Last week I posted about D&D Character Analysis. This week we turn that toward ourselves!
Last week I told you all about this cool way players of Dungeons & Dragons classify their characters based on how well they follow laws or rules (lawful/neutral/chaotic) and what sort of person…
I've been very silly and haven't been posting links to my blog here. That's going to end!
Here is last week's blog post. Lovers of D&D will get it right away, everyone else will learn something new and interesting. :-)
I blog every Sunday on writing and self-publishing topics. https://meredithbond.com/classifying-your-characters/
Involved in all this complication is a really interesting way of classifying a person based on how law abiding they are (lawful, neutral, or chaotic) and what sort of person they are in general (go…
Anessa Books's cover photo
I'll be teaching Word for Writers at the Contemporary Romance Writer's chapter where I'll be showing you how to format your book for print-on-demand and much more! http://contemporaryromance.org/workshops/#Word
The tools needed to respectfully portray characters dealing with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. This is a broad layman’s overview – who, where, what, when, why, and how – of PTSD’s effects on individuals, families, acquaintances, interpersonal relationships, careers and other situations.
Anybody in Canada, Australia or New Zealand? You can now publish your books on B&N!
Remember, if you’ve got questions I’m here to answer them!
I’ll be teaching my self-publishing course at the end of July at the Contemplation Romance Writer’s chapter (online). http://contemporaryromance.org/workshops/#SelfPubABC
Last chance to sign up for an on-line seminar on Word for Writers and how to format for CreateSpace! Don't miss it! https://goo.gl/forms/q4cReqlrZ5a178uk1
This seminar will be held at 3pm EST on January 31st and run through a Zoom "meeting". You'll receive a link to the meeting the day before. If you haven't received it by the evening of the 30th, please don't hesitate to email me at [email protected]. Thanks!
So none of you have to curse Word any longer, I’m going to be hosting a seminar online— Word for Writers. If you’re interested, contact me!
I'm excited! I'm going to be teaching a new course in a few weeks: Microsoft Word for Writers. Do your Word skills need a little refreshing? Join me at Savvy Authors! https://savvyauthors.com/Community/index.php?resources/microsoft-word-for-writers-with-award-winning-author-meredith-bond.573/
Don't fear Microsoft Word anymore!
Here's the promised video! I'll post written directions as well.
I've been having great fun embedding a font to use in the drop caps. It's a bit trickier than just using a font in a heading style, but so worth it! Anyone want me to post the instructions on how to do it? I'd be happy to share!
Well, I didn't manage to get my beginning Jutoh video created and up on Youtube as I'd planned, and I'm very sorry for that. I will do my best to get that done this week--although it might be a little trickier with my children at home, but they can be quiet, so I'll give it a shot. Once it's up, I'll be sure to tell you all.
In the meantime, a very happy holiday to all!
Do you know the difference between page breaks and section breaks? What about when to use each?
Use page breaks in your Smashwords formatting and when preparing your document for Jutoh; section breaks only go into your CreateSpace document after you've copied your book into the template (or adjusted the page size to the size of the book you want).
Have you been wanting to learn how to format with Jutoh? Now you can! I've got a new course where I show you, step-by-step, how to prepare you document, import it into Jutoh and then format it as an epub and mobi file.
I cover basic formatting, conditional formatting so you can create a different book for each vendor, and embedding pictures and fonts.
Check it out at http://anessa-books.teachable.com/
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Coming soon!! An on-line course to teach you how to format your own books with Jutoh. :-o
Learn how to format your ebook with Jutoh! I'm going to be offering an on-line course beginning October 24th. Just contact me for further information!
My new project: putting together an on-line class just on how to use Jutoh. Whose interested? Anything in particular you'd like me to cover? http://www.jutoh.com
Ebook editor, convertor and creator software for Mac, Windows and Linux. Convert to ebooks for Kindle, iBooks, iPhone, iPad, Kobo, Nook.
How many italicized words do you put into your books? Have you ever thought about it? I do all the time because when I format a book, I clean it first which deletes all formatting including italics.
In order to make sure I don't lose any, I first mark all the italicized words with a simply search and replace (click in the "Find" box, click "More" at the bottom of the replace window, font, and then italics. In the Replace window put in "^&". This places a before and a after all italicized words and phrases).
I then run the document through a text program like Notepad++ (on a PC) or TextWrangler (on the Mac), which strips out all formatting. Paste the book back into Word and then search for all my codes and re-italicize everything by hand.
If there are 400+ italicized words and phrases (and yes, I've had 80,000 words books with that many!) that's going to take a while. :-( So, think before you italicize! (It might say something if you feel the need to italicize that much--how well is your writing working that the emphasis isn't clear? Sorry...)
What self-publishing blogs do you read? What info are you looking for there? Yes, I'm asking so that I can get a good idea of what to write on my blog!
Wait! You did know that I've got a blog on writing and self-publishing that I post to every Saturday, right? Check it out! http://meredithbond.com/blog/posts/
Setting the scene: A sunny day at the beach, my umbrella angled just so, a cool drink in one hand (frozen margarita, please… thank you), the newest book from Sarah Maclean/Aubrey Wynne/Miranda Neville/Cathy Maxwell in the other. -OR- A cool, rainy evening, the fire is lit, my comfy chair is pulled u...
Did you know that you can, essentially, create a template for all your ebooks in Jutoh? Yup. Just save your style sheet (after editing the styles the way you like them) and then make sure your style sheet is chosen in each of your configurations. You can then save your configurations too. I've got configurations for each of the e-retailers so that I can have a different version of my book for each one with the correct links in them. More on that later!
Now there's a nice July 4th present! My husband just bought me a ticket back to the U.S. for three weeks in October! Now, I've just got to decide what to do with my time there, aside from my usual work. Anyone need a talk on self-publishing?
Anessa Books's cover photo
Anessa Books's cover photo
I'm thrilled to announce two new services I'll be offering through Anessa Books! Developmental editing and Self-Publishing coaching! Want to learn more? Message me or hop over to www.anessabooks.com.
What do you like to include in your books? Do you include your book description in your ebooks? A dedication? An acknowledgments page? Anything special?
This was my favorite--which my mother wrote in the acknowledgements of one of her books.
Do you want to set up a template for Smashwords? It's a lot easier than some people think! Just make sure your styles are all set the way you'd like them to be, your margins are at a normal 1" all around and you don't have any headers, tabs or more than two hard returns in a row and you fonts don't vary by more than four points in either direction. That's it! Need more help? Oddly enough this book is easy to read and gives you everything you need to know: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52
The Smashwords Style Guide has helped thousands of authors produce and publish high-quality ebooks. This free guide offers simple step-by-step instructions to create, format and publish an ebook. It's required reading for any author who wants to distribute their book via Smashwords to major ebook re...
Are you trying to format for CreateSpace? They've got their own templates available here: https://www.createspace.com/en/community/docs/DOC-1323
but if you want to use your own, see the picture I'm adding to the comments for the specs for your layout.
Thank you for choosing our interior templates to create your work. Here, you will find templates to format your black-and-white interior file using some of our most popular trim sizes. The below instructions provide an overview of how to use our templates to create your book's interior.
Once you've got your Styles set up -- and don't forget to set up your Heading 1 style, as well as Normal -- you need to make sure your layout is right for the type of document you're creating.
Are you making a CreateSpace document for POD? A Smashwords document to upload there for their meatgrinder to convert for you? Creating a Word document for Draft2Digital? Or is this going to be the document your ebook will be based off of?
For each different type of document, you may need a different layout, a different template. Check back tomorrow for the layout for CreateSpace!
So, for the next few days, I thought I'd give you some tips on how to create a template in Word.
To begin with, you need to have your Styles set up. I like to have "Normal" be either Garamond or Georgia font, 11pt. I single space my work leaving a 3pt. space after each paragraph, and include first line indentation. You can set up Normal to be whatever you'd like, but once you've set it up, before clicking okay from the "Modify Style" window, be sure to click the button at the bottom that says "New documents based on this template". That way whenever you open a new document, your style will be exactly the way you've just set it up. :-)
Yesterday, I mentioned the Hemingway app, but I didn't give you a link! Yikes! You definitely need the link because this is such a great program (and cheap! it only costs $10!! You can't beat that). http://www.hemingwayapp.com/
The app highlights long, complex sentences and common errors; if you see a yellow sentence, shorten or split it. If you see a red highlight, your sentence is so dense and complicated that your readers will get lost trying to follow its meandering, splitting logic — try editing this sentence to remov...
Have you all seen Anne R. Allen's blog on editing? It was really good with lots of good links to articles and websites about editing, although she left one out -- Hemingway. I love that program as a first-run through. It catches all my repetitions, adverbs and passive voice mistakes.
9 Ways Editors Can Make You Look Good…and 7 Ways They Can Make You Miserable by Ruth Harris As a former editor, I’m biased but, as a writer, I’ve learned that for me (and for just about every writer I know), editing is the most productive and transformative part of writing a book. Whether …
To start off this new group, I thought I'd ask whether you use templates? There are templates you can create in Word and in Jutoh (the program I use to format ebooks). I use them all the time because there's no reason for me to reinvent the wheel every time--no reason why I should format from scratch for every book I format. And this goes for just ordinary Word documents too. Everytime I create a new document I'm going to get everything just the way I like it.
So, do you use templates? Have you set up your documents to be just the way you like them?
Welcome to my new page! If you have any questions about self-publishing or formatting this is the easiest place to ask them. I'll be checking in nearly every day (might take weekends off, we'll see) to answer your questions and/or post useful hints. Thanks for joining in!
Click the sign-up button to add your name to my self-publishing class mailing list. I'll email you when I'll next be teaching!
Anessa Books's cover photo
Anessa Books's cover photo
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Here's the promised video! I'll post written directions as well.
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