During one of my reviews, I got into a conversation with the editor who was working on Christina Weaver's book about this problem. Afterwards, she offered to do a guest blog post for me. So here it is, folks! What everyone wishes had been online earlier. ;-) I hope this helps you ready your next book to venture out into the great unknown.
Ebook Typesetting
As I have learned the hard way, ebook typesetting is harder
than you would think. It’s so far removed from print typesetting that they
aren’t even in the same county, and it requires HTML and CSS code which is
enough to make any writer’s head spin. It can prove profoundly frustrating, and
requires some research and patience.
Having just gone through this process, myself, I can provide
you with tips on how to typeset your book for (most) ebook formats. Keep in
mind that ebook formatting also differs from device to device. A .mobi has
different requirements than an .epub, for example. Annoyed yet? Good.
While I know Scrivener and several other programs can export
books into ebook format the way I am going to discuss is using Word and
Calibre. Most people have Word already (and if you don’t, I know Open Office
has the same functions, so you are fine), but if you don’t I can’t help you
other than to suggest Open Office which is a free, open-source office suite
that mirrors the Microsoft Office suite well. I can’t help you with Mac options
since I don’t own one and know very little about them. If you are not familiar
with code I strongly advise you acquire a WYSIWYG HTML editing program. I have
not used the freeware programs for doing this, but if you type “WYSIWYG HTML
editor” into Google you will receive a bunch of hits.
In Word, start with your complete manuscript as clean as you
possibly can. Edited and with chapter headers, and everything. Keep in mind
that you cannot use crazy fonts for
this. Stick with the basics like Times New Roman, Arial, Georgia, and so on. If
you use crazy fonts the fonts will very likely be changed to “the next best” by
devices and this will lead you to formatting problems. Also be aware that
readers often will change the font themselves to ones they prefer. With ebooks you
have to focus more on the structure than the aesthetics because every reader
and every e-reading device will set them up differently. It’s just a reality we
have to live with. At this point you should “justify” the entire thing. Don’t
worry how it looks on your Word screen; it’ll look horrible. But it’s better on
an e-reader by a substantial margin and produces a far more professional ebook.
Now,
your next step is going to be setting up your “normal” style. This is extremely
important. You MUST use styles to set up
your book, or they will not translate into code.
You can change these styles however you like by right
clicking them and making changes to their natural layout. You also want to make
sure the “normal” paragraph style does not have breaks before or after
paragraphs. This will result in ugly paragraph breaks in the end product. It’s
fine to have when you’re working on the manuscript, but at this stage you want
to remove those. You can still use bold, italic, and underline formatting
tools, but do not change the font or size using the built-in tools.
Now highlight the entire document and apply the “normal”
style to it. Yes, the whole thing. Even your chapter headers.
Once you’ve done that you should go through and set up your
chapter headers. You should use “Heading 1” (and modify the style until it
looks how you want), but I suggest keeping it simple. Like I said earlier – no
crazy fonts. It’ll cause formatting issues later. Make sure you are using
“Heading 1” – it will be important later. For the book Insomnia just released I
used the Garamond font as the chapter header and Times New Roman for the main
text.
Once you have gone through and done all the formatting to
the chapter headers you are going to need to add page breaks ONLY at the end of chapters. These must
be done using the “page break” function. You cannot just hit “enter” until the pages separate. This is extremely
important – if you do page breaks wrong it will mess up the flow of the
document and can cause unsightly errors on e-reader screens. Remember, you are
formatting for a screen of many sizes; the reader will be flowing the text from
page to page automatically, so even if it looks right on your screen it won’t
on the e-reader. Since e-readers don’t have a set size you cannot determine
what a specific “page” looks like on every device. Unlike formatting for print,
you need to allow the device to adjust the file to its parameters as much as
possible.
Finally, you will need to create a table of contents in your
document, and I don’t mean just typed. It needs hyperlinks! This is simple to
do in Word, particularly if you used Heading 1 for your style for each chapter
start. These are important to your book in ebook format because it allows
readers to hop to their chapter without having to flip through every page of
the book.
To do this you should start on a blank page and write “Table
of Contents” in whatever heading you used for chapter headings. From there
enter down to a new line. Now, the instructions I’m about to give are exclusive
to Word – I don’t know how Open Office or other programs handle this.
On this new line you are going to go to Insert and then
Hyperlink.
You then click “Bookmark” and all your chapter headings
should be listed. Click on the chapter you wish to add and hit “ok”. It should
return you to the page I have the picture of above. Check that the “Text to
display” is what you want and correct it as needed. Repeat this process for
every chapter in your book.
There is a way to do it if you haven’t used the “heading”
style for your chapter headings, but it requires you to go to each chapter
heading and create a bookmark there. It’s more labor intensive than this
version, and I find it unnecessary.
As an overview, so far you should have:
·
Opened a clean and finished version of your
novel in Word (or similar program).
·
You have “justified” the entire document.
·
Applied the “normal” style to the entire
document.
·
Applied a heading style to chapter headers.
·
Added page breaks (using the page break
function) to the end of chapters only.
·
You have created a clickable table of contents.
This should be enough to produce a basic ebook without
anti-hyphenation or dropcaps. If you have done this properly you should not
have odd font changing or size changing through the document, and you will have
properly formatted chapter breaks. If you do not have a program where you can
edit code and are not familiar with HTML or CSS at all (and have no one who can
follow the steps to edit it) I strongly recommend you skip the next section and
go straight to the end where I discuss how to save as various files. If you
want to learn or experiment feel free, but make sure you save a version of your
document as it is right now to save
yourself the headache of having to do it all over again if you mess something
up. I learned this the hard way and had to reformat The Vanishing of Katherine
Sullivan about six times due to my own incompetence while learning.
If you are still reading I assume you either have code
experience or have a WYSIWYG program you are passingly familiar with.
The first thing you want to do is use the “save for web”
function in Word (or whatever program you are using) to make it export the .doc
into an HTML document. Then take that HTML document and open it in whatever
code editing program you use. I’m going to break down the instructions into
segments so you can choose which applies to you and your book. I strongly
suggest you at least use the “anti-hyphenation” feature.
Anti-Hyphenation
This feature will, on most e-readers, stop your words from
hyphenating at the end of the line. It’s a great feature and will make your
books infinitely easier to read. However, I want to note that this code does not work on the Nook. I
tried it on several Nook devices running the software and Nook’s program
ignores this code and aggressively hyphenates no matter what you tell it to do.
I spent about a week tearing my hair out over this and after extensive research
determined that everyone has this problem. I’m not sure why Barnes and Noble
would do this – it creates ugly ebooks – but there’s nothing we can do about
it.
In your CSS add this snippet:
p
{
hyphens: none
}
This will prevent (most) e-readers from hyphenating your
words. It’s a great piece of code and can help you make your book look more
professional. Nook is a lost cause on that score, but this works fine on every
other device I have tried.
Drop Caps
Drop caps are the large letters at the beginning of a
chapter. These look great, and this code works in .epub format, but NOT .mobi.
Make sure that you separate the HTML for .epub and .mobi for that reason,
otherwise you are going to have issues with your first letter of every chapter
cut off.
To do drop caps you add this into your class CSS:
.firstcharacter {float:left;color:#903;font-size:75px;
line-height:60px;padding-top:4px;padding-right:8px;
padding-left:3px;font-family:Georgia;}
Obviously you can adjust the line height and font size
depending on how you want them to look. And you should change the color to
black for most cases. Play with the details to get the look you want.
In order to use this for your drop caps, go to the first
letter of each chapter and add this:
<span class="firstcharacter">L</span>orem ipsum etc.
This will create the drop cap at the beginning of each
chapter and is a great finishing touch to add that “something extra” to your
ebook. Obviously replace the Lorem Ipsum with your text – just make sure the
first letter is in the location of the “L”. This section discussed:
·
Using CSS to prevent auto-hyphenation.
·
Using CSS to create drop caps.
Finally, we come to the part where you change your book into
different formats. If you have been using the CSS snippets you should have
separated the CSS for your .mobi file and your .epub file already depending on
whether or not you wanted drop caps.
The first thing you want to do is load an ebook conversion
program. I have heard of many, but I use Calibre and find it to be the easiest
of all of them in terms of usability. Your first job will be to “add books”
from your HTML files. Add both of them to your library and then select “convert
books”.
After that it should walk you through the process. For all
books I strongly suggest you select “Expand CSS” under the “Look and Feel” tab
– it will make sure your code for hyphens and drop caps works properly.
That’s the whole of it. There are some glitches and errors you can run into, particularly with
pictures, that I am not qualified to speak on. However, if you are having
issues with your fonts not being consistent through your whole book and so on
chances are you don’t have them all set to the same style, so you should make
sure every paragraph in the book (yes, you read that right) is using the
correct style. Remember, the first step of this was to make sure the entire book has the “normal” style to
start with. If you do that then you should be okay.
Best of luck to you in your formatting!
E. Prybyski is
the editorial manager for Insomnia Publishing (www.insomnia-publishing.com). She also keeps a regular blog on her
experiences with writing, editing, and publishing at efharvey.wordpress.com.
When she is not writing or editing, Prybylski plays violin and cello for her
tolerant husband and three cats.
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