Category: Blog Posts

Using Word Headings and calibre to Format ebooks

I see discussion on the writers loops about formatting ebooks, so I thought I’d put in my two cents. Here’s how I format my  ebooks using the free program calibre. And, by the way, I’ll be using a PC and Word throughout.

I am not particularly tech savvy, and this was one of the easiest things I  had to learn.You can give it a try at no cost and preview the results on your kindle or the calibre ebook viewer.

I do a straightforward ebook, with consistent chapter headings but no flourishes. When I’m reading, I find fancy chapter headings distracting once I’m into the book. You could probably figure out how to make your ebooks fancier in calibre too, but I have never bothered. I do put a page with images of my other books and links in the back, though.

This post is in two parts: Headings, and calibre.

Using Headings

Headings are a Word function that many ebook formatting programs use to identify chapters. It is also a useful editing tool while working on picture of an open word documentyour manuscript (ms). The first thing to do is to open the Navigation Pane in your document, (the column on the left in this image. Called Document Map in older versions of Word and, confusingly, is still called that if you try to Customize the Ribbon, as I have done here.)

If your open window does not show the Navigation Pane like this, go to the VIEW tab and click on Navigation Pane. This also opens your search/Find bar. I use the navigation Pane to jump between sections of my document and, with headings and subheadings, it makes an outline of the story as I go.

To set up your manuscript in Word with Headings, go to Headings in the HOME tab, usually on the far right.

headings
Find Headings in the HOME tab

The body of your ms will show as Normal. If you want to setup a chapter heading or Part One, Part Two type of division (as I’ve done here using the days of the week) and chapters as sub-divisions, you can do that in headings.

  • in my case I highlighted, “Saturday, Day 1”, at the beginning of my ms, clicked on Heading 1, and my highlighted words showed up in the Navigating Pane
  • then I highlighted “Chapter 1”, clicked on Heading  2, and Chapter 1 showed up as a sub-heading. I always put chapters as Heading 2. 
  • when I’m working on a ms, I also label the scenes and call them Heading 3 (Rocky apologizes.) for my Nav. Pane outline.

I also put word counts in the headings, and often label structural points, “End of Act 1”, “Mid-point”, etc., as Heading 1. You can add anything you want to keep track of or find again to the Headings. You end up with a brief outline in the Navigating Pane, and as a bonus, you can drag headings around in the Nav. Pane and the whole section moves within the document but your can’t copy the Navigation Pane to use as an freestanding outline.

When I’m ready to format the ms as a book, I save the document with a different name and, in the new ebook version, take out all of these headings notes-to -self and scene headings and just leaving the headings as I want them to appear in the book. Chapter One, etc.

To reformat the look of the headings, change one to how you want them all to look, font, size, bold, italics centered, whatever. Then highlight it and go to that heading tab, right click, and click Update Heading 2 to Match Selection. All parts set in Heading 2 (all chapter headings)  should change to match.

Using Calibre

calibre icon on my desktop
calibre icon on my desktop
  • Download calibre, install on desktop and open.
  • click Add books (top left, red icon)

    calibre open on my desktop
    calibre open on my desktop
  • click on ms file you want to format and it appears in the blue line at the top of your list.
  • Click Convert books and open this panel.
  • set Output format to MOBI for kindle or EPUB for everything else.convert-books
  • I fill in title, author, author sort, publisher, tags, series, and book #, and up load my cover image.
  • DO NOT CLICK OK AT THIS POINT
  • I click on Look & Feel in the left menu, it opens to the Font tab. Choose a font
  • click on the Text tab, click on Justify
  • click on Layout, Insert blank line between paragaphs, change  Line size: to  0.2 em I find this a pleasant spacing to read,
  • go to the left hand menu and click on Table of Contents and click on Force use of auto-generated Table of Contents. This is where your Headings will be picked up on calibre (and other programs) to make your Table of Contents.
  • NOW CLICK OK AND CALIBRE WILL FORMAT YOUR EBOOK AND MAKE A NEW FILE CALLED “CALIBRE” ON YOUR COMPUTER TO STORE YOUR EBOOK FILES .
  • At this point you can go back and change the Output format and it will have saved all your settings and format the new ebook. If you change the output format before clicking OK you will lose all your settings and have to start from square one.
  • If you saved a MOBI file, you can email it to your kindle. Find your kindle’s email address in the settings of your device. This way you can see exactly what your readers will see when you upload your file to their kindle. For EPUB files, I open them on Calibre’s e-book viewer by double clicking on the name in the blue line.

Piece o’ cake! Any questions, I’d be happy to try to answer them, but this is really all I  know. Works for me.

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Making a Permanent Family Album

Our family has acquired thousands of photographs over the past 100 years. Some are in albums, some are on disks, some are in permanent (dead) digital storage. If you are wondering how to get control of your photos, I’m here to help you turn those overwhelming and often under viewed photographs into a beautiful album you can share with your family.

My fear is that at some time in the future, one of my children, or their children,

are going to look at those boxes of slides and photographs and throw them in the garbage.

Or in the case of digital photos, of which I have thousands, push delete.

But a printed, annotated book? I bet they’ll not only keep it but cherish it.

I use Shutterfly to make  gorgeous hard cover albums using the company’s online system. It allows you to upload your photographs and create the book right online using their easy program, which includes a variety of templates and page backgrounds. Then you can print in in a variety of sizes, and invite other family members to view the book online and print their own copy. Over many books, I have always been very happy with the results and the quality.

My daughter Rosey and I made an album together (we also designed my covers together) to commemorate the sale of the cottage that had been in the family for 50 years. We pulled together slides,  prints, color and black and white, as well as pictures that had been printed on alayout2 printer and pinned to the cabin wall for many years. Oh yes, and video stills. But despite the wide variety of qualities and color casts, the result was amazingly homogeneous. That’s why I trust Shutterfly. And since my husband’s 4 grown brothers and sisters and their children had all grown up at the cottage, they were each able to download as many books as they wanted for their families straight from Shutterfly without our having to be awkwardly in the middle.

As I’ve been working on this ongoing family photo project (I have a lot of photographs and have divided it into a number of books), so many people have said to me, “I have so many pictures, too. I’d love to do something like that.”

So I decided to share the process.

If you have another company you trust, by all means follow along and use them. I have no stake in Shutterfly, but it’s the company I use so it’s the company I’ll use in this series of posts.

So, let’s get started.

Step One: Your assignment this week is to pick a topic for your book, gather up all of the related photographs, either digital, slides or prints, and start looking through them.

layout3If you are considering going back to your childhood or, like me–horrors!–your parent’s childhood, contact other family members who might be hording boxes of pictures too. But I warn you that this is an overwhelming task. You would probably be wise to set some parameters and start with your immediate family, or a trip you’ve recently taken (another of my favourite book topics and much easier to make!) Then once you’ve made one and got the process down, branch out to other trips or more extended-family albums. As a photographer, I’m asked to make wedding books too, which is a lot of fun.

So are you with me? Just pick a topic for your book, gather the photos, and start sorting.

What kind of photo collection do you have? Just a few, or have you, like me, ended up with the bulk of the family photographs?

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Posting Reviews & My Review of The Matchmaker of Minnow Bay

I WANT TO THANK MY READERS WHO ARE POSTING REVIEWS OF THE FORTUNE BAY BOOKS.

IT MEANS SO MUCH TO ME – AND IT’S WORKING! 

Reviews are what make the wheels of online retailers turn. (That’s Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, Kobo and the iTunes store.)

I was THRILLED a few days ago when a friend sent me this Amazon promotion she received in her inbox. The first three books on the list were my first three Fortune Bay books! (The Good Neighbor was there too when you scrolled down.)

A real red letter day to me and I owe it all to you!

About the in=mportance of reviews for authors.

I harp on the importance of reviews to my readers, reminding them it doesn’t have to be a long review. A few words is enough.

Strangely, though, I notice that Amazon calls my one 3 star review (all the rest are 4 & 5 star) a “negative” review, although the reviewer has nothing but good things to say about the book?!? Bearing that in mind, I only post reviews on books to which I would give 4 or 5 stars.

Occasionally I give Advanced Readers Copies to readers, hoping for a good review to get things rolling on launch day. It’s a common practice in the publishing world.

Amazon’s policy on reviews for ARCs is that “Book authors and publishers may continue to provide free or discounted copies of their books to readers, as long as the author or publisher does not require a review in exchange or attempt to influence the review.” (From Amazon’s Guidelines for Reviews)  The other online retailers follow similar guidelines.

To post an Amazon review,  “you must have spent at least $50 on Amazon.com using a valid credit or debit card.” For most of us, that’s a given. LOL

To review any of the Fortune Bay books, just click on the covers in the sidebar,go to the retailer of your choice and post. It’s easy. On the book’s home page, scroll down to the reviews section, or just click on the “customer reviews” link under the title.

Today I am following my own advice and posting a review  on Amazon. (You don’t need to say this much. Just write what you’d tell a friend about the book.)

The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay, by Kelly Harms

I discovered this book on my kindle as a sample and was so glad I did. It didn’t begin like a romance and it took me a while to decide that’s what it was, but I like it all the better for not being formulaic in its approach.

minnow-bay-coverIn the short prologue set ten years earlier than the rest of the book, we quickly discover that Lily is a painter, just finishing art school. In the story, Harms deftly weaves the story back and forth between the present and the events of that earlier period of Lily and her friend Renee’s life. Although they are still friends, they are living very different lives now: Renee as a lawyer, married with children, and Lily as a single struggling artist, still in the apartment  in Chicago where she moved right after art school.

Suddenly Lily’s life hits rock bottom. Evicted from her apartment, she turns to Renee and her  boyfriend/art dealer only to discover neither of them will help. She’s been ignoring her responsibilities in life for years, and it is all coming back to bite her. Discovering that she might still be married to a man she met briefly on an  ill-fated trip to Vegas 10 years ago is the last straw, and sends her out in the dead of winter to the picturesque but almost Brigadoon-like village of Minnow Bay in the North Woods.

I loved this book and will definitely be looking up Kelly Harms’ other book, The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane.

 

Thanks for reading small town romance. Don’t forget to review the books you love.

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Gearing up for the Home for Christmas Facebook Launch party

You could win a signed set of the Fortune Bay books at the online launch of Home for Christmas, the third book in the Fortune Bay Series. The Facebook Launch is November 1 – just  a week away! I’m celebrating getting the last of these four books out in eBook and trade paperback formats to online booksellers.

But I’m also celebrating my new readers and hope the facebook party will be a chance to get to know you and have you get to know me a bit better.

It’s just one hour, 1 – 2 pm Pacific time (10 – 11 am Eastern) Tuesday November 1, but I realize not everyone is free for an hour mid-day, mid-week. That’s why I’m planning three ways you can get in on the giveaways:
  1. Come for the whole party! Grab a coffee or tea – or a glass of wine, I won’t judge. I’m planning a quiz for people who have read the prequel, Lake of Dreams, (still e-free on online platforms for a limited time longer! See links in the sidebar), a “who would  you pick to play [insert your favourite character’s name] in the movie” game (I can dream!) and more.
  2. Or just drop in for a few minutes. I’ll be giving away a free eBook every five minutes!
  3. I’m also running an all day contest of a signed set of all 4 beautiful trade paperback books.Just check in at the launch party page any time on November 1, or at my website, to find the entry to win a signed set of books. Perfect to share with your friends.

Let me know if you think you can make it, by clicking HERE.

One Year – Four Books. Don’t try this at home.

 I did it!

I am thrilled to announce that I have finished the third full length book in my Fortune Bay Series,

Home for Christmas, coming out November 1st (on Amazon, kobo, nook and iTunes.)

I told a good friend today that I was finished the fourth book – and  my one year plan to publish four novels would be on track and

she said,”I think four books in one year is very prolific.”

I said, “I did not write the four books in one year!”

That took eight years, that’s from 0 to 300,000 printed words. (Now I write much faster than one book in two years, it was the first one that took much, much longer as I learned the craft.)

HFC COVER MED outln

But I have to wonder, what did people think I was doing for those 8 years if my good friends don’t realize I was writing (and learning to write) these books? LOL

I was always quite bold about telling people that I was writing a novel because that’s what I was doing and I thought that telling people was a good way to keep myself accountable.

It worked for me, but it obviously did not sink in for some of them, because that is not the first person who totally didn’t understand.

Looking back in my notes  today as I finish the editing on book four, I see it was October 19, 2015 that I announced on my (now defunct) old blog my plan to publish the 4 books, so I’m pleased to be on target for my one year plan. (I originally planned to publish Home for Christmas Mid-October but a few months ago decided to change it to November 1, but close enough.)

Anyway I’m just here to say – I did it!

In another post I might ruminate on what I learned in the process, but tonight, just join me in celebrating with a facebook-emoticon-holding-glass-of-red-wineglass of wine.

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers,

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