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Extra Long Table of Contents? Table It 23 Aug 2013 | 09:23 pm
Tables of contents in ebooks are kind of like toilets. Necessary, but you don’t want them on display in the living room. This week I faced an interesting dilemma: a ToC with almost 70 entries, and the...
Front Matter in Ebooks 3: Forewords and Introductions 15 Aug 2013 | 11:26 pm
There has never been much call for forewords and introductions in fiction. Which is a shame, because I love the things. They give me glimpses of the author’s “true” voice and, if written by another, i...
Front Matter in Ebooks 2: Epigraphs, Dedications and Song Lyrics 13 Aug 2013 | 08:26 pm
First a word about Fair Use. Quotes can enhance your work. Snippets of poetry and song lyrics can add thematically to fiction. But their use can lead writers into areas filled with landmines and legal...
Front and Back Matter in Ebooks 8 Aug 2013 | 07:46 pm
I get a lot of questions about what front and back matter should be included in an ebook. Should is the keyword here. Technically and legally, there are no requirements for anything other than the bod...
Guest Post: Karen Myers–No Need For Calibre 31 Jul 2013 | 07:08 pm
When I ran the recent ebook formatting contest, I noticed some similar issues with many of the entries, all of them the result of Calibre conversion. I have no beef with Calibre, it’s a great online r...
Ebook Formatting Services 28 Jul 2013 | 07:12 pm
What Makes a Great Ebook? #1 Great writing, great story #2 An ebook that works properly on the reader’s device #3 An ebook that looks beautiful and is a pleasure to read When I’m reading a book, t...
Boast Post: Thomas Pluck and Co-Op Publishing 14 Jul 2013 | 08:54 pm
Practice makes perfect. And, as Malcolm Gladwell points out in Outliers, it takes a lot of practice, at least 10,000 hours worth. “The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of...
Writers, Promotion and Blogs 12 Jul 2013 | 07:47 pm
I don’t normally discuss promotion and marketing. Partly because I’m not terribly interested, but mostly because I think intense focus on marketing and promotion can be dangerous for some writers, str...
Update: A Fix for the Calibre Line-Spacing Issue 4 Jul 2013 | 07:12 pm
A comment from Kovid Goyal of Calibre on yesterday’s blog post led me to do some experimenting this morning. I took the same files I used to demonstrate the squished line spacing and converted them in...
Calibre and Kindle, Not a Good Match 3 Jul 2013 | 07:34 pm
Don’t get me wrong. I like Calibre. It’s quick, it’s handy, and it has an attractive screen display that I far prefer over Adobe Digital Editions or the Kindle Previewer. Since I don’t have a device c...
