This has been a big week for the world of Wherever Would I Be. (And me.) This week, I learned ALL about typesetting, and it turns out, I actually enjoyed it. Mostly.
The formatting wasn’t so bad (Amazon provides pretty clear directions to follow; and yeah, I know, evil corp – but an indie author can’t get by without them these days…), and I remember the moment I realized my baby manuscript suddenly looked like a grown up book.
This is the joy I’ve been longing for with my first book.
After I got the typesetting all done, then found and fixed all the (truly, awfully named) orphans and widows, I put the finishing touches on the cover (much thanks to my editor and writing group for feedback on the back cover blurb… why is it SO hard to write those?). And then embedded my fonts and created a PDF, just like the website told me to.
And then I uploaded the doc. Hit preview. And:
There were suddenly new orphans EVERYWHERE, and every single line at the end of the chapter was formatted like the above pic. I kept fixing and uploading and fixing and uploading and… you get the idea. Then I lamented to my writing bestie, Jack, asking if he had a similar experience. He smartly asked what type of document I uploaded – he had uploaded a PDF.
And then I realized my error. I may have created the PDF. But I uploaded the word doc. Over and over. [sigh] I uploaded the PDF, and, aside from my fonts not being embedded (even though I followed the directions on their site ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ), the formatting was perfect.
And now, they are printing up a proof of my baby, which should be here by Sunday. And I feel like a little kid waiting for Santa.
Ami Maxine 