Is Draft2Digital formatting a poor choice?

[RiverRun]

The thread on Atticus got me thinking about this question.

My first short story I formatted myself, using Guido Henkel's directions. (If you know what I'm talking about, well, you know.) Once was enough.

Fortunately Draft2digital came into existence in time for me to start using it to format my novels. I'm all about free. But I don't really love the way the formatting looks. Still. Its free. Its readable. It works.

But I can't help wondering. Do you think readers click on the Look Inside and see big blocky fonts and think, 'meh. Unprofessional self-pubber' and move on? Or perhaps react in some subliminal way, recognizing that it doesn't look as tight and well done as a professional and negatively pre-judge what they are reading without realizing it?

If I were to use something like Vellum, would my non-technical, non-expert self have a good chance of creating a better quality product? Something that says to the reader, 'you are in the hands of a professional?' Or does it not really matter? And if you do use a professional formattor or Vellum or something of that kind, why do you use it? Do you feel its made a difference in your self-publishing ventures?

(Because my daughter said she liked this one.) 

[Anarchist]

I use Vellum.

It's simple and flexible enough for my needs.

I'm not precious about my books' aesthetics. Good is good enough.

[Post-Crisis D]

My first short story I formatted myself, using Guido Henkel's directions. (If you know what I'm talking about, well, you know.) Once was enough.

That was the method I used until Amazon essentially dropped the .mobi format.  I had some Perl scripts I had put together to make the process easier.  And then I had to start over . . .

I used Sigil for my last two books.  Well, technically the last one book because the last last book I kind of cheated a bit.

Once I figured it out, which I will have to do again next time because I didn't make notes for myself like I should have, Sigil worked out well for creating an .epub that could be uploaded to Amazon.

When you mention fonts, though, are you referring to paperbacks?  I don't define fonts in my eBooks.  I figure readers will use whatever font(s) on their device that they prefer.

[TimothyEllis]

I only use D2D for formatting paperbacks, and I go with the minimum design.

It looks good to me.

The only thing I don't like is what they do with the contents, but I turn that off.

My eBook formatting is all in Word styles.

[RiverRun]

My first short story I formatted myself, using Guido Henkel's directions. (If you know what I'm talking about, well, you know.) Once was enough.

That was the method I used until Amazon essentially dropped the .mobi format.  I had some Perl scripts I had put together to make the process easier.  And then I had to start over . . .

I used Sigil for my last two books.  Well, technically the last one book because the last last book I kind of cheated a bit.

Once I figured it out, which I will have to do again next time because I didn't make notes for myself like I should have, Sigil worked out well for creating an .epub that could be uploaded to Amazon.

When you mention fonts, though, are you referring to paperbacks?  I don't define fonts in my eBooks.  I figure readers will use whatever font(s) on their device that they prefer.

Never mind about fonts. I was thinking of a trad paperback preview that was very elegant compared to mine. But I'm not super worried about paperbacks. One thing d2d does is included "Chapter1" at the start. I can't get rid of it. Looks a little silly. The whole presentation just feels, I don't what. D2d-ish. I may be just splitting hairs.

[TimothyEllis]

One thing d2d does is included "Chapter1" at the start. I can't get rid of it. Looks a little silly. The whole presentation just feels, I don't what. D2d-ish. I may be just splitting hairs.

Can you post an image of that?

[Hopscotch]

I admire your techie skills and perfectionist drive in doing your own formatting.  But for us nontechies, Joel Friedlander's format templates (often on sale) work great w/none of the problems here described.

[RiverRun]

One thing d2d does is included "Chapter1" at the start. I can't get rid of it. Looks a little silly. The whole presentation just feels, I don't what. D2d-ish. I may be just splitting hairs.

Can you post an image of that?

It looks like this. There's nothing wrong with it. But I understand actually having the words 'chapter 1' is not industry standard. I looked at one of your books, Tim, and noticed it right away. Yours doesn't have a chapter 1 heading. My actual look inside begins 'Chapter 1" and then my quote in italics, but I scrolled up a click or two to show what came before.

I tried for a while to get that quote on a separate page before the first chapter and couldn't do it in D2d (without chapter 1 on top of it). Its not a long quote and fits fine where it is, but as it applies to the whole book and not just the first chapter I had originally intended it to be on a page by itself. That's the case for the paper back also. Just little details.

I admire your techie skills and perfectionist drive in doing your own formatting.  But for us nontechies, Joel Friedlander's format templates (often on sale) work great w/none of the problems here described.

I will look at Joel Friedlander's site, but don't think I'm doing anything much. D2d is point and click. I upload a doc and click a button.

Its kinda' like walking into a room and looking at everyone else's clothes to see if I'm dressed right. (I have so often not been!). Seeing other people doing fancier things sometimes makes me wonder if I'm showing up in a t-shirt and jeans. Not a big deal in ordinary life, but awkward if one is trying to make a sale. Depending on the cost of other options, I may just go on using D2d anyway, but I'd like to know what I might be missing, if anything.

[TimothyEllis]

I looked at one of your books, Tim, and noticed it right away. Yours doesn't have a chapter 1 heading. My actual look inside begins 'Chapter 1" and then my quote in italics, but I scrolled up a click or two to show what came before.

Mine has a number which is then tagged as Heading 1 in Word.

For the paperback, I turn off the contents creation completely, since I don't like that they put it at the beginning of the book, before the other front matter. I think it looks bad like that. I couldn't find a way of not doing it, so I turned it off. In the paperbacks, it's not really needed anyway.

So in mine, all you see is the exact number the way I wrote it.

[RiverRun]

I admire your techie skills and perfectionist drive in doing your own formatting.  But for us nontechies, Joel Friedlander's format templates (often on sale) work great w/none of the problems here described.

The templates on Joel Friendlander's site are really really nice. And on sale! And I'm saving money right now. So never mind. I will bookmark that one though.

[RiverRun]

I looked at one of your books, Tim, and noticed it right away. Yours doesn't have a chapter 1 heading. My actual look inside begins 'Chapter 1" and then my quote in italics, but I scrolled up a click or two to show what came before.

Mine has a number which is then tagged as Heading 1 in Word.

For the paperback, I turn off the contents creation completely, since I don't like that they put it at the beginning of the book, before the other front matter. I think it looks bad like that. I couldn't find a way of not doing it, so I turned it off. In the paperbacks, it's not really needed anyway.

So in mine, all you see is the exact number the way I wrote it.

Now that's a good idea. Thank you.

[Bill Hiatt]

For simple ease of use and quality of output, I second Anarchist's recommendation of Vellum.

[writeway]

I've used D2D's formatting for years and usually looks fine. Sometimes it's wonky and you might have to fix things in your manuscript that doesn't translate but that's not often. It's free and easy so I have no complaints. I didn't like Atticus and can't use Vellum. D2D is not fancy or anything but it gets the job done especially when you want something free and quick.

[Jeff Tanyard]

Disclaimer: I don't have paperbacks, so my formatting is only for digital.  I have no advice for print.

I make the epub in Calibre.  It converts .odt directly to epub without a problem.  If I need to do any editing that Calibre can't do, then I use Sigil.  If Sigil can't do it, then it probably can't be done.  But Calibre is much more user-friendly for me, so I prefer to use Calibre whenever possible.

I also like to name my chapters.  As a reader, I've never cared for opening a new ebook and seeing a table of contents that is just a list of numbers.  The numbers are important, but I want names, too.  I want to see "A Short Cut to Mushrooms" or "The Scouring of the Shire" or something similar.  I actually do most of this chapter stuff in the OpenOffice .odt file.  I make the hyperlinks, bookmarks, and chapter breaks in OpenOffice.  My advice would be to always try to do as much as you can in your word processor, because post-conversion edits can go awry sometimes.  I still have to edit the table of contents in Calibre after the conversion to epub, though, and I made a tutorial thread about how to do it.

I should also add that I abandoned Microsoft Word a long time ago.  Nothing but headaches for me.  I hate it as a program, and I hate all the garbage code it inserts into files for its own mysterious purposes.  It produces bloated files that cost more in Amazon delivery fees than an equivalent book written in OpenOffice, so in addition to all the frustration Word creates for me, it also functions as a sales tax.    

I have a lot of fondness for D2D, but I don't use their epub generator.

Anyway, hope that helps.  Good luck. 

[Bill Hiatt]

I second the importance of chapter titles. Although by default the reading sample starts on the first page of the first chapter, it's possible for a customer to use the navigation arrows to go back to the TOC, and I actually know people who do that. Proper chapter titles (which hint at content but without spoilers) can sound interesting and become part of your advertising, even though not everyone will see them. Those who look are trying to make guesses about what the book after the end of the sample might be like. So if those titles are intriguing, that may help tip them toward the buy button.

On paperbacks, I'm still a happy Vellum user. I'll mention in passing that I did tests (though they were several years ago, so things may have changed), and the size of the Vellum output doesn't vary that much based on what word processor is used to create the original file. (It is, however, geared to Word, so Open Office users and others would need to save as a Word file before inputting into Vellum.)

[RiverRun]

I hadn't thought about chapter headings as a way to give a preview of the book. That's a good idea. For this particular book, I've redesigned the cover to lean more literary, which is making me rethink the whole kettle of fish. I was thinking of ways to make the style and layout match with the more literary end of the historical mystery genre. Might not be possible and could be a complete waste of time. But maybe a good excuse not to write chapter headings! Since I don't really want to.

Reedsy has an ebook formatter similar to d2d with 3 thematic choices. D2d has lots more but they are all chapter headings and line breaks. The text stays just the same. The Reedsy themes actually space the text just a little differently. I may try it out sometime. Might be the closest I can get to changing the look of the ebook without an investment of money or time . Probably I'm the only one who would notice or care.

I found a nice free paperback book template on the Atticus website and played with that a while. Then I remembered how much I hate doing my own paperback formatting. (I've tried before and failed.) So I think that project is deferred.

[Bill Hiatt]

Paperback formatting may be easier with templates. I know that it usually took me a week doing it without one. (That was mostly consumed by stuff like manually hyphenating words to make the justified text look reasonably even.)

I do remember someone saying once that paperback formatting could be done in 1-2 hours (including manual kerning!) What can I say? That person has far more skill than I do.