My Latest Thoughts on Formatting for Self-Publishing

       Before I return to the serious side of life and continue my discussion of the Mythmaker philosophy, I thought I would comment on the system I've worked out for formatting later volumes of "The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head."  I don't know whether anybody will find it useful, but people do seem interested in how-to-do-it material.

       In my post on my other blog "So What's New with v.2 of 'Labors'?" I discussed the new title I've settled on for v.2 ("The Storm-Wing") and mentioned I was in the process of doing some revision on the text.  I'll have to go through this same process with each of the remaining five volumes, so I'm beginning to fall into a routine.

       I set up what I call the "Master Copy."  (I'll remind everybody that I use Word.)  When I divided the original v.2 into two parts, it effectively messed up the formatting.  Word never seems to carry styles over between documents.   I don't know what other people do, but I've always composed using a style called Body Text or Body Text Indent that I've engineered to fit my requirements of paragraph indention, spacing, etc.  This will work OK when you are formatting for print (PDF doesn't seem to care what styles you use), but it won't work for Smashwords (not sure about Kindle).  So the best thing to do is simply Select All and convert the entire document to Normal style right at the beginning.  Basing the whole thing on Normal will work for all formats and it's what Smashwords requires.

      Once you're in Normal, all formatting disappears, even centering, bold type, paragraphing -- everything except the ToC, where the field links to the chapter headings remain (which is nice -- you can still easily navigate the document).  So you have to go through and reformat things like the title page, the chapter headings, the division breaks within chapters (by that I mean, the row of asterisks or whatever you use to break up your chapters).  All that is easily done as you make your final revision and proofing of the text.

       The section breaks also will remain.  Keep those in the Master Copy -- again, for ease of navigation.  Remove any headers or page numbers.  When you do the CreateSpace template, those will have to be inserted in that format; it will be entirely different from what you do in your basic document.

       Base everything you do on the Master Copy.  If, for example, you change some text when you're fitting the document into your CreateSpace template, be sure to make the change in the Master Copy.  That way when you're ready to do Kindle and Smashwords, you'll know you have exactly the same text you used for print.

       Add all the back-of-the-t.p. material to the Master, but don't worry too much about form, since each version will have some differences.  Same with the end matter; write in whatever you want for the print version, and be prepared to adapt it for the e-books.

       Don't mess with the ToC form.  It won't look right in Normal style, but it's still usable; besides,  for the print version it will have to be done over by hand, and it will have to be completely reworked and relinked using bookmarks and hyperlinks for the e-book versions.

      You'll have to reformat all your paragraphing.  I do the chapters one at a time.  I set up the chapter headings, then select the entire chapter text, right-click, click on Paragraph, and then set up the Indents and Spacing the way I want it.  Be sure to remove any paragraph indentions on centered material like chapter headings, title page materials, division breaks, etc., or they'll be off-center.  I use 0.3 indention and single space, and left justification.  There is no point in justifying the Master Document because it doesn't work for e-books; and in the CS template, as I recall, it justifies itself when you copy the text in. 
       I also take Widow and Orphan control off for the entire document.  That way I don't have to remember to remove it when I set up the print template.  That is done in the paragraph formatting box by clicking on the Line and Page Break tab, then unchecking Widow and Orphan Control.

       Do not activate Automatic Hyphenation for the Master Copy.  That's only needed when you put the material into the print template; you don't want it in the e-books because you'll get weird hyphenated words in the middles of lines.  Because line lengths aren't set, there is no way you can divide words at the ends of lines in e-books.

       Use a basic type face like TNR and 12-point type for the Master Copy.  Or you could change it to 11-point if that's what you want for your print copy.  I prefer to use 12-point because that's what I'll want for the e-books.  But be careful when you're doing the print template; if you change the text in the template and copy it over to the Master, you'll get a mix of type sizes; and vice versa -- if you copy a change from the Master into the template, it will remain 12-point.  I had that problem with v.1 of "Labors" and had to check type sizes carefully throughout both documents before I was finished.  I found a way to do that using the Find and Replace feature.  You can search for type-size and simply replace all instances of the wrong size with the right size.

       On the t.p. I type "This is the Master Copy" and highlight it in blue, so I won't get it mixed up with any other draft.  As for the document title, what I do is simply leave it short.  For example, v.2 is titled, "MS - Ki'shto'ba Tales - v.2, Storm-Wing."  When I do the different versions, I add to that basic title terms like:
"Createspace Template"
"CreateSpace Template - PDF"
"Kindle"
"Kindle HTML"
"Smashwords"
as appropriate.  Thus, everything remains grouped together in the Documents List, with the Master Copy title at the top.

       When you're ready to do the Kindle version, make a copy of your Master (don't make changes in the master itself, or you'll lose all your work).  Then replace all the section breaks with page breaks (Kindle wants page breaks between chapters).  When you do the Smashwords, make a copy of your Master and remove all section and page breaks (Smashwords doesn't want any breaks at all except paragraph returns, and not an excessive amount of those). 
       Kindle won't take hanging indention, but it will take a combination of indented lines and unindented lines (block paragraphs) and I believe it will take built-in before-and-after spacing on paragraphs.  However, Smashwords won't; they insist on nothing but centered text and indented paragraphs (no mix of block and indented paragraphs is allowed).  Smashwords also won't take built-in before-and-after spacing on paragraphs -- the meat grinder will kick it back at you if you leave some of that in.  If you stick to only centered material, indented paragraphs, and line spacing using only paragraph returns, you're safe in all e-books.  Be sure to activate the paragraph marks so you can see exactly what you've got, because those rules have to be applied to blank lines as well, and it will also enable you to make sure you've taken out the section breaks.  That's important to remember, especially with Smashwords.

 

       This post is kind of a nit-picky mess, but maybe some of you will find some useful information in it.  I hope so!  Comment with any questions you might have!

      

 

Use of Unicode in Kindle Formatting Is Incomplete!

       Writing this post has certainly clarified my own thinking.  I hope it’s helpful for other people.
       By now most of the people reading this post probably know about my problems with using Wingdings symbols from the Symbols drop-down menu of Word Documents.  I used them as link signs in my Shshi conlang and also used a couple of them in !Ka<tá, my Bird language.  I picked them out in blissful ignorance solely because I liked the way they looked.  They work fine in a Word document and they copy fine to PDF, so they will show perfectly in a printed book.  Any of you who wants to see my languages the way I intended them to look will have to get a copy of the paperback.
       Putting the book in Kindle is another matter, however.  An expert in Unicode gave me a lot of much appreciated advice, helping me discover the Character Map in Word.  This can be found at Start/Programs/Accessories/SystemsTools/Character Map.  All the characters listed there in the font Arial Unicode MS should show both in internet postings (as on this blog) and (I hoped) in Kindle.  However, Wingdings aren’t Unicode at all, so I decided to substitute similar characters that are Unicode, as follows:
↳  U+21B3
↻ U+21BB
⇄ U+21C4
⇅ U+21C5
⇞  U+21DE
       It seemed to work with blog postings (see my sample Chapter 12 on the present blog, where the symbols should show correctly on all operating systems).  So I prepared a sample post for uploading to Kindle.
       Previously I had done a sample upload using the Wingdings.  When you do an upload, you can preview it on a mobi. format (in my case it goes to the MobiPocket Reader), and then you can move it into your Kindle.  In my original upload, the Wingdings showed only as the corresponding alphanumeric characters.  In the sample using the Unicode substitutions, the only character that showed was ↳(U+21B3).  The others all showed as little squares with question marks in them, or in one single case, just a really tiny empty square.
       Awhile back I asked Kindle about the Wingdings problem and they replied by sending me a PDF copy of the “Kindle Publishing Guidelines.”  At the end is a list of the Unicode symbols that they accept.  So this morning I did some comparison.  Kindle lists the symbols sorted by the Unicode number, just as the Character Map does.  And of the ones I wanted to use, only ↳ (U+21B3) is present. 
       Just for curiosity’s sake, I also tested out the Symbols drop-down menu (using Arial Unicode MS [Unicode (hex)]), as well as the Font drop-down menu (Arial Unicode MS).  Both of these got exactly the same result – nothing showed in Kindle except ↳.  But it’s interesting to learn that these two methods seemed to produce Unicode characters.  I haven’t tested yet whether they would work with web postings on all operating systems.
       !Ka<tá also uses two arrow symbols (↗↘2197 & 2198) that don’t appear in the “Kindle Publishing Guide,” but since these don’t happen to be used in “The Termite Queen,” I’m ignoring them for the moment.
       I have not tested any of this on Smashwords, but they told me they can’t take “symbols”; they will show as question marks.  I don’t know if that includes Unicode.  I’ll probably test it out someday when I have time.
       So I would suggest that when anybody is constructing a language, if you want to publish it on Kindle, get a copy of the “Kindle Publishing Guidelines,” be sure you’re familiar with Unicode, and pick only symbols that are in the guidelines.
       The best alternative would be if Kindle decided to include all Unicode characters in its font.  And I would really like to see the various Wingdings character sets given Unicode designations.
       So whenever I’m able to publish “The Termite Queen” on Kindle, I’m going to use the method outlined on the 2/18/12 post on the termitespeaker blog entitled “I Think I’ve Solved the Wingdings Problem.”  I’ll substitute superscript syllables for the link symbols and explain what I’m doing in a prefatory Author’s Note.  (As for what’s holding up the Kindle publication, the permission to publish Robert Graves quotations in e-book format is still up in the air, but that’s off the point of this post.)