Ebook Learning Experiences

Hello, world! I'm still alive though I haven't blogged in a few days. I've been snowed under with work.

First, I had an exhausting time getting my last ebook published. I had a self-imposed deadline, and I nearly killed myself meeting it.

When I got that book published, I went back to the edits on The Trouble With Love . I even had a new cover designed for it since I had a thematic idea for the series now.

So The Trouble With Love, Book 1 of Texas One Night Stands, has a new cover, and Book 2 of Texas One Night Stands, Romeo and Judy Anne is live and available for sale now.

I've just finished uploading revised files of all my romance novel ebooks so you should be receiving a message from Amazon telling you that you can upload a revised file at now charge. I sent a notice to Nook about that, but I never received an acknowledgment that they would notify their buyers. In fact, they ignored me completely.

Now I'll turn my attention to finishing my next romantic comedy Old Enough To Know Better and getting back to my blog series Ebook Success, soon to be an ebook too.

Bottom Line

I just want everyone to know that I will always go back and correct an ebook with typos or errors regardless of whether a copy editor did a sloppy job or what. Even if I contract with someone to do editing or cover art or whatever, I figure the buck stops with me because my name is on the cover. I want my books to be the best they can be, and that includes their editing and formatting. So, I'll always go back and make corrections if they're called for.

Learning Experience

Publishing ebooks has been a learning experience involving every aspect of the publishing business. The insight into what copy editors and typesetters do has been most informative.

Since I've got ebooks out, and I read a LOT of ebooks. I see some errors from book to book. Now that I kind of understand this aspect of the business, I can see why these typos and errors appear in ebooks. Part of it has to do with how writers write. In the past, we probably all kind of did it the same. We think at the keyboard.

We type a word and automatically hit the space bar. Maybe we decide to end the sentence there. If it's dialogue, we might type the end quote marks without thinking to go back and remove that tiny space.

The problem is that when a copy editor edits on the monitor, that space looks so tiny as to be invisible. Then when it comes out in ebook, that space is like the Grand Canyon. We writers have keyboard habits that when digitally published can create messy ebooks.

We're also used to using diacritical marks. If you publish with Smashwords, these diacritical marks create havoc, causing all kinds of weird marks to appear.

Part of it has to do with what version of MS Word you are running. MS Word is the industry standard for the source file on most digital publishing platforms. The most recent version of Word seem to create problems.

With Kindle, there are some formatting issues that I just can't make sense of. If a new paragraph starts, and the page scroll makes that paragraph appear at the top of the digital page, it will not be indented. Ever. I don't know why. Makes no sense, but I've seen this in just about every Kindle book.

Some people have weird block indentations appear suddenly in their Kindle displayed ebook. They didn't purposely indent it this way, but it will appear throughout the book here and there.

Takeaway Truth

An author should work hard to produce a good ebook and to present it well, but some technical issues just seem to be out of the author's control. Focus on what you can control, and don't agonize over the rest.