1. I wanted the ability to make changes, additions, and corrections immediately--and I didn't want to have to pay for small corrections.
2. I wanted control over the final look of the book, and there are a lot of decisions you can only make by trying one thing and then another. Books are a visual medium. I wanted the chance to see different versions of my books and to experiment with where to place information.
3. I wanted consistency from one book in the series to another.
4. I wanted to save money by using a formatting program that would work both for print and digital. That would also mean I could make one set of corrections to a file instead of having to change two files.
5. I wanted a formatting program that would keep the cost of my print books down. Some formats add a lot of extra pages--and that, in turn, increases the cost of your final book.
There are a lot of tools out there for formatting. I chose a product that promised technical support, but sadly, did not deliver. However, I was determined to slog my way through the program.
The weird part about formatting books is that what you see is NOT what you get. A book might look absolutely fine in MS Word, but not convert properly to mobi (Kindle) or epub (for other e-readers). In addition, a book might look fine on one Amazon device (say a Kindle Paperwhite), but not so good on the new Kindle Fire.
Furthermore, the use of computers has changed many of the accepted rules for formatting.
Here's an example: Back in the Good Old Days, when I took typing in high school, we were taught to hit the space bar twice at the end of a sentence.
Today you hit it once. I've been told that has something to do with computers and spacing, but I can't swear to that. I do think it looks better to have only one space, but maybe that's because I'm now used to one space. Who knows?
Similarly, I've decided to put a space before and after a long dash, even though I was taught not to. Otherwise, e-readers tend to clump the dash and the word together as one unit. Because it's generally a long unit, you get a weird empty gap at the end of a line, and the word plus the dash all clumped together on the next line.
One of my publishers corrected me when I used four dots for an ellipsis at the end of a sentence. (Three dots for the ellipsis and one for the full-stop or period.) Now I just use three dots for an ellipsis at the end of a sentence. Otherwise, those dots go on and on forever.
It used to be that you could hit a key in Word and reveal all the formatting. You can do something like that now, but it's not as clear as it once was. These little embedded commands can really mess things up when you are formatting a book. Sentences get stretched out. Lines jump from page to page. And you wind up pulling your hair out.
But I'm learning to suss out those hidden commands. Bit by bit, I'm conquering my new formatting program. I keep telling myself this is like crafting. You do a little, make a few mistakes, fix them, do a little more, and so on and so on.
Have you ever tried to format a book? What program did you use? Any suggestions?
