Formatting and Proofing
Everyone has their own process for writing a novel. This is mine, based on research, on advice from authors, agents, editors, and designers, and on experimentation and experience. Much of it applies (often on a smaller scale) to producing and publishing short stories, poetry, magazine articles, and non-fiction books.
This blog covers formatting and proofing. It builds on the previous process blogs. I outsource the formatting because I want my books to be the same quality as those from big publishing houses, so this is not a tutorial on formatting. I have one designer who handles all my interior design, formatting, and cover designs.
With the first couple of books, the illustrator sent images in arbitrary aspect ratios (height/width). Some images were tall and narrow, some were close to square, some were wide and short. This made life difficult for my designer, and required custom first pages of each chapter. This adds time and cost to the project. For the third book, the designer strongly recommended a standard size and aspect ratio. Most of the images fit that. For the fourth book, we tweaked that a bit so the illustrator felt she could use it for all images. In the process, we also made image area above the chapter title slightly taller than the previous default.
Once the editing process is through, I send the source file to the designer. I send both an ODT (LibreOffice) file and a DOCX (MS Word) file. The artist makes the final illustrations available (we have used both Google Drive and Dropbox). While the designer is doing her magic on the main body, I finalize the front matter and back matter, run them by the editor, and send those to the designer.
When the designer is finished, she sends me a proof copy in PDF form. We check it for several things.
Are all the pieces there?
Is the overall formatting correct?
Are all instance of italics correct, since these don't always transfer properly into In:Design?
If necessary, I send a list of corrections (e.g., page 72, third full para, new para after "the ground.") We repeat the process until everyone is happy.
By now, she has sent me the final proof of the cover as well. We look at several aspects.
Is the overall appearance what we wanted?
Are all the elements (such as the 9 realms Press logo) there?
Is the content complete and correct? (This includes the ISBN.[1][2])
Once we are happy with both the cover and the interior, we can drop the files into our preferred publishing platform web pages and produce books!
At this point I also send the PDF and source file to my ebook designer. Adding images into the mix makes this too tricky to just dump into Calibre and hope for the best (you won't get it). He sends a proof, we verify, resubmit if necessary, etc. I had a difficult time finding a really good ebook designer who wanted to work on my books and charged reasonable prices, but I found one.
There will be at least one more blog showing a typical timeline for one of my books. I'll review the process blogs, and if I've left anything out (or anyone has questions before that), I'll add an extra process blog on those issues.
So... questions?
Pro tip: If you use a scene separator GIF, make a separate copy for the ebooks. Cut the black levels of the drawing to 50% and make the background transparent. That way it looks great and blends in whether ereaders are in day or night mode.
NOTES [1] I purchase my own ISBNs. If you are only going to sell on Amazon, you can just use one of theirs. If you buy your own, it's much more cost-effective to buy in bulk if you'll use them all. I have bought two batches of ten so far. You'll need a different ISBN for hardback and paperback, if you produce both. ISBNs are optional for ebooks. research all of this before you decide. [2] My designer generates the ISBN bar codes and places them correctly on the cover image.
Image: Rube Goldberg device, public domain. Copyright 2019 Miles O'Neal, Round Rock, TX. All rights reserved.