SEAN PATRICK O MORDHA

Once again I find myself between projects. Granted, it may only be a day or so, but it feels lonely in here. However, the time does afford the opportunity to get some things done, like answer e-mails, write a blog or two, help other writers, prepare market promotions, answer the phone, let the cat out (or in), update websites ... Well, there is no end to things that were shelved during completion of the last project.

Speaking of that project. Actually, that little thing ended up being two in one. With completion of Incident at Beaver Creek, it was necessary to post it to an eBook reader, but which one. I worried over that for some time, then thought to go with Kindle. An entire day into that and the idea was trashed. Formating was a nightmare so I went with my first impression -- Smashwords.

The reasoning behind going with Smashwords is easy. Mark Coker, the founder, has made eBook publishing simple. Download and follow his guide and you can't miss. (Well, almost). Step by step he has laid out exactly what to do. Follow those steps exactly and you will publish in multiple formats. The key is EXACTLY and KISS (Keep It Simple Silly) Don't go out for a lot of fancy fonts, sizes, and whatever. Remember, people are buying an eBook for the reading content, not the visual content.

Now, you might notice I said you can't miss -- almost. Following Mark's guide (to the letter) I posted the completed manuscript. On review, it didn't look bad, but there were a few format things I wanted to tweak to make it more readable. Things went down hill from there -- rapidly. After two more attempts, the book was garbage. The problem did not lay with Mark's program or my following directions. What I learned was, my word processor (OpenOffice 3.2) was inserting really weird format codes behind my back. How weird? Well, how weird are Chinese characters??

To upload a manuscript to Smashwords, it must be in .doc form. I have used OpenOffice practically since it came out. It can do that. There have been absolutely no problems between me, any other publishers, or printer. Before that I used WordPerfect. It can do that, too. I gave up on MSWord eons ago for lots of reasons. In any event, I borrowed a computer with Word, ran the manuscript through Wordpad to nuke any format codes, then re-formated the manuscript exactly as Mark said. Bingo! A beautiful read.

In Mark's instructions, he suggested that WordPerfect might not be a good choice. Having used it extensively over the years (since version 3) I couldn't understand why it wouldn't work. I gave it a whirl while preparing A Pirate's Legacy: For Glory, Turth and Treasure. Bingo! A good read right out of the gate. But why? Other submitters apparently had nightmares. I shared my views with Mark and he tends to agree. The problem with WordPerfect may not be so much the program and the users.

Comparing the three word processors, OpenOffice obviously has an issue with stability. I'd like to tell them, but who knows how to contact them. MSWord works fine, but is expensive. I found my 97 version and have no doubts it will work just fine. However, to prepare eBook submissions, I will return to WordPerfect (v.11 or 12) because it gives me a couple formating tools, the others don't. One is the ability to search for format codes as well as words. The second, and most important, is the ability to actually pull up the codes as they appear in each line in a nifty window below the text window. In there, it is possible to manually remove any code you don't want. For instance, when I loaded a manuscript that had been nuked by Wordpad, low and behold, there were several "left tab" codes still in there. Tabs are verboten in ePublishing. They do bad things to overall formats. I would have never seen them in either of the other two processors except in the final product, and I don't have enough hair left to pull or time in life to mess with that.

Right now, authors and publishers have two choices of a word processor when preparing for ePublications. Of course, everyone thinks Windows because they cornered the market. They are getting over the Vista and .docx fiascoes, and MSWord is a good tool, although the cute bells and whistles slow editing. Unfortunately, from a techninical standpoint, there are a couple things wrong. One, their programs are fat, taking up too much computer space, two, they are expensive, and three, Word doesn't have complete control on finding hidden format codes. Newer is not necessarily better. Windows 97 running WordPerfect-12 seems to provide the simplicity and control necessary for preparing eBooks. Just remember to save as a .doc file before submitting.