Hi All,
Would appreciate any and all advice on getting my book from scrivener (I have 1.9, Win 10) into ebooks and POD format.
The compile function seems to have some quirks with mobi, for example substituting fonts (but doesn’t really seem to show how any place how the alternative fonts are selected.) Other formatting issues include line spacing, and indents that are set at a single space, rather than the amount specified under compile options.
When generating the pdf for POD, I used the “paperback” format, which I’ve been able to tweak to get pretty good results, however there are still a few issues such as orphans and widows, and setting gutter spacing.
A program called sigil was suggested, but it looks like this only works with epub files, so I would need to first convert mobi to epub. Or compile to epub and then use sigil. Or compile to rtf and use amazon’s tool to create the mobi? Or it has been suggested that 3.0 has a better compiler?
Any comments or suggestions? How do you all create your final masterworks?
Thanks in advance!
I’ve run into a few problems converting a Scrivener project into an ebook, but the good news is the problems turned out to need fairly simple fixes. Except for my latest effort, But let’s not go there. What I’m running into probably doesn’t apply in your case. You mentioned an issue of the fonts used in the eBook and how, and basically how do you select them. The thing is, even if you successfully select the font you want to see, the reader may see a completely different font. The best you can do is pick a font that’s used commonly and still looks good, and leave it at that.
On the issue of POD and dealing with widows and orphans, you can set Word and most other word processing programs to avoid widows and orphans, but that can cause content to not end evenly at the bottom of the page. To fix that, you either need a solid layout program, such as Adobe InDesign, or someone who has InDesign and willing to do the job for you at a reasonable price. InDesign is very good at adjusting tracking of individual lines of copy, or better, paragraphs, so that the content ends at the same space from the bottom for each page, except for last pages of chapters. But it’s an expensive program with a steep learning curve. Finding someone who will do that at a reasonable cost is the better option if you don’t have experience with InDesign. I’ve seen the effort of someone trying to achieve the same effect using Word, but the result wasn’t good. There are also outlets that offer page templates for print books at very reasonable prices. You could try that. I haven’t seen the result, but the authors seem satisfied with the results.
tom c.
As a less costly alternative to InDesign, you might take a look at Affinity Publisher.
Mark