OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
I love Scrivener.
It is the best writing tool and I couldn’t imagine writing without it now. I’ve also been using Scrivener to format my ebooks for the last five years and that has been fine.
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
asy peasy.
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.)
A word on change
A word on changeAs 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.
Hey Joanna,
Great articles. Love it, love it, love it.
I am a techie junkie who loves tools to make my life easier. After writing and self-publishing a couple of books of my own, I am ready to invest in tools and reduce the amount of what I outsource such as eBook conversions and page layout. I have looked at Vallum and wanted to know whether you have used this for the page design/typeset of your print book to generate print-ready pdf files for printers especially as the amount I paid the typesetter is the same price as the product (yikes…can’t keep doing that). If you have, what has been your experience with this or do you outsource this? If you have done or do your own print layouts, do you have any other tools you can recommend to try out before taking the plunge with Vallum? I am not hot on purchasing templates seeing Vallum has a number of nice ones. This means everything is kept in-house.
PD: Did training in InDesign….too steep a learning curve as well as a steep price.
I generally use a print interior designer as it’s not my favorite thing to do, although I do my own ebooks on Vellum. However, I have done one print book as a test – Successful Self-Publishing, and I’m pleased with the result. Lots of authors are now using it exclusively.
I’m pretty surprised that you are still using Vellum. I’m having lots of trouble with it and cannot get any response from Vellum support. I can’t even get them to send my license. Hi how I purchased on Nov. 8th! The first time I opened it, the chapters came together properly with scenes nicely divided as one would expect. There was a problem with the manuscript which I corrected, but since that first time, Vellum now wants to format each scene as if it is a chapter. Most distressing!
I’ve never had any trouble with it and I’ve reformatted all my 25 books. Try their help desk again as I have found them very useful.
HI, Joanna! I don’t know if you’ve run into this with Vellum or not, but I discovered today that it can’t handle footnotes or endnotes. It strips them out. That’s probably not an issue for most fiction writers, but I’m wrapping up my first book, Discovering Love Online: Love May Be Closer Than You Think, which is a non-fiction title and it has many source citations in it. Did you run into this issue with your non-fiction titles and, if so, did you find a workaround? I contacted Vellum and they have footnotes/endnotes on their feature request list, but no timeline. Not very helpful as I’m within weeks of publication.
I’d suggest including them in a Bibliography or Appendix. That’s what I am doing for The Healthy Writer.
Thank, Joanna! Do you use Scrivener’s internal linking to connect them? Or will that not work?
Which books of yours that I could buy right now were produced with Vellum?
All of my ebooks are now Vellum produced 🙂
First, let me say thanks for the TONS of helpful info you provide, Joanna. It’s much appreciated out here in sunny SoCal. Also, love your podcast.
Just wondering if you or your audience has any experience with Amazon’s free Kindle Formatting tool called Kindle Create? It seems to offer very similar features to what I’ve seen advertised for Vellum, without the hefty price tag. Plus, it works for both Mac and PC. Take that Vellum! Yes, I use a PC…
I’m working on my first book. Started with Scrivener, but don’t care for the overly complicated Compile function, especially with regard to formatting. So I copied and pasted it over to the free Reedsy Book Editor, which isn’t too bad. The only problem is the formatting options are very limited. Still better than Scrivener. But nowhere near what Kindle Create seems to offer. Anyone using Kindle Create?
For non-fiction authors, you should be aware that Vellum does NOT currently support footnotes or endnotes. It strips them out. Since I have over 70 in my book, I was unable to use Vellum. That feature is on their to do list, but there is no timeline for it. Until the ability to work with footnotes/endnotes is added, Vellum is unsuitable for any books that include them.
I’d suggest using a chapter at the end with footnotes, or an Appendix with citations per chapter. This is common now – and what we used for The Healthy Writer which has a lot of medical research citations.
If I use Vellum to update back matter on PDF for print, how much leeway is there before current book cover becomes unusable (will adding even one extra page be a problem?)
Thanks!
Not sure – but I’d suggest it’s not much 🙂 The POD service might error out if you upload a file that’s too big. Just test it and see!
Kindle Create! It’s free and does everything Vellum does and you know it will work flawlessly with Amazon – because they created it! Download it now and give it a try before dumping money into Vellum!
True – but Kindle Create is just for Kindle 🙂 I, like many authors, publish wide and Vellum creates ePub as well as print and other formats.
Agreed. I do not wish to give Amazon all my work alone.
I adore Vellum. As soon as I saw what it could do, I purchased it! I’m an Indie author and wish to only sell/give away my book from my site. I love it- I just wish I could begin a book there, and not have to use Word or Notes.
Most helpful. Thank you
I found I cannot fine tune with Vellum.
It truly is excellent the way it works but…… I have pages of lists which are bulleted.
I have tried all means to simply increase the space between the bullets so as not to look to cluttered but no matter what I do to the Word document the space between the bullets on Vellum remains the same.
There is no allowance within Vellum to increase the space between the bullets, or so it seems.
Any help appreciated
Thanks
Guy S
gonna go buy it right now thru your link–you’ve earned it 🙂
penman
Hey Ms. Penn! Big fan of your blog over the years — you’ve been an inspiration and mentor, thank you.
My first six titles were written directly into MS Word using a variety of templates licensed from thebookdesigner.com. I know it sounds old-fashioned, but I’m so used to Word it seemed quicker to stick with it — and using the templates helps me get the physical shape of the final book. Once written and edited (extensively), I make a PDF for Createspace and import the Word file into Scrivener (using that little # trick to quickly separate chapters). After various checks, I compile and export a .mobi file which I check using Kindle Previewer and then upload to Kindle Direct. It’s not ideal. It feels clunky — and I’m never absolutely certain that readers will get exactly what I think they should be getting. Which is why your experience with that particular problem — and your solution — is so interesting.
Until now, Word to Scrivener has been my workflow. However, with six titles (including a four-part series) on Amazon I want to go to the next level and begin serious marketing to indie bookstores and libraries. I’m going to use IngramSpark as the wholesaler. But here comes the problem. Ingrams won’t accept the regular PDF that Word produces… they want the exotic PDF/X 2001a file. My solution will be to add an extra step and take the completed novel into Adobe InDesign — which will export the correct PDF. Luckily, thebookdesigner.com offers templates in InDesign format — so we’ll see how it goes, but it’s yet another learning curve, plus a subscription to the Adobe app.
Incidentally, from what I can glean from the Vellum forum, Vellum Press does not export PDF/X 2001a… so it looks like it’s InDesign for me. But the Vellum Ebooks version sounds like a winner — if I can justify that $200 price tag.
I’m so confused. I’m trying to put my old writing into Scrivener. I’ve done lots of searches on what the indent should be for fiction, and how to make that automatic. And what is the best font, line spacing, font size.
Can you tell me what you use? I’m going to buy Vellum but I’ve got to get the writing in and I don’t want to tab each time for a paragraph.
Vellum does indents as part of the formatting. For Scrivener, the indents are under Format -> Paragraph -> Increase/Decrease Indents -> and there’s a load of options.
Hi, Joanna!
Thanks for the tip! I’ve been using Word to create and Calibre to format mobi, epub, and pdf. Recently I was called out by Amazon on a few of my 27 books because the TOC was in the back, not the front. So I’m looking into using Vellum for reformatting all of them including, of course, backmatter.
My big question is what is the benefit to using Scrivener vs. Word? I haven’t tried it yet but Word is so nice… Can you elaborate?
Many thanks!
I use Scrivener for writing and it has a ton more functionality for organizing, plotting, revising etc – as well as the ability to drag and drop chapters and generally, I couldn’t imagine writing in Word again. This is an older video but still holds true for the functionality – https://www.thecreativepenn.com/writing-tips/
Hi, and thank you for your helpful info! Once you buy Vellum I assume you can use it to produce all your books for the rest of your life, correct? So you don’t have to pay the $300 for every new book you write? Could not find clear confirmation of this on their site.
Thanks.
Yes, you buy the software and use it over time for all your books. There are people you can pay if you are only doing one or two – http://www.TheCreativePenn.com/formatting
Alas, it appears Vellum is only available for Mac. At this point in my writing career (embryonic), I can’t justify going out and getting a Mac just so I can use Vellum. So for now, I guess it’s Word and Scrivener (and even then, I wish they’d port Scrivener to Android!)…
You can use Vellum on a PC – details here: https://paulteague.com/how-to-use-vellum-on-a-pc/
Thanks for the tip Joanna, but are there any non-geeks out there who’ve had experience with Vellum on a PC? I’d love to know how well it works.
Use Mac in Cloud as per this article – https://paulteague.com/how-to-use-vellum-on-a-pc/
I actually bought a second hand iMac just so I could use Vellum (after getting tired of the draft to digital service mangling my formatting). The only weakness I’ve found is that it only takes a .docx for input … this is fine if you write in word or scriv, but I routinely write in open office which can only save a word file as a .doc (native format being .odt
In the short term I am using scriv to convert my files, importing from .odt then compiling to .docx , but in the long run i’d like to see vellum accept other common formats (if scriv can do it why not)
course i’d also like to see apache open add the capability to save a .docx ( I may have to change to libre which can)
I’ve been using the Reedsy book editor and typing right into it. Before I started with Reedsy I was using Word and I pasted the first document into Reedsy. I discovered later that any italicized words in the text stuck together. As I had several foreign phrases that was an issue. There were a couple of other issues as well, which is why I started typing directly into Reedsy. It’s very easy to use and I love it.
However, I’m thinking of buying Vellum for the some of the more visual aspects it would give me. Has anyone else made this transition, and was it worth the $249?
I love Vellum 🙂 My tutorial is here: https://www.thecreativepenn.com/format-ebook-print-with-vellum/
Hi Joanna,
Great post and very useful video!
One question though: Do you have your manuscript proofread before you import and format in Vellum or after so formatting checks are included in the proofread? This is assuming all the professional copy edits and self-checks are done, but the book needs one last pass through with fresh eyes
I’ve seen a few editors offering to proofread the ebook and make edits in an accompanying PDF file. But the vast majority ask for the manuscript to be sent in Word format, which is obviously pre-ebook formatting. I find transferring from Scrivener to Word (or vice-versa) a pain as the formatting styles don’t always coordinate and major errors get introduced.
It seems like the best time to hire a proofread is after I’ve formatted in Vellum. That way everything gets a look-through for what I’ve missed, including back materials, etc. What is your experience?
Thanks!
E.A.
Yes, I have proofread before formatting. That is the last step for me.
I write in Scrivener, then compile out to .rtf (or epub) and import into Jutoh. I find it does everything i need it to do, and I’ve had no (program-caused) errors in the final files.
Awww wish it had said ‘mac only’ farther up so i wouldnt have gotten excited over it…