'Tis the season

Needless to say that in the weeks leading to Christmas, I'm having less time to devote to publishing Resurgence. Preparing for and spending the holidays with family is time I treasure and is worth the time away from writing and publishing.

Progress to date

I'm learning that preparing a book for publishing involves a lot of tinkering. Tedious tinkering.

Map

I'm still working on the details of the map but it's coming along. I admit, working with a digital stylus gives me hand cramps after less than an hour. It's a huge reminder that I barely write by hand anymore. I just can't write as quickly as I type and when I try, my handwriting becomes illegible. But it is fun to see my map come to life in digital form.

Formatting

Getting the formatting down is quite time consuming but not enough that I would pay someone to do it for me. It does involve some trial and error. I can't get the drop cap to look nice from Word to Kindle using the convert option of sending a personal document to Kindle. I have yet to try the entire upload process to self publish using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) so I have not yet given up hope that I will get it to look fine since I've read books on my Kindle with drop caps.

Formatting involves a lot of decisions like whether to use all upper case letters for chapters or just the number of the chapter. For characters, which ones to list, in what order, and how to list them since Kindle doesn't do bullets or numbered lists. I looked at examples and it varies per book. Even for the same author, there are variations. To help figure out how I want things to look, I'm trying out various formats to see how it looks in an eBook format.

There are tools to help format for publishing using KDP. There's an add-in that can be downloaded for Word and also Kindle Create which can take a Word document and attempt to format it. So far, I don't really like either of them. I might give the Word add-in the edge because in Kindle Create, if I change the format of one chapter title, I have to select each chapter title and change the format by hand, it won't change all the style of all string that are chapter titles.

It may be because I haven't figure out how to do it but I'm normally quick to learn new software. If it's possible, it's not intuitive at all or I have to fix the source document in such a way that Kindle Create detects the correct format from the start. Hence why so far, I'm giving the edge to the Word add-in.

ISBN

I got my ISBN Canada account very quickly (first business day after I submitted the request). I was able to sign in but I have yet to get my first ISBN.

Along with an ISBN, what Canadian writers need to know is that we are obligated to submit our work to Library and Archives Canada to make it part of Canada's heritage. That's kind of cool actually, except perhaps mailing in at my cost any printed work (but becomes a deductible expense). For electronic publications, it's easier to submit. I'll worry about the printed work after I complete the publication of the electronic version of Resurgence.

Next in my free time

In whatever time I have until the new year that I'm not spending with family, I want to finish the map and have the formatting down. I also need to work on the book blurb and finishing up all the other small details to complete the book for publishing. That may spill into January but hopefully not by much. I'm itching to get back to book #6 even though after Resurgence is out, I need to work on getting the next 3 books out as well. I'll have to strike a balance.

I wish my readers a Merry Christmas and happy holidays. Stay safe if you travel and above all else, enjoy the time you have with friends and family. Memorable writing comes from emotions and 'tis the season to experience all kinds and get inspired.