So, your manuscript is checked and ready for publication formatting. First job, as difficult as it is, go away and do something else for a week, then come back, re-read, and correct those typos you still missed, which will annoy the hell out of you when you see them in the printed product, and you find it isn’t as simple as a backspace and republish, and that you need to change dozens of things to make a correction. Trust me, it’s worth it in the long run. Included in this, I’d re-activate that show/hide code I mentioned before (the backwards “P” on the toolbar), and make sure each chapter ends with a pagebreak (insert – pagebreak) and each new chapter. Font size will depend on the font you’re using, but for me, its Sorts Mill Goudy, 14 point for the main body for an e-book. Change this in the “modify styles” section (right click on the one you’re using) to apply consistently. If you put the chapter heading part way down, has the same number of carriage return symbols above it, so they all start at the same height.
So, you now have your 200-odd unjustified A4 manuscript that it genuinely ready to go. If you’re me, you save and back that up, then delete the contents page, and make three copies, these will be your pdf master, e-book master, and paperback master (they will all want to be different) and my advice is, do the e-book one first, as it may show up some expected surprises. Turn on the show/hide code again and, my advice, use the view-zoom to go to something like 50%, enough to view without reading, and consider deleting any unnecessary pictures (like pictures of other titles at the end in an ‘also by’). E-publishing from Word doesn’t like images, so take the pictures out if you don’t absolutely need them. Now, from the ‘References’ tab, use the “Table of Contents” and “Custom” options. If you’ve used Styles as I’ve suggested, it will auto correct. Make sure you’ve unticked “use page numbers” and have selected “use hyperlinks”, and remember you may want to change the default size, font or heading of the page manually. It’s actually quite forgiving, and you can even manually add spaces. Now save as html (save as – web page) as this is the version that will cause the least errors. Using my nifty Calibre software (see previous post) I then upload, edit the metadata and cover, and convert to both .epub and .mobi formats. The former is the actual file I’ll upload to Amazon, and both of these will be made available to reviewers. Before you save, make sure you use the preview function for each conversion. I know it’s a drag and can take ages, and you don’t need to actually re-read, but click through the entire thing. It will be obvious if you’ve missed or added too many page breaks, or if a block of text is still in the wrong font or size, and you want to correct your Master manuscript now rather than later! Great, you now have e-book versions ready both for reviewers and KDP. One thing that might come in handy later, to make a note of. A lot of review sites and Amazon will ask about word count and crucially, you have to include number of pages. This is really difficult for e-books, as the font size the reader chooses for themselves, so number of pages is meaningless to some degree. The best tip I found is to divide the overall word count by 300 and this will give you the best approximation of the page count for an e-book.
PDF version next. If you spotted any formatting errors on the e-book, correct your overall master and re-save your “PDF Master” , and “PB Master” versions first. Whether you want to justify the text or not is personal choice, but on the first page of the PDF one, I insert a copy of the cover image. If you choose to justify, click through the whole document to spot anywhere this looks bizarre and unprofessional. If in doubt, leave unjustified. The reader won’t see if otherwise. Then check the pagination (see previous post for a nifty link on this) and do your next version of the Table of Contents. This time, leave both the “Use Page Numbers” and “Use Hyperlinks” ticked. If you’re happy, “Save as” and select the pdf option (look online for how to ensure accessibility features are selected).
As there’s a bit more to it, I’ll do a separate post for the paperback formatting stage which comes next.
Stay safe
Kit