Okay, that’s a fib; I don’t need any encouragement to drink, but seriously. This is at least the second time that I have had to reassemble the hyperlinks in my Smashwords copy because somehow, Pages obliterated nearly all the bookmarks and converted all the chapter titles to repetitions of the chapter numbers. If that sounds like gibberish, this is what happened:
Where I had started a given chapter with something like this…
Chapter One
Spinners’ Square
In which both lines contained a bookmark used in the Table of Contents, I opened up the file and found:
Chapter One
Chapter One
…and with no bookmark.
The practical upshot, aside from the chapter headings looking ridiculous, was that the Table of Contents would be perfectly useless.
This means that I spent an evening earlier this week going through the goddamn Pages file and reconstructing my chapter headings, bookmarks and Table of Contents. There’s also something new in the Author’s Notes and I’ve made up a Discussion Guide for book clubs, but I signed up for those changes; the nonsense with the headings was supposed to be a non-issue by now. All this hassle would not be necessary if Smashwords allowed us to upload ePub files, but as of now they only accept Word files. Heck, even an HTML file would be more fun to wrangle into shape than translating Word format through Pages.
Oddly enough, ePub is no problem for me. Scrivener can pop out an ePub file no problem, but Smashwords is so finicky that I can’t trust a Word file compiled from a Scrivener project.
All that, and I’ve just barely begun formatting the PDF for printing. Margins and font size are not difficult, but widows and orphans tend to be a problem. Well, at least the PDF doesn’t have to go through a conversion engine that chokes on the slightest complexity in formatting. Finally, only after the PDF is ready can I make a new cover.
(The less said about what’s going into making a new cover of the right image resolution, the better. The analogy of making sausages comes to mind.)
***
All that was written several days ago while I was in the throes of the latest Authoring Situation. It’s basically resolved now; the sausages have been made and the files have been uploaded; you can see the new cover on this page. All the above still applies, though. Formatting and presentation are a bitch.
#1 by Black Hippie Chick on June 26, 2012 - 1:35 PM
I understand and feel your frustration. In my grad school classes we have to post to online forums, create class blogs, etc…it is so frustrating when I can upload things from my iPad :(.
#2 by alysonmiers on June 26, 2012 - 1:39 PM
(I think you mean “can’t” upload from the iPad?)
#3 by Black Hippie Chick on June 26, 2012 - 1:59 PM
Yes, that is indeed what I meant. Although, I do appreciate the ease of format selection choice when emailing a Pages document.
#4 by Ryan Levesque (@eBookItcom) on June 27, 2012 - 9:30 AM
Glad frustration is over. For next proj, if submitting a converted ePub for distrib is more appealing, I’m glad to help. https://www.ebookit.com/distribution/93-do-you-offer-distribution-only-service-if-we-already-have-a-converted-epub