The Distant [Update 3] Expanding to a Trilogy

As I've been working on the third draft of my next book, The Distant, I've been thinking more about the setting I had created, and the fact that the ending would leave some things unresolved.  This was intentional on my part, since in reality most things don't have a fairytale ending or everything wrapped up nice and neat with a bow on top, and I wanted to leave it open-ended (yet satisfying) in case I wanted to do a sequel of sorts.  The more I thought of it, the more I realized I wanted to tell the rest of that story.  So I've decided I will expand this into a trilogy.

I've had ideas regarding this for many years now, but I could not figure out how to connect the dots between the different parts of the story that I want to tell.  During the last month I figured it out, and created outlines for the other two books in the trilogy.  Right now I'm calling the trilogy Of Houlves and Humans, though that might change.

Planning for a Series

What this means for The Distant - which will be Book 1, obviously, and keep the same title - is that I have to make sure the book makes sense within the rest of the work.  There are little things here and there, details that will make sense later, that I have to flesh out.  I'm doing some of that now in the third draft, going back over a few things and firming up the backstory and legends within the book, but I'll need to do more on the fourth draft.

Very little of the main story is changing from what I'd originally envisioned, all of the plot points are the same, I just need to do more edits to prepare for the later books.  One thing that bothers me about some series in movies or books, is when the author decides to continue things later and details aren't consistent, or a later book/movie contradicts an earlier one.

Avoiding Inconsistencies

A good example is with the original Star Wars.  Lucas had a series in mind from the start, but he could only make one movie, and if it bombed, he'd have no chance of telling the next story.  So he created a good resolution, but still made it open-ended.  He took it a step further with the prequels vs. the original trilogy, which have a totally different feel and style to them (like the way Jedi fight).

Now, he's managed to explain most of those discrepancies, inconsistencies and plot holes cleverly (e.g. Luke only had Yoda to train him, so there's no way he'd learn how to fight like the Jedi in the days of the Republic - though in reality it was due to the fact that they were shot 30 years apart and he couldn't have imagined, or wasn't able to stage, fight scenes like that back then).  There are tons like that in Star Wars (just Google it), as well as numerous dialogue and backstory inconsistencies.  But I want to avoid all that.

Sometimes it can't be helped, particularly in film.  You might not be able to do the next part of the story for a number of years.  But in fiction writing, you can keep the same feel and style twenty years later.  A book is still words on a page.  Your imagination might change, and your writing skills may have improved, but as long as you stick to the "style of the world" you're writing in and pay attention to how you write, it can read as if it's all from the same session of writing.  That's my goal.

Draft Update

So, currently I'm at page 250 of 348 in the third draft.  Should hopefully be finished by next month.  I had to rewrite some sections and wrote a new one, and currently the word count stands at 194K.  I want to keep it under 200K for sure, and perhaps try to trim it down to 180K before all is said and done.

We'll see... part of the reason I like self-publishing my work is that I don't have to modify the work to meet some criteria like publishing or contract requirements.  It will be as long as it needs to be to tell the story - but I'm still well aware that longer does not mean better, so my intent is to make it concise, without sacrificing the story or trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.

The Distant [Update 2] Remembering & AutoHotkey

I'm still chugging along on the third draft of The Distant, my next novel.  I'm on page 124 out of a current 323 (these are MS Word pages, single spaced).  So close to 40% complete after two months of editing.

Last month I discussed a bit of the work's history and how it had changed over each draft.  Revising the third draft has been challenging as I'm going through it with a fine-tooth comb, essentially doing a line edit and really paying attention to a lot of little things that I had never paid attention to before.

Things to Remember

Because this was initially written many years ago and has gone through a few iterations, and because it's a bit longer than previous works, details about characters or places tend to easily get confused or overlooked.  Especially if you're the only one doing the editing (I have not decided yet whether to have someone else do an edit later).  What I've been doing here that I have not done before, is maintain a separate text file that notes all the things I have to remember.

This file helps now, but it will be even more helpful during the next draft, because then I'll have a comprehensive list of everything I need to pay attention to and make sure are consistent and accurate.  Examples include what characters look like, what injuries they have, their mannerisms, etc.

There are prose-specific things I need to pay attention to as well, like the fact that Clearmen (people from Orland's Clear, one of the cities in the novel) don't use contractions in speech, aside from possessive contractions (like it's, John's, etc).  I'm deliberately doing this to give their speech an "Old World" and measured quality.  Though it's debatable whether English-speaking people in previous centuries used contractions less in their speech compared to those of today - and there's an interesting post on StackExchange about it, that I recommend checking out - though it's debatable, that's not the point.  I'm merely trying to distinguish the speech of two different people and this serves the purpose well-enough.  But it's something I have to really pay attention to, as it affects the cadence of the prose.

AutoHotkey

Which brings me to the other half of this update.  I have some other text files on various topics that I find it useful to refer to at any time while writing.  But it's a pain to open everything and arrange them just so on the screen.  I have a widescreen monitor and use 1600x900 resolution, so I have plenty of room, but hate having to manually set everything up.

Then I thought, surely there's some application I can use to create macros for Windows tasks and automate this?  Not having a need for this before, I had no idea what was best to use.  In the end I settled on AutoHotkey, which is free and does pretty much everything - you just have to learn how to create the scripts that automate commands.  With robust documentation and a very active forum, and lots of examples all over the internet, it's easy to learn and troubleshoot.

Automating My Setup

This program is pretty awesome.  It took me a little bit of reading, but eventually I created a script that upon pressing a key combination, will immediately open and resize each of my ancillary text files, as well as my main third draft Word document, then place them in specific places on the desktop.  In the end it takes just a few seconds to run and here's what the layout looks like:

In addition to my main Word document, I have files for:

   Things to Remember
   Event Timeline
   Book of Orland (a holy text that I need to further expand and reference)
   Houlf Pidgin (words in the houlf "language")
   Loose Ends (anything I may eventually need to resolve/clarify)

It's so much easier to start working on the novel with this setup.  And then when I'm done, I have a second key combination that immediately closes everything.

AutoHotkey Scripts

The nice thing about AutoHotkey is that though you can only have one script running, you can put multiple macros in that script.  So in my TheDistant script, as mentioned earlier, I have a macro for opening/placement of all files, and a macro for closing everything.

You can just place the script as a shortcut on your desktop.  When you're ready to use it, double-click it like anything else and it will start running in the background (an icon will show up in the notification area of your taskbar).  Then you can use the key combinations for your macros whenever.

At first I wasn't sure how to figure out the exact position and size of each window on the desktop so that I could use it in the script code.  Then I discovered a handy tool called Window Spy that comes with the AutoHotkey installation.  This tool tells you all the relevant stats for any active window. 

From this you can see in the Active Window Position all the info I need.  Plug those numbers into a WinMove command in AutoHotkey and blammo!  Everything in it's proper place.  For each file I used a Run, Sleep and WinMove command list.  Sleep is needed because if the file isn't actually open when it gets to WinMove, the WinMove has nothing to run on and is essentially skipped (it took me about 15 minutes of troubleshooting and forum searching to figure this out).  So don't forget the Sleep command!

Here's my opening script:

This is a great tool if you need to automate repetitive tasks on your computer.  The scripts can be daunting at first, but if you are familiar with any kind of programming language it will only take minutes to figure it out.   You can essentially do anything with this application that you can do with a mouse and keyboard.  I can already think of some other things I can use this for... why I never thought to look for something like this earlier is beyond me.

The Distant [Update 1] Third Draft

If you've glanced at this site, you might know that I have previously released two eBooks, Bonebearer and Practicing.  If you've actually followed this site and explored it a little bit, you might know that I'm currently working on another novel, called The Distant.  I figured I might post some updates on the progress of this work every once in a while to maybe generate some interest and share some writing observations.

First Draft

The first draft of this novel was written between 2003 and 2009.  It grew out of a short story called "Born of the Forest, Dying With You," which I included in my short story anthology Practicing.  Once I got an idea of how to expand the story, I did a fairly detailed outline and wrote many pages of notes and some backstory.  Then I started writing.

Writing for me is a strange process.  Sometimes I get really involved and churn out a lot in a short time.  Other times I have to struggle to meet a target or to get things going, and in those cases I usually take breaks.  In the case of this novel, I ended up taking some long breaks due to a variety of reasons.  Suffice to say, it was written in chunks, and I veered quite a bit from the original outline.

I've read about how some writers have detailed outlines and adhere strictly to that, keeping tight rein on the characters and never letting the plot stray.  I have a lot of trouble doing that, mainly because I can't help but come up with better ideas as I'm actually writing and I can't help but incorporate them in.  Sometimes the characters tell me what to do, so I start taking the plot in a different direction, go back and fix earlier things on occasion, and usually end up in a way that doesn't mesh with how I started.  I then have to again rework earlier parts to make it all fit together, or cut things entirely.

Second Draft

That is what happened with this novel.  I went where the Muse took me and damn the outline.  Once I finally read through the complete first draft, I realized it needed a lot of work.  I let it simmer for almost two years before revising to a second draft in 2011.  I cut a huge section in the middle that was weak and really pointless in the grand scheme of things, 55K words total (out of the first draft's 231K), and intercut the narrative between past and present scenes (the first draft was chronological).

This new draft works much better in my opinion, as it gets to the meat of the story quicker and backstory is related in smaller chapters as needed.  In the original version the first half of the novel is backstory and setup, and when you get to the major turning point, it seems awkward and almost like an entirely different novel.  So mixing the two highlights both aspects of the work, without boring the reader with a clunky first half.

Third Draft

Last month, I started working on the third draft.  I'm trying to average around 2K words edited per day, though I usually don't meet that.  Some sections need little editing, but others need to be revamped or rewritten to reflect its new place in the novel, and that takes longer.  For instance, by starting the second draft in what was originally the middle of the first draft, I now have to introduce characters and explain concepts there, when in the first draft that had already occurred.  I have to do a little jumping back and forth while editing to keep everything consistent.

Overall, this is hardly the best way to write a novel, but it's the route I took for this one.  It's a learning experience, and something like this can only help improve my writing and editing skills.  I'm expanding some sections and will probably end up with a final word count of around 200K.  And there will definitely be a fourth draft, I can guarantee that.

eBook Publication - Practicing

I've released a new book, called Practicing.  This is a collection of short stories, representing my early "serious" fiction work and showcasing a lot of different ideas and styles as I "practiced" at writing.  I've made this collection FREE, so you have nothing to lose in trying it out.  If you like this work, you will of course like my other novel.  I cannot post eBooks on Amazon or B&N for free (without manipulating the price-matching system, which is more trouble than it's worth), so I'm posting it as a download here.  Get it in your preferred format on the Novels page.

Here is part of the Foreword, if you are curious.

In this collection, I preface each story with a little history, a bit about what I was doing then, what I was thinking when I wrote it, etc. They are not necessary to enjoy or understand each story, so you can skip them if you like, but since this collection is somewhat of a retrospective of how I learned to be a better writer—my practice if you will—it seemed appropriate to give some background and context for each one. 

You will notice that there are a number of occult-style stories, at least in the non-traditional sense. I was fascinated with vampires and occult at the time as I read a lot of Anne Rice and Clive Barker during that period, and I was attempting to come up with some unique takes on vampires, werewolves, witches, that sort of thing. Some are a bit off the wall, but I was young and experimenting.

Most all have some sort of double meaning to them, or a second underlying theme that plays off the title. I'm a big fan of early M. Night Shyamalan films (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Village), and I tried to use some of the same techniques in my stories that he did in those films—namely hidden and layered meanings for extra depth or taking a mundane or inconsequential event and turning it into something profound and very meaningful for a specific person.

Other stories are just my attempt at trying something completely different on purpose and hoping they worked. I think most of them do, and I hope you find this collection entertaining and worth the read. In the end, it's interesting to myself to go back and read all these stories and wonder what the hell I was thinking when I wrote them.

So check it out - it's free.  If you like it, also check out Bonebearer and kindly spread the word.  Thanks.

The Wheel of Time [9] Winter's Heart (2000)

We continue the "Wandering Trilogy" with Winter's Heart, another short volume that required another two year wait. This is when it really became evident that the pace of the series had slowed considerably. It wasn't a one-off anymore; it was a trend. Re-reading now, it's a decent book, but back in the day it was frustrating, despite having one of the iconic scenes of the series.

More on that later. First, a digression about the new medium of book publishing. eBooks.

Before you continue:

• This is part 9 of my The Wheel of Time retrospective
• See this blog post for an overview of the retrospective
• These blogs are most effective with your own re-read of the series
• Warning: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE SERIES

The Prologue eBook

Winter's Heart started something new in publishing. Given that the previous book was the first #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list of the series, anticipation for the next installment was high. To capitalize on that and build even more buzz, they offered the prologue for Winter's Heart, entitled "Snow," in an eBook format for $5 a few months before the book dropped.

Now, eBooks barely existed back in 2000. And I certainly did not want to spend $5 for it, even though the prologues from this point on are around 90 pages on average. A few bucks more could get you an entire paperback book six times that length. It also felt like they were starting to milk the series and make as much money off it as they could. Obviously there are marketing reasons behind all this and it is a business after all... but to a 24 year old still naïve about some things in the world, it was hard not to think that way when the books are suddenly shorter, take longer to release, are slower in plot and are now #1 bestsellers. I'm just saying.

But really, the primary reason I didn't bother with the prologue eBook (or any others in the future), was that I wanted to read the entire book at once. I didn't want to read part and then wait a few months in between. It's like when you hear the first single from your favorite band's new album, and listen to it incessantly, then when the album actually comes out you skip that song during the first few listens of the album because you've already heard it twenty times. The book was meant to be read whole in one shot, so that's what I wanted to do.

Reading eBooks

I would have only been able to read it on a computer at that point, anyway. I got my first computer of my very own in 1998, after finishing college (the only computer I "owned" before that was a Commodore 64 my parents had). It was a Compaq laptop with Windows 98. But I didn't use it to read eBooks. I didn't want to read books on my computer.

If I recall correctly, though, the only decent formats then were .pdf (Adobe), .pdb (Palm OS) and .prc (Mobipocket). You could also read them on a PDA. I did get a few eBooks a few years later, in 2002 / 2003, just before the next volume (Crossroads of Twilight) came out. I would get them in the PalmReader format, and I had this totally bitchin' Sony CLIÉ PDA on which to read them. I actually still have those eBooks on my previous PC hard drive, but they are worthless now, since they have DRM and it was tied to my account and credit card info on whatever ancient website I bought them at, which I don't remember. So I can't even view them now.
  

Only thing missing here was internet access.

Thoughts Then

Anyway, as I said before, another two years passed before this volume arrived. I was starting to get used to this; Winter's Heart was the third volume in a row that was released in a two-year interval. I realized that the days of a new novel every year were gone (sigh). There seemed no end in sight for the series, and I figured it might stretch on to 15 or 16 volumes. I definitely thought that after reading this one.

I still lived in Omaha when this book came out. I vaguely remember sitting in a mall food court and eating lunch while reading the prologue, awkwardly trying to hold hardcover open with one hand while eating with the other. I'm pretty sure it was the Westroads Mall, which was right by where I worked at the time.

I liked how the novel was themed around winter, since prior to Book 8 there wasn't much in the way of snow or winter. The early books spanned longer periods of time and things were so fast-paced that I didn't really pay attention to the seasons in the series that much. It had been summer for so long (due to the Dark One's touch on the world) and with the years between books I had forgotten about winter.

However. I did not like this book upon first read. I was very frustrated with the glacial pace. Where were all the cool things that had been prophesized or viewed, all the things Jordan had left hints about and had been building up to for 8 books? We're still not there yet?

No Preparatory Re-Read

Something worth mentioning is that this was the first time I didn't do a full re-read of the series prior to the new volume coming out. That had become a tradition for me starting with Book 6, Lord of Chaos, but with 9 and counting, a re-read every time became a bit much. It takes a long time to read these books.

As much as I love the story, there are other things I'd like to read, and I need breaks from it every once in a while. So I didn't do a full re-read for this one, I merely read the previous two to refresh my memory on recent events.

Thoughts Now

It's so much easier to like this book now, with the knowledge of events in later volumes. It still feels a bit short, and the Elayne chapters still make my eyes glaze over (I generally skim through them), but overall I enjoyed the book a bit more this time. I can now see why Jordan did what he did, though as I mentioned in the blog for The Path of Daggers, it's hard to see that when you first read it and don't know where things are going.

The book is slow in places, and personally I don't think that slow pace works as well when chapters are grouped in chunks by character, especially "one and done" groups of chapters (i.e. the character never appears again in the book). Take a step back and look at what's going on at a high level, compare it to any of the first 7 volumes, and you'll see a marked difference.

• 6 chapters = Perrin finds out Faile has been captured, he mopes around camp.
• 8 chapters = Elayne dickering around in Caemlyn, assassination attempt (though not really), a bunch of women glaring at each other (Sea Folk, Kin, Aes Sedai, Wise Ones), sex with Rand, bonding Rand, visiting the Borderland rulers in Braem Wood.
• 10 chapters = Mat loiters in Ebou Dar, thinks about leaving, finally leaves with a huge entourage of Important People.
• 8 chapters = Rand skulking around Far Madding, looks for renegade Asha'man to kill, finally leaves and cleanses the male half of the Source.

A visual breakdown can be seen here.

That's essentially it. There are a few important and memorable scenes, but for the most part the book moves bits and pieces of the main storyline along at a snail's pace. The Perrin and Elayne storylines barely advance in comparison to their length. The Rand and Mat storylines were satisfactory, in that they moved many pieces about, but I desperately wanted more during that first read-through.

And when grouped in chunks by character, some of the content loses its importance. Take the Perrin chapters. They are all at the beginning. He doesn't do much, and then he's done until the next book. I mentioned this earlier, it's a "one and done" type of structure. Jordan started doing this with A Crown of Swords. This is part of why I don't like these middle books (Wandering Trilogy) as much as the others, which mix up appearances throughout each book and make it feel more like everything is happening at once.

Crossroads of Twilight, the next book, does this too.  It really drags down the story, in my opinion.

Far Madding

One thing that has always bothered me about this book is Far Madding. Of course, we've known the city has existed, since it's marked on the map, but the characters have never gone there. It's briefly mentioned a few times, but nothing about what the city is like, aside from men are expected to obey women there (big surprise, women are more powerful in this world overall).

   

Is it me, or does the island look like the Starfleet emblem?

So I found it quite a shock to learn that people can't channel in Far Madding. They have some large ter'angreal in the middle of the city called a "guardian," that prevents men and women from channeling in the city, as well as detects channeling outside the exclusion zone. Rand goes here for one main reason: to escape the hazards of saidin. He's been having all sorts of problems with the Source – getting nauseous, having problems holding onto it, etc. Very convenient to suddenly have a completely new place that blocks channeling to go to.

I would guess that this caused confusion for many readers because we didn't know the city was like that. It seemed like this would be knowledge the characters would discuss earlier, mainly for the benefit of the reader.  Kind of like how Cadsuane is never mentioned until halfway through the series.  After 8 books, it seemed odd to throw in an entirely new element like this, especially when the city is smack in the middle of the map. At least to me. I mean, there are other places we don't go to until way later in the series – like Bandar Eban and Maradon in Books 12 and 13 – but those places don't have any special attributes like Far Madding does.

The Cleansing

This is one of the iconic scenes of the series, the cleansing of saidin. It's rather clever how Jordan pulled this off, since it's hard to fathom that anyone short of the Creator or the Dark One could cleanse the male half of the Source. But Rand made it work with all the tools that were essentially left to him from times long past.

Why else would the Choedan Kal have been created? They were never used before, from what I gather. Why else would Shadar Logoth have come into being? It seemed to be some random "evil thing" like Padan Fain, serving no real purpose but to be evil in The Eye of the World. And it helps that there's someone like Nynaeve now, one of the most powerful Aes Sedai in a long time, in terms of One Power strength (aside from the former damane Alivia, of course).

All the elements were there for a reason, and Rand figured out how to do it. I didn't exactly understand what happened the first time I read it, but later understood how the evils essentially "cancelled each other out."

Like Far Madding, I found it a bit jarring to suddenly go cleanse the Source. Yes, Rand mentions it a couple of times before that, but he didn't seem too urgent about it and after the ho-hum of most of the book, I wasn't expecting him to do it right then and there. But it makes sense when you think about it. The problems he was having with the Source, along with the number of Asha'man going mad, expedited his need to cleanse it.

Regarding the eBook cover, which shows Rand with the male access key for the Choedan Kal – this is probably my favorite depiction of Rand. That's generally how I've seen him in my mind, though with a bit longer hair. Would have been cool if the cover had shown him and Nynaeve facing each other while channeling, but this will do. Nynaeve was on the eBook cover for the last two volumes anyway.

Darrell K. Sweet: 1934-2011

I'm assuming if you're reading this blog entry, you've read all the entries before it. And if you've done that, you'll know that I haven't been kind to the cover art by Darrell K. Sweet. Unfortunately, Sweet died while I was reading this book, on December 5th. Instead of complaining about the cover for Winter's Heart this time, I'd like to talk about Sweet and his art. I recently noticed something about the art for the Wandering Trilogy (Books 8-10) that I hadn't noticed before, and it makes more sense to discuss that in the blog for Crossroads of Twilight.

I fully respect Sweet as an artist. He was a great painter; his talent is unquestioned. It was partly due to many of his fantasy covers that I got into fantasy in the first place. His covers for the Xanth novels (by Piers Anthony) and The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (by Stephen R. Donaldson) are classics and were very influential to me when I was younger. He also did the ones for L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s The Saga of Recluce, which I didn't get into until I was older, but which have become the face of the series.

I've always loved the Xanth ones the most, though. His style fit that world perfectly. It's going to be strange to not see his artwork on the new novels coming out in that series.

Here are some of my favorites:

Sweet and The Wheel of Time

The main reason I pick on his covers in these blogs so much, though, is because I didn't feel his style fit The Wheel of Time. He knows how to make an eye-catching cover – which is the point, they're trying to sell books – but I felt the series got short-shrift because of the inaccuracies of the covers. I just don't like his interpretation of Robert Jordan's world. When you paint Trollocs as regular humans with helmets, to me that shows a lack of respect for the source material – it's like he didn't even read the text, not even an excerpt. It's not a detail that's hard to miss.

What makes me sad the most, though, is that Sweet never finished the cover for the final upcoming book, A Memory of Light. Even though I didn't like the art he did for the series, he started it and should have finished it. According to Brandon Sanderson, Sweet created a concept, but not a finished painting. So who knows what will happen to the cover for this last one. I trust Tor and Harriet (Jordan's widow) will make the right decision. We'll find out next year.

Update, Feb 2012: Michael Whelan is painting the final cover.  Yeah!  Very happy about this.

The last book in this series is becoming even more bittersweet. Both the original author and cover artist have died. The ones Sanderson has been writing still felt the same as Jordan's partly due to the covers. Now the last one will be out of place.

Either way, thank you, Darrell K. Sweet, for all the fantasy artwork you've done over the years. I may not have liked what you did for The Wheel of Time, but they are undeniably an integral part of the series and now I can't imagine it without them.

Next:

Book 10 – Crossroads of Twilight

Previous:

Book 8 – The Path of Daggers
Book 7 – A Crown of Swords
Book 6 – Lord of Chaos
Book 5 – The Fires of Heaven
Book 4 – The Shadow Rising
Book 3 – The Dragon Reborn
Book 2 – The Great Hunt
Book 1 – The Eye of the World
Retrospective Overview

How to Easily Format an eBook [3] Convert / Verification

This is the 3rd post in my tutorial about formatting an eBook for Kindle or Nook. You can read the first post about overall text formatting here. You can read the second post about title pages and a table of contents here. This post deals with the final step, converting your text into the requisite eBook file for Amazon or B&N and verifying it.

Once all the formatting and features are finished, you are ready to convert your file into an eBook file. For Kindle you can use .mobi and for Nook you can use .epub. You can create both from the same initial Word file, so the entire process is very easy.

Save as Filtered HTML

The first step is to save your Word document as Filtered HTML. An eBook file is really nothing more than an HTML file, so by saving as one initially you've have done half of the work already. Saving as Filtered HTML preserves all the formatting of the Word document, but removes much of the tags that Word/Office use for their specific functionality, cutting down on file size and tags that have no place in an HTML file.

To do this, merely do a "Save As" in Word (F12) and in the Save as type dropdown at the bottom, select "Web Page, Filtered."

Below that dropdown, to the right, you'll see a tag called "Title" (which might say Add a Title next to it, or already have a title from your file in it). Make sure this is set to the title of your book.  Select and change it if necessary.

When saving, save it two times – one with a filename that denotes it for Kindle, and one for Nook. That way you can convert each one separately in Calibre without any issues. If you want, update the type of edition in the Copyright Page for each to denote that one is the Kindle Edition and one is the Nook Edition.

Once saved, you can move on to conversion.

Calibre

The software I've used to convert my books is Calibre. You can find out all about it on the Calibre website, calibre-ebook.com. It can be used as an eBook manager if you so desire, but I only use it to convert files. It's very easy to do, and it has the added bonus of being free. The conversion discussed in this tutorial will only use Calibre.

First of all, download and install Calibre. Once done and the program is opened on your computer, you'll notice that there are a lot of options and it may be a bit overwhelming. No worries, there are only a few steps you need to take.

Add/Update Your Book

The first step is to merely add your book to the list in Calibre. Click the "Add Books" button at the upper-left and navigate to and select the HTML file for your book. If you have more than one HTML file (if you saved one for Kindle vs. Nook), then add each separately. Anything added will appear on the eBook list in the middle of the main window, like so:

From there, you'll need to update your book settings so that everything is set for when you convert the file. Highlight the book in the list and select the "Edit Metadata" button on the toolbar at the top, or right-click and do the same thing. Either way, the Edit Metadata dialog will appear:

Make sure to update the Author(s) and Author sort textboxes appropriately. The Title and Title sort should be set, but update them if they are not. I believe the sort is only used in the Calibre list, but it doesn't hurt to be accurate with them.

This is also where you are going to attach the cover for the book. For publishing on Amazon or B&N, I suggest having two sizes of your cover: 600x800 and 180x240. The first will be used in the eBook itself, while the other can be used for uploading to the Amazon and B&N websites. In Calibre, select "Browse" in the Change cover section and navigate to your 600x800 version.

Also, remember to update the Date and Published fields to denote when you actually created/published the eBook file. Click "OK" when you are ready to save the updates.

That's really all you need to update on the file. Now you are ready to convert.

File Conversion

Merely select your book in the list and click "Convert" on the toolbar. It will bring up a Convert dialog, and if you already did all the updates mentioned in the previous section, there's only one thing you'll need to change. In the upper-right corner, there is a dropdown for Output format. Change this to the desired format – MOBI for Kindle, EPUB for Nook.

Once your desired format is selected, click "OK" to convert. It will take a handful of seconds to process. Once done, you can find your final file in the book's folder wherever you designated the Calibre Library to be on your file system (during installation of the program). That is the file you will use when submitting to either Amazon or B&N.

Verification / Quality Assurance

Before you submit, however, you should always check the file in the target eReader to make sure it appears as you want it to. Generally, if it looks good on Kindle, the Nook version will look just as good.

I do most of my checking on Kindle, since I actually own one. You can easily copy your file to your Kindle by merely plugging the USB cord that comes with your Kindle into your computer. Copy the .mobi file and paste it into the high-level Kindle directory where all the other books on your Kindle are. Disconnect the Kindle, turn it on and check out your book.

For help on transferring files to your Kindle, check here.

If you don't have a Kindle handy, you can easily check using the Kindle Previewer program, which can be downloaded here. It's a simple program that will open any compatible file so you can see how it would appear on a Kindle.  Be aware that this is not the Kindle reader app for PC - you cannot add a custom book to that app.  If you want to look at it on your PC or Mac, you'll need to download the Previewer application.

Change the font style or size. Test out the Table of Contents and the links there. Make sure all your special pages (Title Page, Section/Part Breaks, etc) look sufficient. Nothing will look that good in super-large fonts, so don't worry about those; just test the smaller fonts that most people will use.

Another important thing to check is whether the paragraph indents are working properly (based on the steps taken in the first post of this tutorial). Unfortunately, the only way to really know if all the formatting is okay is to actually read through the entire book on your eReader, making note of each instance that needs to be fixed (I do a final reading in this fashion, using the Note feature of the Kindle to mark areas for adjustment).

To test on Nook, I merely used the Nook app on PC and my Android handset. You can find all the versions here. Nook functions pretty much the same way – if it looks good on Kindle and the Table of Contents work, chances are it will work on Nook as well. But it's a good idea to try it out on at least one version of the Nook app (or the Nook itself, if you have one).

Next Steps

All that's left is to get them published on Amazon or B&N. I'll leave how you do that up to you... but hopefully someone has found these tutorials helpful in some way. Post a comment if you have any questions.

Shameless promotion: If you want to see how this all looks in final eBook form, download a free sample of my book in Kindle or Nook formats. You could also try reading it as well. ;)

How to Easily Format an eBook [2] Title Pages / Table of Contents

This is the 2nd post in my tutorial about formatting an eBook for Kindle or Nook. You can read the first post about overall text formatting here. This post deals with Title Pages and the Table of Contents.

Once you have the basic text ready to go (according to the first part of this tutorial), you'll need to add any extra pages like a Title Page, a Copyright Page, Part/Section Pages, etc. Essentially anything that you want in your eBook that is not part of the normal text. For my eBooks, I created all of the above, including a Table of Contents.

Title Page

The title page in your eBook is essentially the first page after the cover. Usually it just says the book title, the author's name and any other info (like a tagline, publisher, etc) that you deem absolutely necessary. But for the most part, it should just be the title and author.

For my novel Bonebearer, all I did was this:

Very simple. On the Word page, start the title around 7-8 lines down from the top. Put a few spaces on each line to ensure that they remain after you convert it to the eBook format. Try to keep it tight overall and only in the first half of the page so it looks good with the most common font sizes a reader may choose for their eReader. Feel free to use larger size fonts (as compared to your normal text). When converted to an eBook the size differences between the two will remain.

Also remember to keep it on its own separate page, with page breaks between it and nearby pages. Page breaks force a new page in eReaders, so don't forget to use them when needed.

Copyright Page

There are a lot of different ways you can do this. One is to just pick up some of the books you own, look at their copyright pages and imitate them in some form or fashion (that is what I did). Add credits for any additional contributors. Go ahead and put a disclaimer about it being a "work of fiction" and that it's copyrighted, etc etc. Put it on a separate page entirely, with page breaks, like you did with the title page.

Technically you already own the copyright from the moment you create it, further reinforced by fixing your work in some tangible medium (an eBook); you don't have to file for copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office unless you want to bring a lawsuit against someone for infringement. So that's up to you.

For more info on copyright, please check copyright.gov. It's a good idea to read through the FAQs so you're familiar with the basics before publishing anything.

Yet... why bother with a copyright page? Well, because it looks professional, that's why. Plus, they are not hard to make. The extra effort will make it look like you care (which you do, right?).

Here is the copyright page from my novel, Bonebearer:

You will notice I added things like "Cover art by" and an author website. I also have an ISBN, which is something you may or may not have. It is not required in order to sell an eBook, but if you're really trying to be serious about selling your writing, it's a good idea to have one so your work can be identified for a few reasons (as taken from here):

· for the purposes of trading through conventional channels
· for search and discovery in publicly available retailer databases
· for item/product-level sales reporting (whether for royalties or for sales data reporting)

Whether you want to get an ISBN or not is up to you. They even suggest having a different one for each eBook format, but I have used the same one for both my Kindle (.mobi) and Nook (.epub) formats of Bonebearer. Read more about ISBNs on isbn.org.

Part / Section Pages

If your text is broken into discreet parts – i.e. Part 1, Part 2, etc – then you should make them on separate pages (with page breaks) as usual. Format it however you wish, but follow the same basic techniques mentioned for the title page: start it a few lines down the page (with spaces on the blank lines to force them to appear in the eReader format), use different sizes/styles of font as needed, and try to keep it in the first half of the page.

I would suggest using a large size font so that the reader knows it's a part / section break. Here's an example of a part break from my novel, Bonebearer:

I have a quote for each part in that novel. You might just have Part 1: Part Name or whatever. As usual, keep it simple and elegant. No need for crazy pictures or too much variation in fonts.

Don't forget that each part / section page needs to be on a separate page with page breaks separating them from the text. It's important!

Table of Contents

Here is one of the most critical parts of your eBook. A properly done Table of Contents will enable the reader to jump around in the book easily and it also meets the standards that Amazon or B&N recommend for their eBook formats. With one in place, it will also display page numbers in the Kindle format.

To create your Table of Contents, you must add a bookmark in each spot that you want to put on the list. So if you have chapters, add a bookmark at the beginning of each chapter. This can be a tedious manual process if your file is quite large and you have a lot of chapters, but you'll only have to do it once and it will be worth it. Why? Because it will look professional and it shows you care about your final product.

To add a bookmark in Word, first place the cursor where you want it, then select Insert -> Bookmark on the toolbar / ribbon:

This will bring up the Bookmark dialog. Type the name of your bookmark in Bookmark name (overwrite whatever is in there, it may show an existing one). I usually do something simple like "C01" (Chapter 1) or "P01" (Part 1) so I can easily identify it later. Click "Add" to add the bookmark. Go through your entire file and add each new bookmark one at a time.

Once that is done, add a new page near the beginning of your file, typically after the copyright page and before the text begins. This will be your Table of Contents page. Format it however you wish and type out the chapter names. Don't bother with page numbers or the full justification that you might see in a physical book. Just simply list everything.

When your list is complete, highlight a chapter name. Right-click and select "Hyperlink." In the Insert Hyperlink dialog, you'll have the option to add a few different types of links. You want to select Place in this Document, then select the name of the bookmark you made for that chapter. Like so:

Click "OK" and the link will be added. Your highlighted text now looks like a link you might see on a web page, but instead it will jump to the bookmark (and thus the chapter) in your text. Repeat this for every chapter name in the Table of Contents.

Yes, it is tedious. But you only have to do it once!

Next Steps

At this point your file should be completely formatted, along with all necessary features for the final eBook. The last step is to convert your eBook to the proper formats and check it in an eReader (or eReader application) to make sure everything is kosher. Check the link below for the continuation.

Next: Convert in Calibre / Verification

Shameless promotion: If you want to see how this all looks in final eBook form, download a free sample of my book in Kindle or Nook formats. You could also try reading it as well. ;)

How to Easily Format an eBook [1] Text Formatting

Last month I published my first eBook on Amazon (Bonebearer). I spent quite a bit of time beforehand making sure that the file met the standards and criteria required by Amazon so it wouldn't get rejected. I read through their formatting guidelines and did a lot of research, but in the end the process I used was very simple and doesn't require any knowledge of HTML or CSS (although it never hurts to know the basics). My process is outlined below for both Kindle and Nook.

All you need to do this is a recent version of Microsoft Word (2007 or higher is recommended) and an eBook format converter like Calibre (which I recommend, it's free and very easy to use). The basic steps are:

1. Text Formatting
2. Title Pages / Table of Contents
3. Convert in Calibre

Each step will be covered in a separate blog post. This tutorial works best when your eBook is just simple text, like a novel. If you're doing something with a lot of pictures or special formatting, this tutorial would help with final conversions, but not with making sure special formatting is done right.

Remember, this is a simple method that works for me. There are obviously different ways to go about this, but hopefully this will help someone.

Text Formatting

I use Microsoft Word for all of my word processing. I read about other popular authors shunning Word and basically saying it sucks, but I've never really understood what exactly their problem with the software is, other than those authors being anti-Windows by principle (Piers Anthony, for example). I use it all the time and have no problems with it. What you can't do with built-in functions, you can always automate using VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).

Anyway, formatting text is easy. There are only a few things you really need to pay attention to. Before you do any of the steps below, though, MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR ORIGINAL FILE. Never go through this process on your only copy.

The font of your text doesn't make a difference, since Kindle or Nook will ignore the font (the reader controls the font he/she wants to see). When formatting, I switch it to something easy to read, like Times New Roman, 12 pt. The important things you need to address are spacing, tabs, font style, special characters, page breaks (for chapters/sections) and chapter headings. We'll go through each below.

Spacing

Select all the text (excluding title pages and pages that don't have straight text) and change all paragraph spacing to a value of 1.0 and make sure it doesn't add a space before or after each paragraph. I believe this kind of spacing is ultimately ignored, but I like removing it all just in case.

Tabs / Indents

eBooks are generally going to ignore tabs, so if you've got them in your file already, it's best to remove them and replace them with fixed indenting. Even if you don't think you have any tabs in your file, do this anyway just in case. To remove tabs, highlight the entire text, and do a Find & Replace (Ctrl+H). Make sure to click "More" to display more options. A tab character is listed under the "Special" dropdown – select it there for the Find what option, or just type in (^t). Replace with should be blank. Like this:

Select "Replace All" and the tabs go away. Now, you must replace them with indents. As long as you've typed your document like most people do (use word wrap and only line break after each paragraph), this will be easy. Highlight all the text again (excluding title pages, etc, as usual), then just move the "First Line Indent" marker on the ruler (circled in the picture below) over about a half inch (less if you really want, anything larger than 0.5" looks like crap when people read the eBook with large fonts):

Alternatively, you can just go into the Paragraph options in Word and under the Indentation section, make sure Special = "First line" and By = 0.5". Like so:

Font Style (Bold, Italics, etc)

If you type up your document the way you might for a publishing house, where the only font style in the file is underlining (to denote italics in a published book), you should replace it so that what you see in Word is how you want it to display in the eReader. So if you want something italicized, change all instances to italics. A typical novel will only use italics. If you must have something bold (perhaps a chapter header, addressed later), then bold it.

To make these changes, do a simple Find & Replace, as mentioned in the Tab section above. Instead of replacing tab characters, though, you'll be replacing font styles (yes, you can do this in Word... easily). Ctrl+H to get to Find & Replace, select "More" to reveal more options and in the Replace section, use the "Format" dropdown and select "Font" to select the style you need to find or replace.

So in my example, replacing underline with italics: in the Font dialog, the only things you should change are Font style and Underline style.

For Find what, you should have these settings:
   Font style = Regular
   Underline style = Normal underline style, the thinnest unbroken line

For Replace with, you should have these settings:
   Font style = Italic
   Underline style = (none)

Always make sure the Preview window shows the desired look before continuing.  In the end, this is what you want to see in the Find and Replace dialog:

Select "Replace All" and viola, the formatting in your entire document has been changed. Easy.

Special Characters

Another thing you'll want to look out for are things like double en dashes (--) which should be turned into em dashes (—), or the horizontal ellipsis character (...) that Word likes to replace your normal three periods with if you have it set to AutoCorrect.

For double en dashes, these should appear if you were writing in plain text for potential publishing or manuscript submission.  They are easy to fix.  Just do another Find and Replace (make sure the formatting criteria is removed from the last step), type -- for the Find what and for Replace with select the em dash special character in the "Special" dropdown.

For horizontal ellipses, if you typed your manuscript in plain text it shouldn't be a problem, but if it was in your AutoCorrect list, do another Find and Replace.  Copy the horizontal ellipsis character into Find what and type three periods in Replace with.

It's always a good idea to check the AutoCorrect list in the Word Options, to ensure that it doesn't automatically replace things that could be problematic later.  Even better, just turn it off when you're working on your text.

Page Breaks

If your text is broken up into chapters, sections or parts that are clearly demarcated, you should put a page break at the beginning of each. This will help for when you later add a Table of Contents and it just looks better in the eReader when you jump to that chapter or section.

Page breaks are easy to add, just page down through your document and at the spot where the break needs to occur, place the cursor and select Insert -> Page Break in the Word menu. You can also use the shortcut key of Ctrl+Return. Do this for every spot where you want the content to start on a new page: chapter, section, part, etc.

How you want to do it is up to you – logically you'd want it for every chapter or section, like you would find in a professionally published book. If you're publishing an eBook I'm going to assume you like to read, so just reference some books of your own.

Chapter Headings

How you want to do chapter headings (i.e. chapter name) is also up to you, but you should at least format them differently than the main text so that it's obvious that they're chapter headings. There are a couple of different ways you can do them. I suggest you keep it simple – there's no need to go crazy with graphics or any of that, because that just makes for more formatting that could go wrong somewhere along the line.

The simplest way is to do an italicized header, without an indent (my personal preference). If you've set up the fixed indenting throughout your file (as noted in the Tabs / Indents section), then whenever you press Return/Enter (carriage return) the new line will automatically be indented. To remove it, just slide the First Line Indent marker on the ruler back to 0 (opposite of how we created the indents earlier).  If you look back at the second picture in this post, you'll see where the chapter header is not indented, but each paragraph is.

Here's an example of a simple chapter header:

6: The Northwest Fires

Or if you have chapters without names, just do something like:

Chapter 10

If you want to center it, merely use the Center Text option in Word on your selection (or Ctrl+E). The center formatting will carry through to the final eBook.

If you want your chapter header to be partway down the page, place a few carriage returns before the header and put a space or two on each blank line to ensure that the blank line remains. However – don't put too many blank lines before the header, as it may look goofy in a large font on the eReader. Generally this won't be a problem, because I'd wager most people don't read eBooks with gigantic font - and ultimately there's nothing you can do about that - but it doesn't hurt to keep it in mind.

If you want bigger letters or all caps for the first few words (like you sometimes see in a published novel), format your text accordingly. I personally haven't felt the need to do that yet.

Next Steps

At this point the text of your file should be formatted properly. The next step is to add a Table of Contents, along with a Title Page and any other ancillary pages you might need (section / part breaks, copyright info, etc). Check the link below for the continuation.

Next: Title Pages / Table of Contents

Shameless promotion: If you want to see how this all looks in final eBook form, download a free sample of my book in Kindle or Nook formats. You could also try reading it as well.  ;)

eBook Publication - Bonebearer

I've finally released my first novel, Bonebearer, as a Kindle eBook on Amazon.  It has been released under my pen name, Brad Murgen.

It can be purchased here:

USA ($0.99):
http://www.amazon.com/Bonebearer-ebook/dp/B005LDNM0G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315414293&sr=8-1

UK (£0.86 - at time of posting):
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bonebearer-ebook/dp/B005LDNM0G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315417161&sr=8-1

If you want to check it out prior to purchasing, you can get a free sample sent to your Kindle... the sample is comprised of the first two chapters, along with a portion of the third chapter.

I actually wrote this novel many years ago, all the way back in 2003, and it's been through a few revisions since then.  I sent it to a few major publishers and got rejected (of course) and eventually I got really busy with other things in my life, and the book and my other writings got put on hold.  But now, I figured it was time to start getting my work out there, so I decided to just self-publish it.

Here is the blurb I posted on Amazon:

Kother is a young Yanai boy that lives in the jungles of Kounna. He grows up learning the ways of the jungle and what is expected of a Yanai male, though with his own private doubts about the accepted traditions and rituals of his people.

When he embarks on the male Yanai "coming of age" mission to retrieve his soulstones, he realizes that he is not fit to be a Yanai, and has no true desire to be. This realization leads him on a quest beyond the jungles of his homeland, through deserts and tundra and mountains, encountering strange peoples and customs, searching for the meaning behind his existence.

What he finds is disconcerting... and what he eventually becomes is even more disturbing, for deception lies at the core of all things.

It's kind of a "why do we do things this way?" novel, a topic I've always been fascinated by.  I think about things that we as a human race do or believe in, and wonder where they came from, how they originated, how they possibly got twisted as knowledge was passed down through generations over the centuries.  It's a fantasy, though there's no magic or anything like that.

I am looking into other eBook publishing avenues in order to get the book to as broad an audience as possible, but I haven't decided on any others yet.  Kindle eBooks can be accessed from so many device types now (Kindle, PC, handset, tablet), that I'm not even sure it's worth publishing through other sites.  So we'll see.

Currently working on a simple author website using WordPress (http://www.bradmurgen.com/) and some author info (photo, bio), which will be up in the next few days.  I probably won't blog on the author site.  I will move this one over if the need arises.

I have another novel and a collection of short stories about ready to go for the future, so there will be more material from me if you happen to like this novel.  It's only a buck... give it a try!