Publishing a book on Amazon is more complicated than I thought.
Well guys, today we actually got a book published on Amazon.com. This is a book written by a collaborative group of Steem Fiction writers under the group name @steemfiction.
Pixabay
We had originally set a goal for March 1st, but as the end of the month came up I realized how much editing really needed to be done.
Everyone's story was written in a different font, with a completely different style.
Word, Google Docs, OpenOffice, LibreOffice.....
Everybody use something else to write their stories, and everybody uses a completely different format. Some people love white space. and some people hate white space. Some people indent all the way.... some people don't indent at all.
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. No two people write the same way.... even if they've been writing on the same platform for years.
Fortunately for me I had a really great editor to help me out. The entire process went pretty much exactly how I thought it would.
That's incredible.
All eight of the authors came through, and delivered stories that were better than I could have asked for.
Putting the stories together was a gargantuan task. I had to make Word agree with all of them. That's a lot harder than you think. As soon as you put two different formats together, Word enters compatibility mode.
It will then reformat whatever it decides doesn't work in order to get out of that mode.
It took many hours to come up with one cohesive manuscript that was actually built from eight different lengthy short stories.
Of course trying to get Amazon to agree with it is another thing entirely.
It would be nice if they used Word on their internal system, but they don't. Therefore, you not only have to make sure that the program agrees in your original word processor.... but you have to make sure it agrees on the Amazon site as well, and that's really difficult.
Getting a sizable short story written that is actually good in a couple of months is really incredible.
We got eight.
I now also know that editing the stories and getting them into the actual book is at least as much work as writing the actual story.
Nevertheless, we did it.
Our group has created an Incredible Book of creepy short stories to keep you up at night.
So without further ado,
Voices in the Darkness: Tales from the Steem Blockchain (Steem Fiction Book 1)
I wonder if this is a real/paper book or e-book and what kind of program Amazon works with.
At least you know next time what you can do or ask for, to save yourself some/a lot of work.
Ask the writers to use the same program or use something like open office yourself (or something else).
I doubt writing on the same platform will change your writing style. People write the way they are used too, but still can follow some rules to make the end job easier.
It always takes me at least twice the time to check out, reread and post as to write. So I know what you are talking about (I am a mobile blogger, write in my note bloc, copy past into word, check some things out, change, copy past back and copy past on steem...before posting I reread it several times, change again, post and see again what I do not like :(
Congratulations to the writers and the ones who made this book possible.
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I am so glad you did all the hard work of formatting so I could just write. I love you for that.
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Thanks buddy.
Congratulations..... I also do have a book but due to the difficulty publishing it, I didn't publish it
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Congratulations to you all! :)
I just wanted to say - Scrivener would help a lot with a few of the issues you mentioned, with formatting and compiling and such. Just a thought for next time!! :D
Congrats once again!
I'll check it out.
Excellent. Well done , people!
Thank you.
Nice job. Too bad Amazon didn't take Steem as payment; maybe someday. I'll be sure to pick up a copy anyway as I've got about a 20 hour flight in a few days and it will certainly help pass the time.
If you are planning on doing another one, I might suggest using Affinity Publisher. The program is still in beta right now, so it's free. They don't advise using it to make a completely finished book yet, but it's been working really well for me and hasn't crashed hardly at all so it might be worth a shot. It would give you a much better way to format everything into a correct format and it's really easy to adjust just about everything in regards to how the content looks on the page. Adding graphics/pictures is much easier to resize as well instead of using Word. Once it launches a full product, it will still only cost around $50 just like Affinity Designer and Photo.
That's interesting. I appreciate the suggestion.
I'm definitely going to check that out.
publishing a book is little bit tough
well done
Congrats to all ..what an accomplishment.
Great job!
Thanks!
This post has been included in the latest edition of SoS Daily News - a digest of all the latest news on the Steem blockchain.