Witcherley Books

Great Stories - Fantastic Characters - Quality Puzzles

getting started in self-publishing

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Distribution Plan for an Independent Publisher for eBooks and POD

Before we started our publishing journey we considered how we expected to print and distribute books. This is the outline plan we put together. It focuses on distributing to Amazon as paperbacks and ebooks, and considers the routes to make books available more widely as paperbacks to online and physical bookshops. It assumes paperbacks are initially printed-on-demand (POD) via both LightningSource and Amazon Createspace (although it isn’t necessary to use both). We’ve not completed all the distribution paths we first thought of (those with dotted links are pending), as, for instance, we’ve not completed any audio books or distributed any short stories yet, partially as audio via Amazon’s ACW wasn’t initially available in the UK (although it is now). Some of the things listed were tried (like Amazon eStore and Amazon Select) and were a mixed success which we may or may now continue with (most likely not continue with).

Outline Production and Print Plan for Small Independent Publisher of ebooks and paperbacks (POD)

Originally posted to wordpress.com on 4 November 2014.

Six years on and this distribution plan is more or less the same. CreateSpace is now KDP Print. We no longer use the Amazon astores. We have also now added audiobooks.

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Generating Book Interior PDF for LightningSource with Adobe Acrobat XI Pro

LightningSource printing can be used for print-on-demand (POD) books, or for small print runs. Their book setup requires the cover and the interior to be loaded separately. The cover has to be built to a specific size and their website has a template generator (https://myaccount.lightningsource.com/Portal/Tools/CoverTemplateGenerator) to produce the right size of cover for the type of book, the number of pages, paper type and book finish. The book interior is however down to you, but must comply with LightningSource’s requirements for a PDF. We’ve uploaded a few interior files now, they have all been accepted on the first upload, and here we share the settings we’ve used.
First thing to note is that we use Adobe Acrobat XI Pro to generate the PDF. There are later versions of Adobe Acrobat available, or it can be run from Adobe’s cloud Software as a Service (SaaS) options, or have a look through eBay for a copy of a suitable version (with a licence key).
Once you have Adobe Acrobat the following may help as this is how we generate our PDFs. This assumes that you have already formatted the document into a mirrored page layout in MS Word with appropriate margins for a book being printed by LightningSource, and that the book is formated into pages, proofread and ready to go.

  1. In MS Word, select Print and then select ‘Adobe PDF’ as the printer.

2. Select the button under ‘Adobe PDF’ for ‘Printer Properties’.

3. Select ‘Adobe PDF Page Size’ and either pick the size you want or select ‘Add’ and create a customized size. We created a customized size. The size for our books is 5.25in x 8 in or 133.35mm x 203.2mm.

4. Select ‘Default Settings’ and ‘Edit’ to choose the settings to configure the PDF file. These are the settings we use, first for ‘General’. Here select the ‘Compatibility’ mode and set the default page size.

5. then for Images

6. for Fonts. Select to embed all fonts.

7. for Color

8. for Advanced

9. for Standards. We chose ‘PDF/X-3 (Acrobat 4.0 Compatable)’, although more compatibility options are supported by LightningSource so choose one available at LightningSource.

10. Once you have all the settings you want select ‘Save As’ and give the format a name you can find again later.

11. With the ‘Adobe Properties’ selected, choose ‘Print’ to create the PDF file.

12. Once the PDF is created, Adobe Acrobat will open automatically, if not, open the document with Acrobat, and then check that all the fonts being used in the document are the ones you want and that no others have snuck in. Select File->Properties->Fonts. If any are wrong or not embedded, then go back to the MS Word document and remove or correct them before recreating the PDF again as above.

The PDF file created can also be used at other printers provided they don’t have different print sizes, different margins, or different PDF standards, so, for instance, the file output from these instructions can alternatively be loaded at Amazon’s CreateSpace although the MS Word file margins for CreateSpace can be different.

Originally posted on wordpress.com in 20 October 2014.

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ePUB to MOBI in 5 Steps on Windows Platform

Here is a simple method showing how to convert your book from ePUB into a MOBI file for Amazon Kindles. It can use the same steps as for a conversion from MS Word. If you have a lot of photos and pictures, or weird or fixed layouts then this won’t be quite right for you, but if you have a text or fiction book with a few pictures this should be fine.

  1. Download Amazon’s KindleGen program (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765211). Get the latest version. Save it to the same directory/folder as the epub file you want to migrate.
  2. Create a new text file and call it runkindlegen.bat. Put the following text into it (change the two names “your html file.epub” and “your book name.mobi”) and save the file. @echo off “kindlegen.exe” “your html file.epub” -c2 -o “your book name.mobi” -verbose pause
  3. To create the .MOBI just double-click on the runkindlegen.bat file you have created. It will open a small black command window and as ‘verbose’ is set it will list any errors, warnings and information messages on the screen.
  4. Go through the messages and look for any that start Wxxx or Exxx. You can ignore the ones that start Ixxxx as these are just for information. If you don’t include a cover file then there will be at least one warning message for the missing cover. For any other messages check to see what the problem is and if you can fix it.
  5. Download and install Amazon’s Kindle Previewer (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765261), and use it to check the .MOBI file loads and reads ok.

The KindleGen program page (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765211) has some help options if you want more control on the formatting.

If the ePUB includes a cover, then if you’re planning on uploading the MOBI file to Amazon then you should remove the cover from the ePUB first otherwise you end up with two covers.

Good luck.

Originally posted on wordpress.com on 19 October 2014.

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QuarkXpress 9.5.4 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for ePUB

We have just finished creating and checking the ePUB files for our latest book: Inspector Hobbes and the Gold Diggers by Wilkie Martin. And we thought we’d share the formatting we have used for it.

In our earlier post Building an ePUB with QuarkXpress 9.5.4 and Sigil (https://witcherleybooks.com/2020/02/22/building-an-epub-with-quarkxpress-9-5-4-and-sigil/) we described how we format ePUBs in QuarkXpress and how we use the pre-defined Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) style names in the QuarkXpress files to control the format of the ePUB when it is output. In this post we share what the contents of the amended style.css and toc.css files that we have used for our books when generating the ePUBs from QuarkXpress. Though please note that we then also make further amendments to the ePUB file after it is exported, so this gives us the start position and does the vast majority of the book formatting.

These are used for English fiction books with a simple layout, with one or two photos/logos and some centralized text. These books are reflow format and do not included any fixed format, tables or indexes.

We use the standard QuarkXpress style names for these areas of the books:

  • – body = for body
    – byline = for author name
    – figure = for figures
    – figure-caption = for some centralized text, for the copyright page, for the company name and ISBNs
    – figure-credit = for figure credit
    – indented-para = for the standard chapter text – all indented
    – pullquote = for subtitle text
    – title1 = for the book title
    – title2 = for the advert headers for othr books available
    – chapter-name = for the chapter numbers, and section titles
    – headline1 = for the first paragraph in a chapter or section (not indented)
    – headline2 = for the last paragraph in a section (indented and with a space after it to separate the sections)

To these we have added styles for centering and a style id for copyright (see our post Centering for ePUB (https://witcherleybooks.com/centering-text-for-an-epub/) which describes why and how we’ve used this.

The QuarkXpress CSS files are found in this folder: QuarkXpress9\XTensions\DigitalPublishing\Templates\css

Here is the replacement style.css file that we have used.

.body {
margin-left: 0.5em;
margin-right: 0.5em;
orphans: 1;
widows: 1;
}
.byline {
font-size: 125%;
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
margin-top: 1em;
margin-bottom: 1em;
}
.figure {
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
}
.figure-caption {
font-size: 75%;
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
margin-bottom:1em;
}
.figure-credit {
margin-top: 1em;
margin-bottom: 1em;
margin-left: 2em;
text-align: left;
text-indent: 2em;
}
.indented-para {
text-indent: 1.25em;
}
.pullquote {
font-size: 125%;
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
margin-top: 1em;
margin-bottom: 2em;
}
.title1 {
font-size: 150%;
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
line-height: 2em;
}
.title2 {
margin-top: 1em;
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
margin-bottom: 1em;
}
.chapter-name {
font-size: 150%;
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
margin-bottom: 1em;
}
.headline1 {
}
.headline2 {
text-indent: 1.25em;
margin-bottom : 1em;
}
.bold {
font-weight: bold;
}
.italic {
font-style: italic;
}
.underline {
text-decoration: underline;
}
.strikethrough {
text-decoration: line-through;
}
.strikethrough-and-underline {
text-decoration: line-through underline;
}
.superscript {
vertical-align: super;
}
.subscript {
vertical-align: sub;
}
.superior {
vertical-align: super;
}
p {
margin-top: 0;
margin-bottom: 0;
orphans: 1;
widows: 1;
}
p.title1 {
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
}
p.title2 {
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
}
p.pullquote {
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
}
p.byline {
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
}
p.figure-caption {
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
}
p.figure {
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
}
p.chapter-name {
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
}
p.headline1 {
}
p.headline2 {
}
#copyright {
font-size: 75%;
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
}
span.centered {
display:block;
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
}

And the replacement toc.css that we have used:

#toc-style {
font-size: 100%;
}
#toc-style li {*/
list-style-type: none;
}
#toc-style ol {
font-size: 100%;
}
#toc-style ol li {
padding-left: 10px;
list-style-type: lower-alpha;
}
#toc-style ol ol {
font-size: 100%;
}
#toc-style ol ol li {
padding-left: 5px;
list-style-type: lower-roman;
}
.space-fix {
visibility: hidden;
line-height: 0;
}

These are the formats we’ve used so far. It is possible we will find things we need to change in them later. Once we generate the ePUB we use a number of devices to check the layout is ok and matches what we want. We can’t guarantee these will give you what you want, they are just an example of what can be done.

If you notice anything wrong or can suggest a better way of laying out any of the above then please let us know, we’d be happy to hear from you.

Definitions:

centered – text/pictures that appear in the middle of the page (using American spelling)css – cascading style sheet – a common holding place for the html commands used to control the layout

ePUB – electronic publication, a zipped file containing files for each book chapter and layout files that make up an e-book

toc – table of contents

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MS Word to MOBI in 7 Steps on Windows Platform

Here is a simple method showing how to convert your book from MS Word into a MOBI file for Amazon Kindles. If you have a lot of photos and pictures, or weird layouts then this won’t be quite right for you, but if you have a text or fiction book with a few pictures this should be fine.

  1. Make sure your book is nice and tidy in MS Word first. That you have consistent fonts, and not too many of them etc. If you are planning to load the .MOBI to Amazon then you don’t need to have the cover in the file as this is loaded separately and added to the file by Amazon.
  2. Use the ‘save as’ option to save as type ‘Web Page Filtered’.
  3. Download Amazon’s KindleGen program (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765211). Get the latest version. Save it to the same directory/folder as the html file you created in step 2.
  4. Create a new text file and call it runkindlegen.bat. Put the following text into it (change the two names “your html file from step2.htm” and “your book name.mobi”) and save the file. @echo off “kindlegen.exe” “your html file from step2.htm” -c2 -o “your book name.mobi” -verbose pause
  5. To create the .MOBI just double-click on the runkindlegen.bat file you have created. It will open a small black command window and as ‘verbose’ is set it will list any errors, warnings and information messages on the screen.
  6. Go through the messages and look for any that start Wxxx or Exxx. You can ignore the ones that start Ixxxx as these are just for information. If you don’t include a cover file then there will be at least one warning message for the missing cover. For any other messages check to see what the problem is and if you can fix it.
  7. Download and install Amazon’s Kindle Previewer (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765261), and use it to check the .MOBI file loads and reads ok.

And that’s it. The KindleGen program page (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765211) has some help options if you want to control the formatting a bit more.

Good luck.

Originally posted to wordpress.com on 17 September 2014.

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Centering Text for an ePUB

This is how we center the text for our ePUB files. After creating our ePUB files we found that the centering of text didn’t always work – even on devices where we’d tested the ePUB files during the build. This is due to the ePUB that eventually ends up on the ereading device going through the proprietory load process for the device, and some of them render the centering commands differently. We therefore used a combination of approaches to centering – though it is also worth considering if you want to center at all. Some devices offer the user the chance to control how the text is shown, what justification to use, and some of the code suggested below will mean that the user’s preferences are ignored, so don’t use this approach too widely.

This is what is needed around the text you want to center within each of the text html files:
<p class=”yourclass”><span class=”centered”>Your text to center</span></p>

This is also needed, assuming that you want the whole ‘body’ centered then can add the ‘id’ centertext, but still do the spans around each individual paragraph (p):
<body class=xyz id=”centertext”>
With the main text area that makes up the ‘body’. This is the main area of the book chapter it starts with <body> and ends with </body>
</body>

These are the controls for this that we included in the style.css:

centertext {

text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
}
span.centered { display:block; text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; }

The style.css was associated to each file with the following code at the top of the html file in the head section:
<head>
css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” />
<title>Your title</title>
</head>

Definitions: ePUB – format for an electronic book ereader – device to read an ebook css – cascading style sheet, set of shared formatting commands to control the appearance html – hypertext markup language. The formatting words that go around the text to tell the ereader how you want the book to appear (within < and > characters) 0em – here used for text-indent, this gives the size of the indent. It says it is made up of no (zero) elements of the type called ’em’. The size of em is the equivalent to the size of the ‘m’ character of the font you are using for that part of the text #centretext – the name of this section of the css file p, class, span, /span, /p, body, /body, head, /head, link, href, rel, type, title – html commands text-align, text-indent, span.centered, display-block – css control commands

Originally posted to wordpress.com on 11 September 2014.

When we tested our ePubs in various devices we found some text that should be centred wasn’t, so we adopted the above approach. While the last ePubs we’ve created haven’t had that problem we’ve kept the post in case e encounter the problem again so we can hopefully use the same fixes.