#WWoW!: More Fun with Formatting and Distributing #ebooks with @dochappycamper #amwriting #MyWANA #ASMSG

Welcome back to Tammy's Tidbits here at Writer's Words of Wisdom. This is my first post of 2014 and I thought I'd continue with my last post of 2013. Formatting your ebooks for publishing can be a daunting task, but with just a little extra work you can produce files that look great on any ebook reader.

Last time I talked about the Smashwords Style Guide. It's a fabulous resource for all self published/Indie authors whether you decide to do your own formatting or not. Just the tips on how to tame Microsoft Word are enough to make it a must read and a KEEPER for your publishing arsenal. The best thing—it's FREE. 

Just this last week I decided to try out another site: Draft 2 Digital. I have to say it's the most user friendly site for self publishers and small independent publishing houses. D2D will take your Word document and convert it into a beautifully formatted EPUB file you use on ANY other site. In fact, you can take this file and covert it to any other ebook format you need with Calibre.

Why couldn't you do this with Smashwords? Well, all the files produced by the "Meatgrinder" formatting process on Smashwords are required to have "Smashwords Edition" in the front matter where your copyright page is located. 

Not so with Draft 2 Digital. With my newest release, I put "Electronic Edition" in the same area I normally would acknowledge Smashwords, All Romance, or Amazon. Now, I can take this one Word document and create all I need. Right after the conversion process, D2D allowed me to download the epub file. I looked it over to make sure it looked good in a NOOK and then accepted it on the site. 

Next. I got to choose the stores to distribute my book. Since it was my first time and I had already set up Smashwords, I decided to opt out of Barnes and Noble and Kobo. At the point when I did that, Smashwords hadn't shipped them the file yet so it worked out.

Now, The Surrender of Julia (Now and Forever 3) is live on both sites thanks to D2D. All the other distribution sites I've got covered with Smashwords, All Romance, and Amazon. The next book I publish, I'm starting out with Draft 2 Digital and distribute to BN, Kobo, iTunes and maybe a few more. They even have Createspace as an option so I could do my print formatting with them as well.

Go ahead and check them out and see what I'm talking about. If you're not ready to publish yet, bookmark the site so you can go back to it when you're ready. They have plans to add more distribution channels in the future and I for one can't wait to see who they partner with next. 

Until next time,

~Tammy

Learn More About Tammy

Tammy Dennings Maggy is a best selling, multi-published poet and erotic romance author with Siren and Sassy Vixen Publishing. Her writing explores many facets of romance from ultimate betrayal to finding your soul mate. Her poetry serves as a companion to her novels and has inspired entire series all on their own. Tammy and her alter egos Lia Michaels and Stephanie Ryan make up the core authors at Sassy Vixen Publishing and together they've created the shared world series Temptations Resort. Look for the first books in that series to come out later this year.

Now happily married to her own Muse and soul mate, she continues to live her dream and act as secretary to all her characters demanding to have their stories told.

Check out:

Tammy's Website
Tammy's Blog
Tammy's Books on Bookstrand, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords,  and iTunes 
Sassy Vixen Publishing
Friend Tammy on Facebook
Like Tammy's Facebook Author Page
Friend Tammy on Goodreads
Friend Tammy on Pinterest
Follow Tammy on Twitter
Find Tammy's Videos on Youtube


If you'd like to share your experiences in the publishing world, please contact us about setting up a guest appearance. We'd love to hear from you!

#WWoW!: Using #Calibre to Manage Your Ebook Collection and Files #MyWANA

It's Wednesday and time for Tammy's Tidbits here at Writer's Words of Wisdom. The last two weeks I talked about using the program Scrivener to help organize all my projects from the research through the editing phases. One part of that program I still haven't mastered yet—converting my final manuscript into all the different ebook formats needed to upload to various retail sites.  

Don't get me wrong. I didn't give up on using Scrivener for conversion of files, but until I work out the process, I found another way to do it...for FREE.

Calibre is program you can download for FREE and use it to organize your entire ebook collection in one place. Not only that, you can convert your files from one format to another and organize them all in one location on your computer.

Here's an introductory video put together by the creator of the program. It's pretty self explanatory on the site, but this video shows you more detail and in real time.

Now I'm going to come right out and say this. Some people use this program, with additional plugins, to remove the digital rights management (DRM) restrictions from books they've purchased in order to convert them to other file formats to use on different ereaders or actually upload the file to pirate book sites.  This post is in NO WAY supporting this sort of action.  What I want to discuss here today is converting MY OWN manuscripts to the various ebook formats.

With Scrivener, I can create a final document and save as a .doc file. This is the format I use to upload to both Amazon and to Smashwords. My file will then automatically be converted to the formats required for each site. Unfortunately, I can't use any of those files on other sites such as All Romance ebooks and Omnilit.

So what do I do now? Open the .doc file up in Word and the SAVE AS a PDF file.  This is the format I add to my files in Calibre. Once you open the program, you'll see the menu bar at the top where you can add books/files, edit metadata, and convert books. Here is the screen shot of what the conversion page looks like.

Removing the conversion window, this is what my collection looks like so far. I've highlighted the Courtship of the Vampyre files. On the right of the photo, you can see the files I've created from the PDF. Those files I then uploaded to ARe/Omnilit and are now for sale there.

As you can see, creating your own ebooks isn't hard to do when you have access to programs such as Scrivener and Calibre. With a little time and patience, you can be in charge of your own publishing house in no time!

Until next time,
~Tammy

Learn More About Tammy

Tammy Dennings Maggy is a best selling, multi-published poet and erotic romance author with Siren and Sassy Vixen Publishing. Her writing explores many facets of romance from ultimate betrayal to finding your soul mate. Her poetry serves as a companion to her novels and has inspired entire series all on their own. Tammy and her alter egos Lia Michaels and Stephanie Ryan make up the core authors at Sassy Vixen Publishing and together they've created the shared world series Temptations Resort. Look for the first books in that series to come out later this year.

Now happily married to her own Muse and soul mate, she continues to live her dream and act as secretary to all her characters demanding to have their stories told.

Check out:

Tammy's Website
Tammy's Blog
Tammy's Books on Bookstrand, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords,  and iTunes 
Sassy Vixen Publishing
Friend Tammy on Facebook
Like Tammy's Facebook Author Page
Friend Tammy on Goodreads
Friend Tammy on Pinterest
Follow Tammy on Twitter
Find Tammy's Videos on Youtube


If you'd like to share your experiences in the publishing world, please contact us about setting up a guest appearance. We'd love to hear from you!