the amended input from SFFC, reworked along the lines suggested on Goodreads, and also using some amended wording that one of the Goodreads contributors suggested. I’m going to head it up with the byline of the book, and with any luck it will also serve as the backcover copy when I finally produce the paperback.

A small side task was to look at one or two sites that would produce barcodes, again for the paperback. I found one that I think will be OK and does it for free, with contributions welcome.

I also took a copy of one of my book title images and played around with making it transparent, as one of the issues with using an image is that if the reader changes their view to white-on-black (or uses a sepia background on a tablet, which I do myself as I find it more restful on that kind of screen), it hopefully won’t appear as a white block against a different colour. Haven’t had time to check that yet as I need to make a small ebook including it. Still don’t think I’ve cracked the actual size issue re the title page graphic, but I’ve found a hint on a book building site that images should be 300 not 75 pixels per inch. I did try to produce a transparent image with text superimposed in Gimp but the text looked puny so the title page image is a work in progress in its own right. Graphics are not my strong point, unfortunately.

I did some reading for general tips on a few sites of people who have self published. A good one which I first found some years ago and then lost track of is Lisa Shea’s. She has redesigned the site a lot since I first found it – http://www.lisashea.com/lisabase/writing/gettingyourbookpublished/

Anyway, to summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Produce a fourth e-book version and play it through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Up to end of chapter 17 of the latest.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – Pretty happy with the process I’ve documented, apart from the continuing issue with the title page image which has the text too small possibly because of making it responsive and sizing for the screen (not including actual figures for width and height). Need to try again with text title/author name and the logo image and see if they still split across ‘pages’. Need to create a short dummy ebook to find out if the trial attempt at a transparent graphic works, as none of the preview tools are any use for that.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, check where authors can be identified who have used particular pro editors previously identified as possibilities, to validate the quality of the editing and possibly amend the shortlist.
  4. Approach the various editors in the revised shortlist to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.
  5. Come up with a book description that can be used on Amazon and also for the back cover description on the eventual print on demand version. More or less done, with the input from SFFC and Goodreads.
  6. Finalise the back of book text and also remember to add info to the copyright/dedication page such as the book cover designer and editors credits.

 

ROW80 is posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list again – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

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Pushing Through http://www.pambaddeley.com/pushing-through/ http://www.pambaddeley.com/pushing-through/#comments Sun, 19 Feb 2017 19:53:51 +0000 http://www.pambaddeley.com/?p=1052 Continue reading →]]> computer keyboard

Pixabay, by Simon, public domain

Some progress over the last week or so. I completed the read-through to the end of the novel and embarked on creation of the fourth ebook version for a final read-through before approaching pro editors.

I used the process I started to develop last summer, and this time there were no ‘rubbishy’ styles thrown up in the Calibre conversion, just one for italics and the rest the odd ones it uses as part of its structure, at the top and bottom of each file/page for example. So I won’t need to use Calibre in future conversions for this novel, such as the real one for producing an epub file for Amazon upload.

The most taxing part of the process this time was at the HTML stage where the tool was going through the motions of saving the file but then prompting to save it when I tried to quit as if it hadn’t saved it at all. Luckily, I played safe by using the File\Save As option and also copying/pasting the text to a notepad file to be on the safe side, because when I managed to quit the program, none of the work I had done in the preceding 2.5 hours had been saved in the original file! It was still the filtered HTML file as exported from Word that I’d started with. Soon sorted that out by getting rid of that version and renaming the Save As version with the right name. Phew! Computers can be sneaky.

A glitch at the Sigil stage was a couple of fonts not displaying as intended; instead, they were defaulting to the options in Sigil for text that has no CSS class defined. Then I realised I’d met this problem last time and it is due to the font names being capitalised by Word, but all lower case in the stylesheet. Made a note in my instructions this time at the appropriate place to remedy that during the HTML clean-up stage. It was in the notes later on, at the Sigil stage, but it should’ve been flagged up under the section on HTML and it was quite a few months ago that I’d met the problem so I’d forgotten.

Also I did some more trials to try to get a single image that would include the book title and the logo for the title page. This continues to frustrate; I found out how to make the image responsive and include that in the CSS by using an id tag in the image inclusion tag and and cross referencing that in the CSS file, but the text continues to look miniscule when displayed on an actual Kindle. So still head scratching. I’ve confirmed by research on the Kindle forum that there is no way in an ebook to keep text together (or text and a logo image). The advice on there is to make the title page one whole image, but despite trying to enlarge the text, it is still pretty teeny on the Kindle itself. Otherwise, all was OK, with correct table of contents, book opening in the correct place and the text itself all being correctly indented or blocked, and italicised text being italicised.

Following this, I’ve embarked on the read-through and have done nine chapters so far which doesn’t sound a lot, but the last three were long ones. The only actual mistake I’ve come across was the use of ‘relived’ instead of ‘relieved’ in one place. The rest, as ever, is tidying up cludgy bits missed previously or sorting out the odd sentence which is really omniscient viewpoint rather than close third. Plus some small bits have come out here and there that I think are obvious and don’t need to be underlined. The main concern is introducing new mistakes because I did realise in time that I was nearly doing that in one place when rephrasing, so I hope there aren’t any that I haven’t caught.

The pro editor question is bothering me a little; I had a look at the work of a writer who recommended an editor who is right for the genre and sounds a lot more reasonable price-wise than most. The writer has used this editor for all their books and been happy. But in the first few paragraphs, a comma splice jumped out at me and one or two places where I’ve been told a comma is required. Comma splices (joining two clauses with a comma when they need either a colon, a semi-colon or possibly a comma and a conjunction such as ‘and’ or ‘but’, depending on the type of clauses being joined) is a general no-no in English (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_splice), so I’m having doubts about the editor’s abilities. I need to look into this in much more depth for all the recommended editors on my list, but I don’t want to distract myself from the read-through.

Anyway, to summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Produce a fourth e-book version and play it through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Up to end of chapter 9 of the latest.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – Pretty happy with the process I’ve documented, apart from the continuing issue with the title page image which has the text too small possibly because of making it responsive and sizing for the screen (not including actual figures for width and height). Need to try again with text title/author name and the logo image and see if they still split across ‘pages’. Haven’t finalised the end pages yet.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, check where authors can be identified who have used particular pro editors previously identified as possibilities, to validate the quality of the editing and possibly amend the shortlist.
  4. Approach the various editors in the revised shortlist to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.
  5. Come up with a book description that can be used on Amazon and also for the back cover description on the eventual print on demand version.

 

ROW80 is posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list again – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

 

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Still Making Progress http://www.pambaddeley.com/still-making-progress/ http://www.pambaddeley.com/still-making-progress/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2017 18:06:33 +0000 http://www.pambaddeley.com/?p=1032 Continue reading →]]> stone cutting tools

Gellinger, Pixabay, Public domain

Well, only the second post of the year; already falling into bad habits! I just seem to be doing so much and not having a lot to show. But there is progress, in small stages.

I’ve been working on the WIP using the text-to-speech technique which helps to throw into relief clunky sentences and the odd place where a word was missed out. I had to break off and go back to the beginning again a little while ago because I’d read in more than one place that it was standard for UK books to use single quotes for dialogue (with double quotes inside those for any quote-within-quote). The reverse is true for US books. I’d been raised with the old tradition learned in typing classes that you used double quotes for speech, and so have several other people I know, but books such as ‘New Hart’s Rules’ have been informing me this isn’t standard for the UK. I checked quite a few recent traditionally published paperbacks and they all follow the single quote convention, so I’ve been back through the MS correcting that.

Being concerned that something might go haywire with a global find-and-replace, after doing the replace, I did a search on single quotes to make sure that nothing funny had happened, which resulted in a few small line edits here and there as I spotted other things I could improve. I had to tear myself away from re-reading the chapters in full, but given the number of edits already made on this third text-to-speech read through, I think I’m going to have to do a fourth to make sure there really are only minor things to deal with, before approaching the pro editors. Anyway, I’ve caught up to where I was before starting the quote replacement so I’m hoping to steam away with it now and get the last bit done.

Something I discovered by chance: I use an electronic copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, but on Windows 10 it has gone a little bit glitchy, loading ‘off screen’ so that I have to maximise it via various right-click and key combinations to make it visible. Then it does a ‘stay on top’ so that I have to minimise it to get back to Word. I discovered yesterday that there is a free Wordweb dictionary tool which, provided you accept the option on installation to create a taskbar icon, you can access by highlighting a word in Word (or other software), then holding down the Ctrl key and right-clicking with the mouse. A window pops up with various dictionary help and functions. They also do a pro version for £17 that allows you to purchase add-on dictionaries, and I was tempted when I saw they did the SOED, but I investigated and the last edition is the one I already have – 6th edition (2007) – so it wouldn’t make sense to buy the same thing again in a different form. Anyway, for anyone interested in the free version of Wordweb, it’s at http://wordweb.info/free/. For users of Macs or other operating systems, scroll down that page to the links at the bottom.

Quite a bit of time has been taken up over the last few months writing reviews of the books I’ve been reading for the Goodreads site – anyone interested in seeing those can click the Goodreads button in the sidebar on the home page. I found a few good groups there for exchanging views and finding out information on self-publishing, not just author only forums but also those where the focus is on readers.

Earlier this month I wrote a short story (200 words) with a set topic (a particular phrase had to be included) for a short story competition in one of those Goodreads forums; no prizes, just a bit of fun, and I thought it would be a challenge. I’ve backed off from doing those kinds of competitions for some months as I felt a bit discouraged by the lack of response (didn’t expect votes but some feedback would’ve been nice). So we’ll see how this goes. It doesn’t close until later this month.

I’ve just finished critiquing the latest batch of submissions in the email-based group to which I belong. More alpha than beta readers, as I’ve only sent round parts of a first draft of another novel so far and it’s not the whole book in one go, just a few chapters at a time. I’m parking all feedback on my own material for now, rather than letting it distract me from finishing the current WIP.

I’ve been reading a rather quirky book, The Pocket Book of Proofreading. It also covers copy-editing to some extent and includes some useful information; in fact, it ‘prodded’ me to finally do something about the single quote thing – I had read something about that a couple of months ago, but prevaricated about having to deal with it.

Last time I received a couple of comments from kind people who read that post and asked questions. I should have spotted those back in January so apologies for the delay. @Shan Jeniah Burton, the forum I meant was the Science Fiction & Fantasy Community. Thanks for that tip about APE. @Beth Camp, I’ve been using an old Kindle Keyboard which does a robotic voice for my text-to-speech readthroughs, which I bought secondhand. For this book, I’m going for copy editing, because a professional writer very kindly read an earlier version and gave me developmental comments.

Anyway, to summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Play the novel through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Up to end of chapter 30 of the latest run through.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – This is parked at present though I’ve done quite a bit on this. Have looked at other ebooks by self published authors I know, and they all differ. Need to sort out the graphic I was using as the title page – when I had the publisher logo with normal text it split the page text, but the graphic all-in-one wasn’t big enough either and looks silly.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the various editors previously identified as possible pro editors to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.

 

ROW80 is posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list again – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.

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Keep On Keeping On http://www.pambaddeley.com/keep-on-keeping-on/ http://www.pambaddeley.com/keep-on-keeping-on/#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2017 20:20:14 +0000 http://www.pambaddeley.com/?p=1021 Continue reading →]]> Plant growing through crack in pavement

SymphonyofLove, Pixabay. Public domain

After the whole Christmas and New Year thing, it’s taking a while for energy levels to get back to normal as far as writing goes. Lots of distractions still keep appearing and I’ve only managed to edit another two chapters since Christmas. The situation is a bit like one of those old school reports which said “Must try harder”.

Hence, not a lot to report, but I am trying to get back to a regular schedule of blogging and checking in with the ROW80 motivational group of fellow writers and bloggers.

One thing I did do in the Christmas run-up was to polish a short story that I wrote a few years back, and submit it to a competition which closed on 31st December. It’s been a while since I last entered a competition – must have been in the first quarter of 2016 – and it’s an odd short story, not at all my usual sort of thing, but the competition looked appropriate.

Other than that, I’ve added another professional editor to my list of those to approach, following a recommendation from someone on the SFFC forum.

To summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Play the novel through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Up to end of chapter 20 of the latest run through.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – Quite a lot accomplished. Have looked at other ebooks by self published authors I know, and they all differ. Need to sort out the graphic I was using as the title page – when I had the publisher logo with normal text it split the page text, but the graphic all-in-one wasn’t big enough either and looks silly.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the various editors previously identified as possible pro editors to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.

 

ROW80 has changed its format and posts updates in a Facebook group instead of a blog ‘linky list’. You can access it here.

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Catching up is hard to do http://www.pambaddeley.com/catching-up-is-hard-to-do/ http://www.pambaddeley.com/catching-up-is-hard-to-do/#comments Tue, 13 Dec 2016 17:17:35 +0000 http://www.pambaddeley.com/?p=1011 Continue reading →]]> Cluttered deskDo you know that feeling when there are too many things to do and not enough hours in the day? Yep, that’s been the trouble here, for the last few months in particular, hence no posting on this blog, though I’ve kept up with my round of Goodreads, Facebook and sffchronicles forum updates. Something had to give, and with the continuing edit of the magnum opus which occupied me during this NaNoWriMo – rebelling again, and had a ‘win’ with 58 hours of editing clocked up – it was this blog, sadly. And as soon as NaNo finished, the Christmas preparations, including present buying and wrapping and writing of Christmas cards, took over.

All this being the case, today is the first opportunity to return to the blog for a quick update of how things have been going. I did some more work on how to create an ebook, testing the process I documented in my last post to produce the third iteration in Kindle format then started another text-to-speech read-through on my trusty Kindle Keyboard. I reached the end of chapter 18 before Christmas preps brought everything to a halt. I still have ‘stuff to do’ but hope to get back to it soon. This is the last one before I approach pro editors for quotes and find out if it is affordable.

So to summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Play the novel through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Completed the previous run and up to end of chapter 18 of the latest.
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – Quite a lot accomplished. Have looked at other ebooks by self published authors I know though they all differ. Need to sort out the graphic I was using as the title page as when I had the publisher logo with normal text it split the page text, but the graphic all-in-one wasn’t big enough either and looks silly.
  3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the various editors previously identified as possible pro editors to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.

 

ROW80 has changed its format and posts updates on Facebook instead of a blog ‘linky list’ which you can see here.

 

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Onward and Upward http://www.pambaddeley.com/onward-and-upward/ http://www.pambaddeley.com/onward-and-upward/#comments Tue, 06 Sep 2016 11:40:06 +0000 http://www.pambaddeley.com/?p=997 Continue reading →]]> Since the last post I’ve been busy, so busy I’ve had no time to blog about what I’ve been doing. First off, I completed CampNaNo well ahead of the target which I had revised a couple of times but couldn’t increase above 35K (35 hours in my case, being an edit) because you’re not allowed to amend your goal once you reach the date when you can start ‘winning’. I left it too late for another increase so my last recorded goal was 35K and I ended up doing the word count equivalent of 65 and three quarters hours of editing. I completed the text-to-speech read-through I embarked on a while back and looked well on track for tidying up a new dummy ebook and performing another read-through to ensure no mistakes had been edited in.

But sometimes things are a slog. I went back to working on ebook production, and then became sidetracked into doing a full-blown edit once more because I picked up a couple of books cheap, The Penguin Guide to Punctuation and The Penguin Guide to Plain English. A perusal of the first one in particular convinced me that I still wasn’t using semicolons correctly and that most of them should be colons. Also, I wasn’t sure about comma usage in places. The upshot is that I’ve started re-reading the whole book onscreen and have done not only little tweaks, but a lot of full rewrites and rejigs of some sections. It has taken a few more hundred words off the word count. But I’m not convinced it’s correct as I get the impression that, in the process, I’ve introduced the passive – ‘was walking’ – into places simply because the flow seemed to require that. I need to go back over those first eleven chapters (as that’s how far I’ve got) to make sure I’m not doing too much of that.

I made progress in my understanding of ebook production thanks to finding some posts by Rudy Rucker which still have value despite being written in 2012: four covering ebook production, from the most lightweight process to the most thorough. The first post  How to Get Started kicks off the process and each is linked through to the next if anyone wants to check them out.

I already knew that the foundation is to follow the Smashwords Guide to Editing first, to make sure everything is implemented through styles. That’s fundamental before embarking on any process. So I had already done that prior to creating the first dummy ebook for text-to-speech.

The process I’m following involves saving the consolidated book file (which I add the front and back matter to) as a filtered HTML file. The trouble is, Word incorporates all sorts of rubbish which isn’t needed in an ebook so I’m using an old HTML editor I have to strip out unnecessary style info and to create a proper CSS stylesheet with the correctly defined styles in it, linked back into the main file.

If I use Calibre to create an epub, I don’t need to remove the style section as Calibre will create a stylesheet, but I do need to get rid of lots of ‘panose’ entries and to make sure the styles that are left are correct. Also, for later stages, I may replace the embedded front page graphic which includes my publishing logo, with a link to the graphic file.

Word creates a lot of its own styles such as ‘msonormal’ where the normal style was used in the original. For the HTML I’m using a find-replace to turn this into a ‘para’ style instead. I’m also getting rid of the <SPAN> tags that it insists on adding, so that I make the HTML as simple as possible, formatted using <p class=”classname”> tags only.

As a troubleshooting step after that, I create an epub file from the cleaned up HTML one using Calibre. There’s a school of thought that Calibre files are not always accepted on Amazon. Whether this is currently the case or not, Calibre is certainly useful because it creates a lot of extra styles if there is anything odd in the input. I found a number of things that weren’t visible in the original Word files – spaces formatted as red, some letters that were formatted not to display in Word – plus a few paragraphs that stubbornly insist on having ‘inline’ formatting, in other words having a <p> tag around them with everything defined manually instead of using a CSS class. So I was able to use my HTML editor on the filtered HTML file to clean all this up, and in the case of things where the cause could be seen in the Word original, clean it up there also.

For ebook production, I’m probably going to take a cleaned up HTML which incorporates the fixes identified from the Calibre conversion, then take that into Sigil and manually add the file breaks for each chapter. I use Word to define a pagebreak for the chapter heading style, and ebook readers will normally obey that, but the ebook would remain one big file if it isn’t split either manually in Sigil or automatically by a Calibre conversion, and large files can give problems on some readers.

I’ve written up this process for my own use in a Word document, which is still in progress as I’ve broken off to do more editing, as I said above. Like I said, I’ve been really busy!

So to summarise the latest goals and progress:

  1. Play the novel through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Completed that runthrough and will have to repeat when the latest editing is done
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – Quite a lot accomplished. Have looked at other ebooks by self published authors I know though they all differ. Have a process now to follow which will be trailed when the next ‘dummy’ is produced for text-to-speech checking
  3. Complete the latest edit then produce another ebook for text-to-speech checking
  4. Once the final edit is complete, approach the various editors previously identified as possible pro editors to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.

Here is what those nice folks at ROW80 have been up to:

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Camping It Up http://www.pambaddeley.com/camping-it-up/ http://www.pambaddeley.com/camping-it-up/#comments Thu, 14 Jul 2016 11:25:13 +0000 http://www.pambaddeley.com/?p=985 Continue reading →]]> CNW_April 2016_Participant

Or not as the case may be … I’ve joined a cabin for July CampNaNoWriMo and set myself a modest initial target as I did in April.  Although I should exceed it, I don’t think I’ll be able to manage so much editing this time as in April, because I have a busy second half of the month looming.  Never mind, I’ve been able to manage 18.5 hours of editing so far and have moved on with the current text-to-speech edit.

That’s also with doing three crits for an email crit group in the past week or so.  I usually end up spending a couple of hours apiece on those so they are a significant chunk of writing time, but of course I’m getting a critical eye on one of my own books in return, the one I completed the first draft of after a couple of years of NaNoWriMo.  They’ve thrown up quite a few developmental issues that I need to address.  Like a lot of my unfinished novels, this was started years ago, and until the last couple I couldn’t get time or sufficient motivation to push on with it.  NaNo was useful for that, plus a couple of writers’ retreats I attended where I got a good chunk done each time.  Sadly, that retreat has closed, but I’m doing my own mini retreats in effect.

Anyway, it’s a toss up as to which book I should turn my attention to once I’ve got the current WIP completed and self published.  The most sensible thing would be to tackle one of the two short books that have had a load of rewrites over umpteen years as I don’t think either of those will need a lot of work, compared to what I’ve had to put in on the current one.  After that, there is a long contemporary supernatural novel that will need a lot of work to bring it up to date with modern developments – unfortunately, life has caught up with fiction as it deals with a lot of topics such as mass migration that have become very pressing in recent years, so I’m not sure how I’m going to tackle that.  And then I have the one I’m sending to the crit group, plus a partly written murder mystery/supernatural tale set in different time zones, and fragments of about three or four other books.  Oh, and there’s the other supernatural one that needs a complete rewrite.  So lots to do, which is why it is important to focus on one thing at a time otherwise it gets a bit overwhelming.

So the goals this time with progress:

  1. Play the novel through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – done to end of Chapter 26
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those –  No further progress, but I have found an article I bookmarked ages ago which has a different method and I’m going to follow that one when I finish the current play through because I am going to repeat the exercise to catch any typos that have been introduced by the current round of edits, which turn out to be a lot more substantial than I was expecting
  3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the various editors previously identified as possible pro editors  to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.

And here are those nice ROW80 people and their updates:

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Lessons in Line Editing Part 2 http://www.pambaddeley.com/lessons-in-line-editing-part-2/ http://www.pambaddeley.com/lessons-in-line-editing-part-2/#comments Thu, 23 Jun 2016 15:38:02 +0000 http://www.pambaddeley.com/?p=954 Continue reading →]]> Stop sign with pen

staand, Pixabay, Public Domain

Since my previous update, I’ve continued using the text-to-speech method of editing and I’m finding it more and more valuable.  It has shown up three typos so far, but its main use as before is in making it obvious where more work is needed.  In some places, I’ve completely redrafted a section because of it.

So far I’ve tacked the first fifteen chapters since the beginning of June, and that’s with days off doing other things.  So that is hugely faster than the previous edit which began last April.  I’ve decided to incorporate this method into my regular editing cycles which have to get a lot quicker.  I think if I concentrate on doing a clean up of the obvious stuff including continuity problems at the second draft, then do a text-to-speech read through for draft three, that will create the different mind set which I’ve found is highlighting many areas that need addressing which were not showing up on the radar before.  Perhaps, because different parts of the brain are used to process speech as opposed to written words, this has the serendipitous effect of making weaknesses obvious?

When I finish the current exercise, I’ll produce a rough ebook again and read that through to catch any typos that might have been introduced during this edit.  Hopefully the ‘big stuff’ will have all been dealt with this time through.

I’ve also blogged about my issues with the Windows version of Scrivener for producing compiled books, either for ebook or print.

So my goals for ROW80 and progress in red:

  1. Play the novel through on the KK and make further amendments – first 15 chapters done
  2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those –  No further progress, but I have documented the method and know what needs to be done mostly. I’ll get more practice when I finish the current play through because I am going to repeat the exercise to catch any typos that have been introduced by the current round of edits, which turn out to be a lot more substantial than I was expecting
  3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the various editors previously identified as possible pro editors  to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’.

And here are those nice ROW80 people and their updates:

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