Comments A word of advice for writers

[bad_karma00]

When I first placed Billy on Amazon, some of the feedback was that the sentence structure was sometimes off, and that there were a lot of words that were spelled wrong. I tried going back through it, but although I did see a few errors, it didn't seem to warrant some of the comments. Still, I decided to check the upload. Wow.

First. Never, EVER use PDF conversions to upload to Amazon. The process will take italicized words and eliminate the spaces between them, creating a mess. PDF conversion will also occasionally just cut a sentence off. Maybe it will move part of it somewhere else, or just skip a line, but it may also just cut it right out. I have no idea why that is. I do, however, know that it happens.

If you decide to place something you've written on Amazon, go online and download Open Office. It's a free download. Once you've transferred your work to Open Office, you can then save it in HTML format.

Uploading HTML to Amazon will work much much easier than a PDF, and will not, that I have seen so far, wreak havoc with your story, or it's sentence structure.

I know that only a few are interested in doing something like this, but for those that are, I'll let you learn from my mistakes, lol.


Bad

 

[kaijafon]

Hey Bad! HI! I just finished reading your story about Trip! wonderful!!!! REALLY hope you do the whole trilogy

just wanted you to know I enjoyed it tremendously... I can't seem to post on that site.... blogger either.

Thanks!

 

[bad_karma00]

Hey Bad! HI! I just finished reading your story about Trip! wonderful!!!! REALLY hope you do the whole trilogy

just wanted you to know I enjoyed it tremendously... I can't seem to post on that site.... blogger either.

Thanks!

Fan Fic Net may require membership to post now, but they also sometimes have issues. If you meant my wordpress site when you said blogger, I thought anyone could post, but I'll have to check, now. It may be you have to have an account to post there. Sorry. It used to be a lot less strict there when I started.

Glad you enjoyed the Trip fic. If I can find the time, I plan on doing the whole thing, just don't know if I'll have the time. I have a Firefly fic I need to finish, but I've hit the writer's bloc from way down south on it and can't seem to get by it.

Bad

 

[pauldude000]

When I first placed Billy on Amazon, some of the feedback was that the sentence structure was sometimes off, and that there were a lot of words that were spelled wrong. I tried going back through it, but although I did see a few errors, it didn't seem to warrant some of the comments. Still, I decided to check the upload. Wow.

First. Never, EVER use PDF conversions to upload to Amazon. The process will take italicized words and eliminate the spaces between them, creating a mess. PDF conversion will also occasionally just cut a sentence off. Maybe it will move part of it somewhere else, or just skip a line, but it may also just cut it right out. I have no idea why that is. I do, however, know that it happens.

If you decide to place something you've written on Amazon, go online and download Open Office. It's a free download. Once you've transferred your work to Open Office, you can then save it in HTML format.

Uploading HTML to Amazon will work much much easier than a PDF, and will not, that I have seen so far, wreak havoc with your story, or it's sentence structure.

I know that only a few are interested in doing something like this, but for those that are, I'll let you learn from my mistakes, lol.


Bad

Dude, I tried Open Office initially with my story Surviving In America: Under Siege. I will not make that mistake again. It tried to be helpful, like microsoft. However, it is not nearly as good at it as microsoft. I had a file that required six editing passes to nominally weed out its helpfulness. The main problem was with its spell checking and use of global search and replace, along with its grammar rules. Nothing worked perfectly, or even close to perfectly.

I said to heck with it, and spent the bucks for Microsoft Office Professional, and am SO glad I did, even though it is ridiculously expensive. Once MS Word is configured properly, you can crank out quality.

You can achieve it to a certain degree with Open Office, but you will fight it, unless they have completely redesigned whole sections of Writer code since I used it last in 2012.

Also, upload the files to Amazon in .docx format. Their system works the best with it, from what I have seen. (I have nine books published now on Amazon.)

Just some serious advice.

 

[bad_karma00]

Dude, I tried Open Office initially with my story Surviving In America: Under Siege. I will not make that mistake again. It tried to be helpful, like microsoft. However, it is not nearly as good at it as microsoft. I had a file that required six editing passes to nominally weed out its helpfulness. The main problem was with its spell checking and use of global search and replace, along with its grammar rules. Nothing worked perfectly, or even close to perfectly.

I said to heck with it, and spent the bucks for Microsoft Office Professional, and am SO glad I did, even though it is ridiculously expensive. Once MS Word is configured properly, you can crank out quality.

You can achieve it to a certain degree with Open Office, but you will fight it, unless they have completely redesigned whole sections of Writer code since I used it last in 2012.

Also, upload the files to Amazon in .docx format. Their system works the best with it, from what I have seen. (I have nine books published now on Amazon.)

Just some serious advice.

I haven't experienced that kind of trouble with Open Office, but I also don't really use too many of the 'helps' so maybe that's why. I didn't know about the docx though, and appreciate the info. I used that to upload to FanFiction.Net back when I was doing fanfiction.

Definitely going to give that a try. As for Microsoft Office Pro, I've been considering it. Apparently Word is the preferred method for uploading to Amazon, and a few other places. Some require e-Pub, which I have no experience with, and honestly not a lot of time to get used to it anyway. Other sites require still other stuff, (though I'm sure you know that).

I appreciate the info!


BAd

 

[pauldude000]

I tried Draft2digital and Smashwords before Amazon pulled the Kindle Unlimited BS, and I use Lulu for hardback and Createspace for paperback. MS Office Pro covers all of those bases. I even get less hassles making the paperback version (such as the table for the Contents page, that used to be a small nightmare). Draft2Digital or Smashwords, either one, will get your books on Apple, Sony, and Barnes & Noble. Createspace will get your paperback pretty much everywhere it needs to be, including bookstores if you get a demand. None of the other outlets are really worth the time or effort.