I love Scrivener.
Until recently.
In the last few weeks, a reader reported that a couple of my books had a formatting issue with the Kindle Look Inside on Amazon.com.
I checked and found that the spacing and alignment was screwed up. But in my Scrivener file and my KDP Preview, and even in the ebook itself, the formatting was fine. It was just a problem in the Look Inside Previewer. Perhaps there was an update inside Amazon that interacted with the particular way my formatting worked. Who knows? But whatever it was, I needed to fix it.
Because it was costing me sales.
Paying a formatter is one option, but when you publish a lot and you like to update back matter and fix typos or issues yourself, then having control is more important.
Then I heard about Vellum.
Their tagline is Easily Create Beautiful Ebooks, and that’s exactly what the software does. Here are some of the highlights for me:
- It’s incredibly easy to use. You just import a Word docx file and you can basically use it as-is
- You can also use the various Book Styles to change the look to something funkier
- You can preview the design as it will look in the various ebook readers, within the program
- It has template pages like Copyright, About the Author and More Books by the Author which have extra functionality, like areas for social media links and default text.
- You can import images and it will format them correctly, with extra text and links and resizing
- It makes boxsets REALLY easy. Seriously, if you haven’t done boxsets yet, as a single author or with multi-authors, then check it out. Here’s the specific Vellum boxset help page.
- It outputs the various formats for each of the stores and includes store specific book links in the Back Matter
It's basically the best tool for the ebook formatting job.
I use a lot of online tools (here's a list), and each has one job. By using Scrivener to format, I was trying to make that tool do more than one job. I'm super thrilled to find a tool that specializes in formatting.
There is one downside. It's Mac only. Sorry, PC people.
My new formatting process
I write in Scrivener and do my own self-edits in Scrivener. Then I export a Word doc to send to my editor.
When I get the changes back, I make them back into Scrivener.
Just to be clear. I still do all the writing and editing in Scrivener. It’s an awesome writing tool and I love love love it. (Here’s a video on how I use it).
But once the book is done, I export as a Word docx and open in Vellum. I use the formatting templates to add the back matter and check everything is beautiful, including adding the Ornamental Breaks to make the book look more professional.
Then I check the formatting on the various devices – which you can do within Vellum! Then I export to the various formats and upload to the stores. E
Click here for my tutorial on how to format your ebooks and print books with Vellum
So right now, I’m currently re-publishing all my ebooks with Vellum versions to give them the same look and feel, plus I'm updating the back matter as I go. The content hasn't changed, just the formatting. If you have my books, you should be able to re-download new versions. (Or you can always email me if you want a new formatted book.)
As I mentioned in the blog post on the Digital Commerce Summit, we are living in a time of exponential change.
There are new tools, new opportunities and new markets opening every day. Things we did even a few months ago might not work any more.
We have to be prepared to change our opinions and our practices.
This can be difficult. But it can also be exciting.
I’m learning so much on this business trip that I have a number of other big changes coming in 2017. I’m pretty excited about it, to be honest. I’m a change junkie 🙂 I'll tell you more about it when my thinking is clearer but for now, I'm heading back to my formatting! (Click here to check out Vellum).
How do you format your ebooks? Please leave a comment below and join the conversation.
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1 2 3 … 9 Next »I'm a PC gal, so while I've heard great things about Vellum and seen the lovely books it produces, I don't use it. It's cost + the cost of using Mac in Cloud is just too far out of my budget for my low volume of sales, and I'm definitely not buying a Mac for a single program. While I love my iPad, for my actual computers I'm sticking with PC and Windows :).
My print formatting I do in purely in Word and export to PDF.
For eBooks, I've tried a few options including Calibre, Jutoh, PressBooks, and just dumping the Word file up to Amazon. They all have various issues, though I do still sometimes use Calibre for doing a second round of checks and for making alternate formats.
Currently, I've settled on exporting from Word to filtered HTML, cleaning that code up in Dreamweaver (web developer by trade), then use Sigil to do the final formatting. I have a baseline CSS file I use for all my eBooks with tweaking for the headers, which makes it go faster.
My only aggravation/disappointment is that despite using the proper CSS, I've yet to figure out the trick of being able to embed fonts for selective use for the chapter headers the way Vellum can (and I even got the CSS from them!) :-P
I like to format the ePub direct. I use both Sigil and the ebook editor that comes with Calibre. I haven't yet decided which one I prefer :/
In either case, I use Kindlegen to convert the ePub to mobi for uploading to Amazon.
My process is the same as yours, Russell, though I prefer sigil. Calibre can still write some bloated css in my experience.
It took me a long time, but I finally have a dead-simple stylesheet that creates ebooks that work in any ereader/app without errors, so I'm loathe to move to any other method.
Hello Joanna !
I had the same problem last month and did not realize it until recently...It sure cost me sales as the Look Inside functionality is one buying decision factor...
I love Scrivener for its amazing writing functionalities. I also deeply appreciated the exports functionality at the click of a button. Having everything in one place is obviously more comfortable.
But formatting is a real subject so I will definitely try Vellum. Thanks for sharing !
Regards.
Folco
I had the same problem with my Look Insides and realized Scrivener was the root cause. I contacted Amazon support, but it provided no lasting help, so I started tweaking my compile settings, publishing, checking the results, repeating. Anyway, I found the fix.
Under Compile -> Transformations, check both "Remove Highlighting" and "Remove text color". That should do it.
It may be that only one of those two is needed... once I got it working, I stopped experimenting. Take a look. Both these books' Look Insides were a disaster.
https://www.amazon.com/Joss-Seven-J-Philip-Horne-ebook/dp/B01F8CULT4
https://www.amazon.com/Lodestone-J-Philip-Horne-ebook/dp/B00655L8GO
Thanks for the info. :) ... I'm not at the publishing stage yet, but love Scrivener and don't want to fork over the $$ if I don't have to.
The second book is now back to "disaster" status.
Hi Joanna,
I'd always used Google's Docs for writing because I wanted to write anywhere. But last year I bought Final Draft as the (admittedly minimal) research I'd done suggested it was the best solution out there. I'd also read that I don't actually own anything that I save in Google Drive!!
Final Draft is certainly a wonderful app that just lets me write without clutter.
But you've opened my eyes to Scrivener and now I want to go and try it :) It gets some fantastic reviews.
Thanks for the information.
All the best,
Wilf
First I convert my book into filtered HTML from doc.
I make sure there are no bugs by recreating all the text formatting manually in a new file before coverting into filtered HTML; of course that can be done with any word processor, not just Word.
Theoretically I could manually compile the HTML by adding all the tags to the text, but it would take forever. The conversion from a clean doc file works just fine.
Then I manually compile the opf file.
You can use Mobipocket Creator to create it for the first time; it's a small text file.
Then I manually compile the ncx file.
You need to read a tutorial on how to create it, but again it's really easy. You do it once and then you can use it as template for the future.
Finally I use Kindlegen to convert into mobi.
I don't need to convert into ePub myself with Smashwords, I can just use a doc file (the same mentioned above, with no bugs and complying to Smashwords Style Guide).
As for Draft2Digital, I convert the filtered HTML file into ePub with Calibre, then I let D2D do the automatic correction so that it is validated. I use the file coming from this correction on Google Play, too.
The whole process is really fast. You really need more time to explain it then to do it.
The longest part is the reformatting of the text, so it depends on the length of the text and its complexity. All the conversions mentioned above can be done in 20 minutes. :)
I always check directly the HTML file before any conversion. Sometimes I do changes directly on it. I think it's better even for those who don't know HTML to try to learn the basics of it, because this way you really have control on the final output and can fix any bug created by any previously used program (like Word or Scrivener, etc.).
I am just about to update and reformat all of the books in my Regency romance series, so your blog post is perfect in its timing! I have heard many good things about Vellum, but your experience is definitely pushing me to check it out. Until now I've used Scrivener, and I love it as a writing tool. Would never go back to Word. I've taken classes, read books, and online blogs, and am finally starting to understand how to do all of the fancy formatting to get a good looking ebook. But Vellum makes it look so much easier!
This looks great but I can't find your link to Vellum. A swift google search throws up nothing. Do you have the link?
Ian
Thanks - it's http://www.thecreativepenn.com/vellum/
I'm so glad I follow you! I have been struggling with Scrivener ebook formatting and bought the Learn Scrivener Fast course to help me. While I absolutely love Scrivener and will keep using it, Vellum looks amazing...and easy! Thanks :-)
Definitely will look into Vellum. Am presently using an interior designer and am happy with their skills. However, I would like to make changes on my own (as I find typos or need to insert a short breadcrumb for later books). Thanks!
PS...hope you enjoyed Oregon...!