Post by waltkie on Feb 3, 2015 19:27:14 GMT -8
Hello all, finally got a book "published," as it is, published from a manuscript typed in MS Word without knowledge of ebook formatting. To all new authors expecting to publish on Smashwords, read the style guide FIRST, before typing one sentence, it will save you much editing time. If it weren't for the recent snow storms and holding up inside, I'd still be editing.
Style guide is, for the most part, excellent and true. My first submission was accepted without errors by closely editing according to the style guide; measure twice, cut once is good for ebooks as well as carpentry.
The biggest thrill I got thus far is the tool I stumbled upon to fix my endnotes; the thrill came as a result of not having to fix each note by hand, one at a damn time. Mine is a non-fiction book with beau coup endnotes, endnotes that were auto inserted via MS Words tool bar, a big ol no-no for ebooks (at least those created through SW). So, there I was with a bundle of endnotes and no idea how to convert them en masse...and the snow had stopped and the sun was coming out.
And then God created "Note Stripper," and it was good, and he and I loved it! I found this little gem through Google (the web is amazing if you let it be). They offer this for a price but there is also a 45-day free trial. Being from New England, I chose the frugal route...free trial. What this tool did, in no time at all, was take all my auto generated notes and convert them to regular text, along with the corresponding endnote marker numbers, and clearing the manuscript of any auto generated endnote codes. Voila!
Of course, I still had to link each endnote marker with...something; I didn't give a 120% and link to each corresponding note and vise versa. I cheated.
Using the freshly swept endnote text, I merely created a "Note, Chapter X" section at the end of each chapter, it is merely normal text with a style different from that of the body text, the notes in that chapter are linked to that section but not to the exact corresponding note.
So, read the style guide first, and seek out "Note Stripper"....or write fiction.