Phew.

Alright, after calming down from my last tirade, Geneslave looks pretty good right  now. I just finished formatting it for Kindle, so we’ll see how that goes. I am actually afraid to put all that hard work into Kindle Previewer to see it fucked up right now, so I’m going to wait. Get pissed if you want, that’s what I’m doing.

So far, I’ve read my book…five times, editing each time. I don’t want you to be frustrated, but I want you to work hard on your novel. Here are some formatting tips I’ve learned from Paul Salvette, the guy that did those Youtube videos I posted in my previous entry (23 November 2011). First, turn on all editing marks. You know, where it shows you all the tabs, paragraphs, spaces. All that shit. The button, if it’s on your word processor, typically looks like a paragraph mark.

Then, select your ENTIRE text and then use the REPLACE function on your processor. Next to find what, you’ll have to find the symbol for a manually entered tab character. I think Salvette mentions it in one of his videos. Find it yourself man. If you’re too lazy, you have no business writing and entire fuckin’ book. Anyway, just leave the REPLACE WITH section blank to delete them all. They look like arrows on the document, the manual tabs.

Next, re-select your entire document again, and use the tab stop at the top of your word processor’s ruler. It’s the top minature arrow on the ruler. Put that sucker on the half-way mark between no inches, and 1 inch. Now, you’re document is indented the big boy way, and Kindle won’t cry about the format when you convert it.

Return to your REPLACE function is your word processor (god bless the kind soul that put this function in). Delete ALL manual page breaks (same method as above) and start the document from fresh, putting page breaks in-between the title page, the copyright page, the T.O.C. (if you have one) and in-between chapters, sections, or whatever. ALWAYS use a manual page break when starting a new chapter, or section, or whatever format your book has.

Finally, do one more proofread of your WHOLE novel and delete any funny tabs, or double returns between paragraphs.

I did all of that in about…an hour and twenty minutes. I already proofread the thing, that took HOURS. But the final touches really don’t take that long. So. I’m going to go and look at it in the Kindle Previewer tomorrow and see what comes out.

It should be pretty obvious if it was good or bad if you look at my next entry’s title.