Who wants free stories?
Okay, to be fair, doesn't everyone want free stories? Over the next week, I'm giving away episodes 5-8 novellas of my super spicy Breaking the 4th Wall series on Amazon.com to celebrate the launch of my Gods Among Us Universe. Yes, you heard right! The book our protagonist in Breaking the 4th Wall (c'mon, you know that isn't actually me — it's just a fun idea) is writing is now available on all major booksellers (https://books2read.com/GAU-hidden) so snag it now.
It's been a wild ride preparing to launch my first major novel since writing stories isn't my day job. My novellas were a great lesson, but because of their length, there were things I couldn't try with them. Self-publishing is no joke. If I can impart any advice for what I've learned over the past year, it's make lists with timelines, and then double the amount of time you think it will take.
Seriously.
Especially if you are working another job.
And I'm not even talking about the actual writing and editing process. Nope. Today, I'm just going to tell you about what I've learned from finished manuscript to publication/initial launch marketing.
So you have finished, fully edited manuscript in your hands and you are just itching to share it with the world. But to get it out there, you have to format it for publication. No matter where you want to publish, whether Draft2Digital or IngramSpark (aggregate distributors that send your book to other retailers like Apple, Barnes & Noble, library services, and others, then send payments to you), Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon), Kobo Writing Life, Google Play, or others, you need to format it. I've tried three methods over the past year:
Microsoft Word: My first story was written in Word. It's the word processor I use every day for my work as a professor. I write scientific papers, edit my graduate students' proposals and theses, and write grants using this software so it was a no-brainer for me to use it to write my story, then format it into ebook or paperback formatting using the instructions or Word templates provided KDP. As long as you follow the step-by-step instructions, this is finicky but doable. On average for one of my 10k word Breaking the 4th Wall episodes, it took me a full day (6-8 hrs) to complete the formatting and verify it worked properly on KDP.
The difficulty comes with Word's hidden formatting that can sneak in and be hard to find or fix. Word also has many font choices installed but not all of these are acceptable for a commercial license, which may jeopardize your publication. Still, if you write in Word and are comfortable with troubleshooting formatting in Word, this can be an easy option for publishing through KDP.
Other distributors and retailers won't accept Word files, but may accept a .pdf of your .doc file. The next strike against Word for formatting is that the preferred file format across all distributors and retailers is an epub format, but there is no way to directly export an epub from Word.
Once I realized I needed to create epub formats for my stories so I could publish widely on multiple retail sites, I shifted away from Word for formatting.
Kindle Create: This is free software that allows you to import your manuscript, then format it and export it as an epub. The free aspect is nice, but I found the software extremely limited in formatting options. If you are planning on also publishing a paperback, you are limited to a format that will export to KDP but not other distributors and retailers. It was much faster than formatting in Word, taking me only a couple of hours to format and verify. With all its limitations in formatting and exporting, I used this for one manuscript, then moved on to try other options.
Atticus: This is paid software that allows you to import your manuscript (or write it within the program, but that isn't my jam), format it, then export it as an epub for ebook publishing or a pdf for paperback publishing. You can set up different styles of headings, fonts, scene breaks, images, and trim sizes (the physical size of your pages). All the fonts are commercially licensed so there is no worry that you'll use something you don't have the license for. The program tells you which trim sizes are acceptable for KDP or IngramSpark. By choosing a trim size that works for both, you can export a pdf that will be accepted across all distributors and retailers.
This is the program I use now. Does it have absolutely every feature I could wish for? No. But I can import a 10k manuscript and have it fully formatted, exported and verified within a couple of hours. I was able to create the Breaking the 4th Wall bundled episode books (Seductive Characters Episodes 1-4; Ephemeral Pages Episodes 5-8) quickly as the program allows you to create bundles from books you've already formatted. For Hidden, I was able to use a personalized scene break, and format emails and text messages within the chapters. I was also able to have the chapters divided into parts, with a quote for each part.
So what don't I like about Atticus?
Pretty much all my complaints are around paperback formatting as I haven't had any issues with its ebook formatting. For paperbacks, the program can get hung up calculating the page numbers during the preview. A refresh usually fixes this, but it's an annoying bug.
When it comes to the table of contents for paperbacks, it's frustrating that there is no option to force a page break in a specific spot when it breaks awkwardly. For example, leaving Part 2 on the bottom of the table of contents, then the first chapter of Part 2 on the next page of the table of contents.
My final issue is formatting of emails (dialogue between characters) within a chapter's text. I figured a work-around by formatting them as callout boxes with a heading font I could manipulate the size of to prevent the program from leaving a big space at the bottom of a page when the next email was too many lines to fit at the bottom of the page. I don't know how many writers are using email as a dialogue device, but I don't expect I'm the only one. Still, these are pretty minor issues to solve for being able to format a manuscript in more than half the time it took me to do it using Word.
That's my breakdown on what I've tried and learned. Hope you find it useful!
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