Must you use epub for ibooks and mobi for kindle

ajenery said:

I never use tabs but must admit didn't know that you shouldn't use spaces for indents. So, I take it then that I should either use left justified and no spaces or fully justified (left, right) and no spaces? As to empty lines between paragraphs, I do this as well after every four or so paras, otherwise the text looks too blocky imho.

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Indents can (and should) be set using text styles. The same goes for spacing before/after paragraphs, but space between paragraphs (except for a scene break) tends to look amateurish.

All of this is explained in any good style guide or formatting book, though.

Everything should be done using styles. Or use Liberwriter

One of our goals as self-pubbed writers is to spend as much time creating our work and as little time as possible on the mechanics of publishing it. Unfortunately, when we self-pub we become publishers. So there is a minimum we must know and do, such as creating or hiring an artist to create a cover - something you have not mentioned but something you WILL have to deal with.

As others have said, the KDP how-to instructions and the accompanying forum is a good place to start. The people there are willing to spend a lot of time helping first-timers, more than we in this forum usually have.

So a few basics beyond the good advice given so far.

Create, edit, and save your original in .doc format - not .docx, the newer .doc version. The older format is proprietary but most word processors use it as their main format or can export it. So services such as KDP and Draft2Digital and so on know well how to handle it and convert it to .mobi and .epub. So you may want to just hand them your .doc and leave all the conversion to them. Just be sure you only use the minimum of formatting of your .doc, little beyond bolding and italics. For scene breaks use a centered # to indicate an extra line, or something similar such as ~ or - (dash). (I use <>, the less-than and greater-than signs, not the special character equivalent of a diamond.)

Apple and B&N expect .epub, but there are subtle differences in the version they use. Plus you must have an Apple computer to create the special .epub format Apple requires, or use one of the several services they recommend. I found that Amazon sells maybe a hundred copies of my books for each one Apple and B&N do, so I don't pub there any more. Still, I create an .epub using Sigil, rather than calibre which has technical problems doing so. Because Sigil automatically creates a chapter table of contents file needed for KDP, saving you from doing it manually. Then I use calibre to create the .mobi file.

https://sigil-ebook.com/

Sounds like a lot of trouble? Welcome to the self-pub world.

ajenery said:

I've been writing for years, but before eReaders it wasn't really viable to go the traditional publisher route as they charged unknowns (the big publishers did anyway...) a fair amount at the time.

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Erm, there are vanity publishers, but I'm pretty sure most trade publishers have never charged writers? Someone correct me if I'm wrong...

ajenery said:

I've been writing for years, but before eReaders it wasn't really viable to go the traditional publisher route as they charged unknowns (the big publishers did anyway...) a fair amount at the time.

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You've been misinformed. Vanity publishers charged writers. Trade publishers, publishers who sell to "the trade" (meaning bookstores, wholesalers and distributors) haven't charged writers for well over a hundred years.

This is what a trade publisher does:
Writers submit a query or a manuscript or both.
If the manuscript is accepted, the writer receives an advance; this may be a partial payment of the advance with the rest coming on final submission and/or publication.
The publisher pays editors, copyeditors, proofreaders, designers, typesetters, and artists to produce the final book.
The author works with the editors, proofers to produce the final ms.
The book is sent to the printer. If ebooks are being produced, the manuscript is "forked" so that a special version is sent to the printer, and another version is sent to ebook production to make various kinds of ebooks using different file formats for different devices.
The publisher's sales, marketing teams have already been working on selling the book to distributors, wholesalers, book stores and libraries, including finalizing release dates, selling the book, establishing review schedules by sending out ARCs, etc.
The book is available for advance orders.
The book is released.
The rest of the advance is paid.
People buy and read and review the book.
If it sells enough copies to "earn out" the author will a year or so after release, receive royalties quarterly.

But the author doesn't have to pay for editing, or book design or distribution or marketing.

ajenery said:

I never use tabs but must admit didn't know that you shouldn't use spaces for indents. So, I take it then that I should either use left justified and no spaces or fully justified (left, right) and no spaces? As to empty lines between paragraphs, I do this as well after every four or so paras, otherwise the text looks too blocky imho.

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Not sure how Open Office works as I only tried it out once many years ago. But with regards to avoiding the use of tabs, spaces for indents, and empty lines between paragraphs, you should format the document using the what in Word is called "Styles" to accomplish all that. Smashwords has a free eBook on formatting written by the owner Mark Coker that gives a very thorough explanation of the process. It's called Smashwords Style Guide. If I remember correctly, it does focus on using Word, but Open Office is mentioned. While it is written for those intending to publish with Smashwords, the information works with any eBook platform because I've used most of them.

Also, Draft 2 Digital will allow you to use their site to convert your manuscript to .ePub and .mobi for free whether you choose to publish on their platform or not. You can download the conversion files and do with them as you please. It's a great platform and is far easier to use than Smashwords. According to their faqs page, you can upload your book in Word .doc, .docx format, or RTF.

Finally, I agree with what others have said about PDF files on readers. I just read a book last week for someone who asked me to review it and they provided me a PDF. It's the first time I tried reading a PDF book on my iPad and hated it. It didn't behave like I expect an eBook to. The print was very small and I could not increase the size. All and all, a horrible experience. I'd certainly not knowingly pay for an eBook available only in PDF. Definitely you should convert to both .ePub and .mobi in my opinion.

ajenery said:

I appreciate your advice here, but it seems to me that whether I use Draft 2 Digital (which I just looked at briefly) or Smashwords or Calibre, I'm going to have to apply styles to my word.doc file in the first place; that is, an OO file that was saved to word 97-03 .doc format. The problem here is, that just can't seem to get my head round it :/ - so I'm thinking of using the liberwriter service that has been mentioned in this thread. Question is, are they reliable at 60US$ per book? Are they any good?

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Yes, the styles must be applied to the document you will be uploading to a publishing platform. I looked into it a bit this morning and have found that OpenOffice does use styles similar to how Word does. (See https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Do...er_Manual/Writer_Guide/Introduction_to_Styles) So, it seems you could apply styles to your OO file and then save it as a Word.doc. Again, the Smashwords Style Guide I mentioned does a super job of explaining styles and while aimed at Word users, I think the information should be readily transferable to OpenOffice.

I am not a very techie person at all and far from an expert on Word, but using the Smashwords Style Guide, I quite easily created a document using styles the first time I tried it and have never had any problems uploading my books for conversions.

I'm not familiar with the service you mentioned because I've never used a service like them, but personally I wouldn't pay $60 to have a book formatted. It really isn't hard to do. I've always used Word, but OpenOffice seems so similar, I don't think using it should be a barrier since you can save the finished document in Word 97-03 .doc format.

If you use a Word alternative, you should probably use LibreOffice, not its ancestor Open Office or even earlier Star Office. It's very secure and well supported with a help forum and fairly well-written documentation.

They were created to be a free version of Microsoft Office and designed to be very compatible, so if you knew Word and the other Office apps it would be easy to change over to them. So styles works substantially the same.

Further, for general fiction writing you should use the most basic formatting, little beyond word and paragraph formatting. Fancy formatting such as tables is not easy to translate to ebook formats and takes a lot of your time to get right. Better spend that time making your writing terrific.

In LibreOffice save your document in .doc format rather than its native .odt the first time you create it. That way you never have to have two different formats in your folders, with all the possibilities for the two getting out of sync.

Sweet as. Sounds like you have it sussed out. Let me know how you get on with the project.

ajenery said:

Thanks for some great tips there. So Word .doc format only? In that case I'll have to export the odt's to .doc and then do the styles. As to other things you mention, I am I admit trying to do everything myself including own cover artwork as I don't have great cashflow atm, but I manage I've been writing for years, but before eReaders it wasn't really viable to go the traditional publisher route as they charged unknowns (the big publishers did anyway...) a fair amount at the time.

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Good trade publishers don't charge any writers for publication. They just don't.

ajenery said:

Well, I approached Macmillan once, and they quoted me certain charges on the basis that I was a so-called unknown. Whether this was for vanity publishing, I don't know; wasn't aware that it was.

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Publishers love publishing debut (aka unknown) authors: it's a huge promotion opportunity.

My guess is that you either misread their reply, or you contacted a press masquerading as Macmillan. Either way, I'd be very interested in you providing us with more information on this, so that we can work out what happened.

ajenery said:

But... I have to get it right, because according to reviews I've seen via SE's, amazon takes weeks to approve a new title and will reject an ebook even if it has just one error - don't know first hand if this is true though.

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Where did you hear that? It's definitely not true. Most books go from upload to live in hours, or a day at most.

If you have a major problem with the structure of your file, that could cause it to bounce back to draft status. However, KDP isn't going to check your draft for grammatical or typographical errors, or even formatting errors, as long as they don't affect the structure of the file. Sometimes, I wish they did have some kind of quality filter, though.

After the book is published, readers can flag it if they notice errors and care enough about them to report the book. KDP will send you a quality notice, telling you to fix the problems, but it doesn't happen very often.

It is the internet and you can find anyone saying anything. But trade publishers to not charge fees so I encourage you to send that email to Author Beware or someone similar to see what really happened, and Amazon will publish any more-or-less correctly formatted book within a day or two. The process is automated so you don't need to meet the standards of any person, just the uploading system.

ajenery said:

I don't know about trade publishers in general, but this wasn't the case in my experience with Macmillan, okay? I'd love to provide further info on this, but it was some time ago and I didn't keep the correspondence, etc.

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Might it have been Austin Macauley, rather than Macmillan?

Marissa D said:

Might it have been Austin Macauley, rather than Macmillan?

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That makes a lot more sense.

Big Five publishers don't charge authors.

ETA: And here is a sample letter from Macauley with wording close to what the OP described.