A New Smashwords Rant

      I always think I have everything down pat whenever I upload a new book to Smashwords, but every time a new problem arises! 

 

       First-off, I want to complain about their uploading process.  You have to do it all at one time.  If you log out in the middle and then log back in, everything has disappeared (CreateSpace retains whatever you put in if you've hit Save).  So you have to be sure you have plenty of time and hope IE doesn't crash!  So you start by putting in the short description, which has to be 400 characters or less.  I never know how many characters I have and they don't tell you as you type (or sometimes they tell you and sometimes they don't -- I haven't quite figured that out).  So you get to the end and it tells you the short description is too long.  You go back and fix it -- and your text and cover upload disappear and you have to re-enter them!  That's just stupid!

 

       So you get past that point and you're absolutely sure that the text is perfect this time.  The meatgrinder starts up.  You're #32 in the queue (everybody seems to be uploading on a Saturday morning -- I recommend some other time).  It reaches #30 and sticks there for an interminable (or it seems interminable) amount of time.  Somebody must be uploading a satirical version of the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.  Then it speeds up a little.  Each item -- epub, Kindle, etc. -- proceeds apace.  You're thrilled.  You get to the end, assign the ISBN -- and get that dreaded Autovetter error.  This time it's this:

 

"Space Bar Error - You are attempting to use space bar spaces (created by the tapping the long space bar at the bottom of your keyboard) to orient text on the page. This is a common error for writers, often mistakenly used either to create indents for the first sentence of a paragraph, or to center text on the page. In most ebook formats, these space bar spaces disappear, rendering your book difficult to read. If you're trying to center something, use Word's "center" button, or better yet see the Style Guide for tips on how to create a custom paragraph style that defines centering. If you're trying to create first line paragraph indents, follow the instructions in the Smashwords Style Guide. To locate the offending spaces, activate Word's "show/hide" feature then do a Search (press the "CTRL" key and the "F" key at the same time) and then search for three spaces (press the space bar on your keyboard three times). Delete all strings of three or more spaces. Also delete any space bar spaces preceding the start of any paragraph. "

 

       You know what I hate about their messages?  Not only are they verbose -- they're patronizing!  Has anybody out there gotten this far with self-publishing and yet has no idea what a space bar is or what it's used for?  They make you feel like an eight-year-old piano student whose teacher stands over you and raps you on knuckles whenever you hit a wrong note, all the while saying, "Now, now, dear, remember it's wrong to make a mistake!"

       And certainly I am quite aware that using the space bar to paragraph (like I'm doing in this blog post) or for most other purposes is a big, fat no-no in Smashwords.  Smashwords will allow nothing but Paragraph Indent and Centering.  You can't even use No Paragraph (block paragraphs).  So I was swearing and yelling, "I did not use the space bar except where I'm supposed to!"

 

       Well, of course I did.  I didn't use it for paragraphing, but I did find several places where I had made three spaces when I meant only two.  (Just touched a wrong key there, ma'am -- please don't hit me again!) And then I went through the whole doc. looking for extra spaces at the beginning of paragraphs.  By golly, I found quite a few.  Several double spaces and a whole lot of single spaces.  Some of those are certainly present in the printed book as well, but most of those are so miniscule that unless you took a ruler and laid it on the page against the beginnings of the paragraphs, you would never notice them.  However, in the future I will check that before I even start formatting the CreateSpace template. 

       Now, I was also using *     *     * between chapter sections  (employing the space bar -- what's a space bar, Mommy?) so I redid those as simply *****.  I don't know what editors prefer for section breaks, but I've always used a series of stars.

 

       But here is what is peculiar.  I rechecked the document I uploaded for The War of the Stolen Mother, and it's got the *     *     * and plenty of extra spaces, including some three-space chunks and extras at the beginning of paragraphs.  And Smashwords never quibbled in the least about that one!  So go figure!  Is it something new they've added?  Is it a matter of a different individual doing the vetting?  I thought Autovetting didn't involve living people. 

 

       Oh, and one other thing: When I looked at the epub version, I found an NCX error, where I had missed a link to the Facsimile page.  Smashwords didn't catch that one!  Evil laugh -- heh-heh-heh! So I fixed that as a bonus.

 

       It's all a big mystery!  But my final upload worked and I'm now waiting to be included in the Premium Catalog.  I've had two sample downloads so far.  Hope you enjoy! 

 

       Rant over!  I feel better for sharing!  And maybe it will help somebody else avoid the same errors.

      

An Addendum on Formatting Kindle Books

That dang map!

       I received instructions from Kindle on how to format images for uploading.  It's quite thorough and I do not fault Kindle Help for anything, because I'm the ignoramus when it comes to computer knowledge.  I did manage to understand quite a bit of it.  It seems that when you convert a .doc to HTML, the images are saved in a separate file.  I actually found the file with the image at the beginning of my documents menu.  Then they said to zip the files and I did that.  But it still won't load.  Apparently, you're supposed to insert a bit of HTML -- here's what they gave: IMG SRC="imagename.jpg"  The image name in the folder that I found is Image001.  So I stuck that in:  IMG SRC="Image001.jpg"  But I have no idea where to insert this bit of HTML, so I put it at the top of the image, and went through the whole process, converting to HTML, zipping, etc.  I must have tried about 6 different versions and nothing would load the image. 

       So I wrote them again.  If I still can't to it after hearing from them again, I'm going to drop the map and put a note in the book telling people to print or download the map from this website.  Or else buy the print book!  No problems there!

Footnotes

       I discovered something called cross-references in Word, so I made a sample and converted all the footnotes (it turns out there are 72 of them) to endnotes, then experimented with linking them up.  I had no luck with the cross-reference menu, so I tried the bookmark/hyperlink method that is used for ToCs.  It wouldn't work.  I even checked out the Smashwords Style Guide, because they are really very complete (read verbose) in their explanations.  They let me down.  I think they just expect you to use the same bookmark/hyperlink system, but it doesn't work the way it does with the table of contents.  The links don't work when you click on them.  Maybe you have to type in the endnotes rather than using the converted footnotes. Hmm.  I could try that before I give up.  If I typed them in, I could put the notes at the ends of the chapters.  But no matter what I do, it's going to be extremely time-consuming.  

I'm getting no feedback as to what people would prefer.  I still would like to know:  Would you rather read a book with notes inserted in the text or placed at the end?  I will not place them at the end if I can't figure out how to link them both ways. 

Problems Formatting Books for Kindle Using Word

I NEED YOUR OPINIONS ON FOOTNOTE FORMATTING!  SEE EXCERPT AT END!

       This post is not meant to be a comprehensive lesson on Kindle formatting.  I'm going to hit on two points that are driving me bonkers as I try to prepare "The War of the Stolen Mother" for Kindle.  One is the map and the other is the footnotes.  What I do is make up a sample post with all the points in it that I think could cause problems and then upload it.  I've already tried three versions.

The Map

       Kindle's instructions are quite clear.  An image file must be a JPEG and be under 127 KB.  My original map was 75.2 KB and I made it into a JPEG.  Fine, I thought.  Then it said something about compressing the file and gave instructions.  Frankly I don't see why you have to do that if your file is small enough already, but I tried the upload without the compression and no luck.  Then I tried compressing it.  Still no luck.  Then I thought, well, my map is a lot bigger dimensionally than a Kindle screen, which is a dinky 4.75 inches x 3.5.  So I reduced the size of the map to about 4.5 x 2.8 (I doubt anybody will be able to read it when it comes right down to it).  That made the KB count  only about 22.  Nope, still doesn't work.  All I get on both the MobiReader and on the Kindle is a picture of a camera with a triangle containing a ! superimposed on it.  So I give up.  I wrote to Kindle Help and we'll see what they say.  If it comes right down to it, I'll publish the book without the map.  Maybe I can put a note telling the reader to come to this website to see the map.  As I say, I doubt anybody be able to read that dinky little thing anyway.  (Or maybe I should tell them  to buy the paperback!)

The Footnotes

       In Word, footnotes are so easy! It's one thing that works with near perfection, unlike their section breaks/header/footer stuff, which is impossible.  You can number the footnotes by page, by section, or continuously through the whole document, or you can convert the footnotes into endnotes.  So I thought maybe I could put the footnotes at the ends of chapters, but that's impossible (probably by applying some HTML coding you could do it, but again I know nothing about that), because Kindle makes you delete all the section breaks and substitute page breaks, and the choices in Word for placement of endnotes is End of Section or End of Document (ironically, that might work in Smashwords, which makes you use section breaks).

       Then there is the problem of linking the footnotes to the text reference.  I tried to do something with the in-document bookmark/hyperlink setup that I use for the ToC, but it didn't seem to work, and without a double linking back and forth, notes at the end of the book are next to useless.  Kindle is just too hard to navigate.  You can't stick your thumb or a slip of paper into the area you want to return to.

       So I reject endnotes, and I can't put the footnotes at the bottom of the page or the ends of chapters, so I'm resorting to inserting them into the text.  Now, I want to say that the book has a lot of notes in the early chapters, but this slacks off later as the reader becomes more familiar with the nature and language of the Shshi.  This will mean that the notes may make for bumpy reading, but the only other alternative I can think of (short of omitting them altogether, something I refuse to do) is to make a Glossary and Notes section at the end of the book, and that's useless, too; nobody will ever bother to read it and you really need the information as you go along).

       So I tried inserting each note in the text, using several dashes ------- before and after.  This caused a different problem; that row of dashes automatically produced a line drawn all the way across the page, and I thought, well, that's OK.  But in the Kindle upload, those lines disappeared.  I think they were considered a drawing object.  Then I couldn't get the damn things deleted out of my text!  As I tried to delete them, it kept duplicating them and moving them up and down the page!  Grrr!  Finally I deleted the whole chapter, copied a new one in, and started over. 

       This time I used a group of three asterisks *** .  And it turned that into a whole row of bullets (little squares, maybe called slugs)!  Fortunately, those were erasable.  So I used the *** both before and after the note to separate it from the text, and I used a slightly smaller type.  And it worked fine in the upload.  So I'm all set to begin formatting the whole text if I do use that method.

       I'm presenting here the first page from Chapter 1 of Stolen Mother

showing you how it will look.  It's a spoiler for "The Termite Queen," but I've given up trying to avoid that.  The type size in the notes won't be a small as it shows here.  Please do give me your opinion on whether you find this system offputting (if you don't like it, you really can buy the paperback, where everything looks the way it's supposed to look.)

Chapter 1

Di'fa'kro'mi Reminisces

Twenty-eight years … I was hatched twenty-eight years ago, this very season.  Do both of you know that?  Now I lie here in a dark chamber and rarely move – I who was accustomed to wandering long distances under the sky and gazing at the stars during every darktime …  I have felt rain on my wings and sand crunching under my claws … the heat-blast of volcanoes’ firestreams and the sting of the ice-field’s frozen pellets …  I have seen the waves of the Great Water and I have immersed myself in them …

It is a strange end I have come to, the strange end of a very strange life …

What is it, Chi’mo’a’tu?  Yes, yes, put all that down … Ru’a’ma’na’ta wanted everything I have to say – if she ever comes again …

I do not think I will ever see her again – she comes less and less often …  Did you know, Chi’mo’a’tu, that the Star-Beings die even as the Shshi do?  You did?  Well, some refuse to believe that, but it is certainly true, because we know that Ru’a’ma’na’ta’s King died.  You met Ru’a’ma’na’ta when she was last here, did you not?  You are so young …  Oh, an imago for nearly two whole years!  So much experience!  I am overwhelmed!

Well, anyway, what I started to say was – you may have noticed that the mat of hairs on Ru’a’ma’na’ta’s head was white, or mingled white and gray.  It used to be a sort of even brownish-tan.  She told me that that color-change is a sign of age among her kind of Star-Beings.  They live long – much longer than the Shshi do.  When I last saw Ru’a’ma’na’ta, she told me she was an astonishing ten years past the two-antennae count.‡  So one day she will no longer come at all …  Perhaps no Star-Being will come …  That makes me feel a little sad.

***

‡[The Shshi count by threes and sixes; each of their moniliform antennae has 18 knobs, so they name no number above 36.  Any larger amount becomes simply “many.”]

***

I also feel sad because her King died here in Lo’ro’ra.  She told me once that she had never produced offspring – that she had cared so much for her King that she refused to take another.  That seems unnatural to us, but then the fortresses of the Star-Beings each contain many shma’na’ta|,‡ so it is not essential that every one of them lay eggs.  But there is something very touching in this single-minded devotion of hers.  And of course her King died because of Lo’ro’ra’s aberration – because he was caught in that long-ago rebellion led by the Unnatural Alate whose name I refuse to speak.  And so the memories of that will always sadden me.

***

‡[Plural of ma’na’ta|, mother, the Queen, the only fertile female denizen of a Shshi fortress]

***

Something of her King was left behind with his destroyers.  When Ru’a’ma’na’ta first returned and saw what we had done, she made the sorrow-display where the water drips from the Star-Beings’ eyes.  Perhaps you should write down what we did and why we did it, so it will not be forgotten.

....

  

Of Title Pages and Maps: Author Proposes, CreateSpace (and Word) Disposes

       I've always had in mind a fictional gimmick that I thought would be quite effective.  My intent was to have my name as author appear only as minimally as possible in all the volumes of "The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head."  It would appear in the copyright and maybe on the credits for illustrations and maps and (probably only as initials) on a brief acknowledgment of my debt to Robert Graves' Greek Myths.  I wanted the title page and cover to read like this:

The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head

A Series

Volume I

The War of the Stolen Mother

by

Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer

Translated by

Prf. Kaitrin Oliva

       And that was it.  I wanted to maintain the fiction that this was really a work written in the 30th century by an alien intelligent termite and translated by a Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology of that time.  But I'm pretty sure there is no way to accomplish this without a lengthy discussion with CreateSpace's Member Support people, some of whom are rather dim bulbs in the imagination department, if I dare to say such a thing.  And I really doubt they could accommodate me in any case -- the rules are too cut-and-dried.  I'm sure they would say, you can publish under a pseudonym, but that's silly -- I'm neither Di'fa' kro'mi the Remembrancer or Kaitrin Oliva; they haven't lived yet!  And I want the books to be listed on publishing sources under my name.

       So I decided to compromise and put on the t.p. and cover just the series title, volume number, title of the individual volume, and my name as author -- just the normal stuff that will certainly satisfy CS requirements.  However, this morning I went into CS to set up the title information -- and I can't find a field to insert a series title!  I'd have sworn they had one, but I guess not.  They have a place for a volume number, but I can't call this a multivolume novel. 

       So now I've compromised again.  I set the whole thing up under the title "The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head" to which I will append the volume number, the way I did with "Termite Queen."  Then I'm going to use the individual volume titles as subtitles.  It will appear on the Amazon listing and allow for an Amazon search under the subtitle; I just checked it out using the subtitle of "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder."  So my cover and t.p. will read as follows:

The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head

Volume One

The War of the Stolen Mother

by

Lorinda J. Taylor

       Then inside the book, right after the dedication, I'm going to have a fictional facsimile t.p. with all the information about Di'fa'kro'mi and Kaitrin and an imprint with a 30th century date.  The book itself will follow -- Table of Contents, List of Characters, Translator's Foreword, etc.

       Then I thought, where should I put the map?  I was going to put it at the beginning of the 30th century material, but I think it will get lost there.  So I've decided to use it as frontispiece, before the 21st-century title page.  I think that will add a lot to book's appeal.

       I worked on the map this morning and adapting what I'd already drawn didn't turn out to be as easy as I had expected.  (What else is new?)  This map has a horizontal orientation, since Ki'shto'ba and its Companions are traveling from east to west at this point.  So I'm having to turn it and print it sideways, on the left-hand page before the t.p., facing the t.p.  But the darned Word drawing program wouldn't let me rotate it!  I realized it was because you can't rotate a text box, and my maps are loaded with text boxes!  I don't know any other way to put on the captions, pointing out the names of the fortresses, rivers, etc.  The Word Art part of the program just doesn't work well on my current version of Word; the older version that I used to have was much better in that regard.
       So I had to delete all the text boxes and then rotate the page.  Now I'll have to put the boxes back in with the text flipped to run sideways.  Furthermore, I have to change the colored map to black-and-white, because I think it will raise the price of the book too much to ask for a colored illustration.  So I can't color code anything -- for example, in order to differentiate the fortresses of the Shum'za from those of the Da'no'no Shshi.  I may have to vary the symbols.  So you can see I still have a lot of work.

       Now a surprise:  I've decided to print the original colored map here on this blog, on a separate page.  You can go right now to that page and view it!  When I get the b & w one done, I'll add it so you can compare them.  [I had a devil of a time getting the thing to hold its formatting while I turned it into a JPEG!  And would you believe it?  I typed every letter on that map in Times New Roman and it converted part of them into Arial or something similar!  No way to fix it!  Not that it matters particularly -- I kind of like the Arial.  Anyway, on the actual book, I'll just be using copy & paste to put in the drawing.  What this means for Kindle I shudder to think!]

       Addendum to the above, added 6/12/12:  I finished the black-and-white map, but when I inserted it into the template, it completely rearranged the text in the text boxes!  But now I've figured out why it does that.  If there is a default paragraph form in the document into which the material is being inserted, it reverts to that.  Therefore, all the text came out with indention and spacing after paragraphs.  So what I'll always have to do is wait to format the text boxes until the piece is actually in the document.  But it's taken me nearly all day to do this!
       Consequently, I'm not going to try to insert a copy of the map in this blog.  I know it will alter it again and it's not worth taking the time to fix it.  You can look at the colored map and wait for the print book to see the black and white one.

More on Formatting Covers for CreateSpace

       First a progress report on the text of v.1 of the series ("The War of the Stolen Mother"), which I've now begun to prepare for publication.  The editing hasn't amounted to much so far -- some rephrasing to smooth things out and a few changes to the Foreword to account for the fact that there will be six volumes in the series instead of three.  I haven't shortened anything, but I didn't really expect to.  I think this story is practically perfect as it is.  (Self-praise, etc., but I can't help it.  I really like my premises in this series, and if the Shshi can at time be wordy little beasties, that's part of their nature.)

       I'm working on the cover.  I've resized the picture that you can see in an earlier post, which means that it comes out narrower and taller.  I figured out the best way to do this.  Group your picture into one entity, then open Format Autoshape and then Size.  In Size, use Scale, marking Lock Aspect Ratio.  Then gradually reduce the width until the Absolute Width shows as close as possible to what you want (in my case that is 5.75'').  (If you increase the heighth, you end up with something really wide and you have to redraw everything.  If you don't lock aspect ratio, then you'll stretch or narrow the figures instead of merely reducing them in size.) 

       Then make a square on your document that is the size of the cover allowing for bleed (in my case 5.75 " by 9").  Move your adjusted drawing onto the square, fitting it against the left margin of the square.  It will be a perfect fit in width, with lots of empty room at the top.  Then draw another square the size of the actual cover (in my case 5.5" by 8.5")  Position this square on top of the drawing, aligned against the left margin and allowing .25" at the right and .25" at the top and bottom (this is the bleed, the area that will be trimmed in the finished book). 

       Now you have saved all the items in the picture -- you won't have to cut anything off -- and the proportions will be correct.  All you have to do is adjust the positioning of the objects in the drawing to fill the space at the top and to fit in the title.  That will still require some work, but you won't have a huge redrawing job.  And be sure not to let anything important lap into the bleed, but also be sure that the bleed area is filled in with something because you don't know exactly where it will be cut.

This is not what I was planning to write about this morning, but since my posts on Ruminations of a

Remembrancer on formating text and covers for CreateSpace have attracted a lot of hits, I decided to elaborate a little on the cover aspect.  I mean to write another post in the next couple of days; I want to talk about the characters that occur in epics, mythology, and folklore.