I thought I’d share the checklist I use whenever I create a new version of a MOBI file for one of my books. It saved me from a big error yesterday.
I use the Android app “List Master Pro” to display the checklist on my Nexus 7 while I work on my PC.
Some explanations:
Item 0: Whenever I note something I need to do later, I add “qqq” to the comment in document notes. For example, “qqq Finish the acknowledgements.”
Item 05a: I run a spellcheck in OpenOffice because Scrivener doesn’t let me do this on a project-wide basis (unless I’m missing something). Because I’ve added all correct words that were initially flagged as incorrect (either to the standard dictionary or to one specific to the project), the spellcheck will tell me immediately if there are any new errors. This saved me other day because I’d changed “pain-killers” to “painkillerss.”
Item 06: This is the most important step. I do a comparison with the last version. If I only changed one thing, there will be only one change displayed. Thus, if I’ve made any inadvertent changes, this will catch them.
This is what saved my butt yesterday, since somehow I’d pasted a few paragraphs of incorrect text into my book.
Item 10: “Runkg.bat” is simply a batch file that will run KindleGen, but pause so that I can see if any errors or warnings were generated:
cd C:\Users\Al\Documents\YT
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Kindlegen\kindlegen.exe” %1
That checklist has served me well.