The Shed 15

originally posted by: Night Star

Welcome Shlaw and congratulations on your e-book!

Thank you! I am very happy (but doing yet another formatting for kindle )

originally posted by: LucidWarrior
a reply to: shlaw

Well, yeah. Haha

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be glib in my response, but I am happy
the whole writing process is done, not just the ebook part. Having
done just one, I am hardly an expert on it, but here are a few things
I ran into doing the conversion:

Trying to navigate all the different sites that offered advice was
daunting to say the least. One immediate takeaway was that an
ebook is more a web page than book. That's so it can be viewed
on as many different devices/platforms as possible. Because of
that, proper formatting is critical, and is different from a typical
formatting one might do in Word.

I was fortunate that my book was simple; no pictures other than
the front cover, and no fancy formatting ie tables, etc. I was
unfortunate in that I am using Openoffice. Most of the sites that
check a ebook before upload work best with a Word Doc file. And
of course, Openoffice doesn't save doc files with all the required
formatting. Ugh.

The book can be done in RTF, but by the time I'd already spent
untold hours doing another reformat and converted to RTF, some
of the formatting was lost yet again. I should have done the very
last format in RTF to avoid the issue but didn't know.

Later I found a site that advised using libreoffice as it saves docs
better, but shortly after I found another more recent site that
complained it was no longer supported and didn't work anymore.

Like I said earlier, lots of info, lots of contradictions, and it can
get confusing really fast.

Anyway, I am doing one more reformat today to conform to Kindle's
guidelines while I still have an active trial of MS office.

Note that making an ebook does not save time, nor make any part
of the process easier. All it really does, in my opinion, is remove
the spectre of being refused fifty times by publishers as has happened
to some (now) very successful authors.

Here is my estimated total time for my 40,000 word novella:
Overall writing: started the book 5 years ago, the last 2 months were hardcore 8 hours a day
Rewrite: a complete story overhaul that took 3 weeks, 8 hours a day
Editing: hard to be accurate here- I did at least 30 or 40 reads for grammar/spelling/concise(ness?)
Submission to professional editor: took 1 week to get it back
More editing: did about another dozen passes after getting it back
Formatting for ebook: 2 weeks to learn and get it right, plus ongoing but almost perfect
Create cover: I'm merely adequate in photoshop, so it took a week
*** There's probably more I'm forgetting, but anyway, thank god it's done for the most part.

Hello Jess! Still out in virus land eh? Nasty buggers! Hope it gets resolved soon! I'll have some of that coffee!

Slaw, I can see you are quite passionate about your writing and I'm sure you will get your book out there. I am old school and prefer a real book with paper pages I can turn. I am way behind in my reading and have books sitting around here and there waiting to be read. I do have kindle on my computer, but once I turn this thing on, I am on the forum or facebook or youtube or whatever and can't seem to tear myself away.

Good luck in your writing endeavors!

To all Sheddites everywhere, I wish you a lovely day!

originally posted by: Night Star
Hello Jess! Still out in virus land eh? Nasty buggers! Hope it gets resolved soon! I'll have some of that coffee!

Slaw, I can see you are quite passionate about your writing and I'm sure you will get your book out there. I am old school and prefer a real book with paper pages I can turn. I am way behind in my reading and have books sitting around here and there waiting to be read. I do have kindle on my computer, but once I turn this thing on, I am on the forum or facebook or youtube or whatever and can't seem to tear myself away.

Good luck in your writing endeavors!

To all Sheddites everywhere, I wish you a lovely day!

I think I would piddle myself if it ever got to print...
ahh, just the thought (rushes to washroom)

a reply to: shlaw

Hahaha! I'm sure it would very exciting!

Everyone, please wish Swanne/John, a very happy ATS Anniversary here...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Browsing the world of the Shed before I'm ready to go off to the grocery store. I'll be back this evening.

a reply to: LookingForABetterLife

LOL! Cute pic! See you tonight Blue!

a reply to: Night Star
Hey Night - Yes still playing in the world of viruses. URG

Blue - That cat pic is adorable!!!!

a reply to: Martin75

I know you'll fix things and all will be well! You're my smart cookie!

a reply to: Night Star
Well it is good to know that someone has faith. LOL

How is your day going? The weather is beautiful here but I've only been out to smoke (see smoking is getting me outside in the sunshine, LOL)

Dropping in to say something horrible has happened that my phone isn't wanting to load at except super slow.

Good morning though!

Edit to add: of course my phone decides to be all fast right after I posted this

Hello denizens of the Shed!

Welcome to Shlaw - good to see you here chief. Read the latest installment on the D'Arc thread - nice work. Not looking too optimistic for Keeper, though.

Hi Admin! Hope your anti-viral efforts are going well. Seems like it was a pretty nasty one. There were a lot of machines at my office that needed to be patched or flat out re-imaged. Serious stuff.

Hello to everyone else!

For those interested I'll be posting the next episode of Falling yet this afternoon. Stay tuned!

Jess weather here is warm and sunshiney. I even opened a couple of windows! Yay!
I keep forgetting that you smoke. LOL
Hope you are making your own. I would never want to pay what they ask for ciggs. Someone had given me a good machine and I found the cheapest tobacco and cheapest tubes. They come out like a profesionally made cigarettes and you save a fortune!

Hi Lucid! I could never use a phone to be posting on forums. I have a laptop with a good sized screen and easy to type with this keyboard, not some teeny tiny thing. God, it would take me forever to post with a phone, even the simplest of lines. LOL

Waves at Shep. I'll get to your story eventually. I always do.

Hey what happened to Gordi, Timely, Pheonix, Jiminy, Kaelci, Dave, Visited by us and many others? ...Sighs. Time to send the dragon search party out again? OR...are they all lurking in the damned bushes again? I set up a nice place for them out in the garden. Maybe I shouldn't have done that.

a reply to: Night Star

Yeah I hate posting on my phone it takes me forever to write my stories haha.

Aye send out the dragons, I'll get the faeries looking

a reply to: Night Star

Hello Mayor Night Star your Elvenness! *waves*

OK, so I posted another episode of Falling for those following the story. As always you may follow the link in my signature to the beginning of the thread or you may use this link to go directly to the new post:
Falling: An Epic Fantasy - A Keen Mind

Just got this lovely message from JustMike to pass along to everyone here.

Dada & I have been living at our cottage since April 2nd -- ie, a little over 6 weeks. We haven't even been back to Prague once since then. Instead we're just living a very quiet and peaceful country lifestyle.

I wanted Dada to feel that our cottage is "home", and if we did trips to Prague to see how our flat's reconstruction is going, she might get confused. So, we've stayed here and only visited people we know in the local area.

Our Prague flat's reconstruction/renovation is now done and it should be going on the market within a week. Hopefully it'll sell fairly quickly and then I can finally stop worrying about money matters!

Living here at the cottage is definitely helping Dada. It's so low-pressure compared to living in the capital city, and now the weather is finally getting warmer and the days are longer, it's just gorgeous around here. The trees are coming in green and/or blossoming, birds are everywhere, and the air is so clean and fresh from the forests all around.

We were having a cup of coffee this afternoon with the windows wide open to let in the warm air, and a swallow flew in! She flew around for a few seconds, doubtless a bit confused to find a sky that was plastered over and painted white (!! LOL) but we just sat quietly and after a few moments she saw her way out and flew outside again.

What a buzz. Never, ever saw anything like that when we lived in the city. But then, we never had any swallows where we lived.

Dada and our neighbour Pani Vesela (Pani = Mrs, and Vesela means "happy" , so Mrs Happy is how we'd translate it -- I kid you not!) are becoming quite good friends. Mrs V, who's been a widow for 16 years, comes over every afternoon and then they go out for a walk and just chat about whatever. Great for both of them as they are much of an age, and it's also a little respite for me. Just that hour or so per day when I don't have to worry about her at all takes off so much pressure. I almost never had that in Prague.

Main thing, we're keeping well, I'm slowly making some progress with Book II in the Tales of the Goddess series, and also looking forward to when I can afford to get a permanent internet connection. Right now we just use one from our neighbour's when he can lend it to us. Not ideal as it's only time to time, but it's still very kind of him to give us use of his portable wi-fi modem thingy.

Hope you're keeping well and are also getting some warmer, sunnier days,

Mike (and Dada)

a reply to: Night Star

Awesome! He takes care of his grandma?

a reply to: LucidWarrior

No, his lovely wife.
He is the one I told you about that has an e-book besides our other member Pheonix.

Things to do, but I shall return. Hugs everyone!