Book Creation Tutorials

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by crutledge

Well,I went ahead to find out if catenating files would work. I going thru the HELP fileand I found "Join books" so I guess this is common. I joined two short novels - one with 4 chapters and the other with two and a couple of short storys. The file was loaded into BD and a normal formating routine was done.

Yes, that approach certainly works. I do it a slightly different way myself: I load the first book into BD in the usual way, but for 2nd (and subsequent) books I simply open the book in the web browser, select all the text and copy it to the clipboard, then simply "paste" it at the end of BD window.

It's one of those things that there's no "right" or "wrong" appraoch for; there's lots of ways to do it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, that approach certainly works. I do it a slightly different way myself: I load the first book into BD in the usual way, but for 2nd (and subsequent) books I simply open the book in the web browser, select all the text and copy it to the clipboard, then simply "paste" it at the end of BD window.

But don't forget to let people know that doing a paste bypasses Book Cleaner so all the fixes in Book Cleaner do not get applied.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But don't forget to let people know that doing a paste bypasses Book Cleaner so all the fixes in Book Cleaner do not get applied.

That's true but, on the other hand, a lot of the stuff that's in the BC files is there to "put right" the reformatting that BD does when you load a file, such as breaking lines after a ".", even if that "." is part of an abbreviation like "Mr.". That reformatting isn't done when you paste text into BD, so those "fixes" are unnecessary.

The only thing that "breaks" when you paste into BD is that em-dashes get converted into hyphens, so before I paste, in the source material I replace em-dash by "--" and then, after pasting, replace "--" by em-dash in BD.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's true but, on the other hand, a lot of the stuff that's in the BC files is there to "put right" the reformatting that BD does when you load a file, such as breaking lines after a ".", even if that "." is part of an abbreviation like "Mr.". That reformatting isn't done when you paste text into BD, so those "fixes" are unnecessary.

The only thing that "breaks" when you paste into BD is that em-dashes get converted into hyphens, so before I paste, in the source material I replace em-dash by "--" and then, after pasting, replace "--" by em-dash in BD.

I'll have to give it a try and see if anything actually breaks other then emdashes.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'll have to give it a try and see if anything actually breaks other then emdashes.

I've done it a LOT, Jon - in fact with pretty much every one of the "omnibus" edition books that I've posted here. I really think that I'd have noticed if it did "break" anything significant.

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I've done it a LOT, Jon - in fact with pretty much every one of the "omnibus" edition books that I've posted here. I really think that I'd have noticed if it did "break" anything significant.

I agree with Harry. Pasting keeps everything except emdashes.

Sometimes when one puts a file into BD it becomes one long paragraph. If you can't find the stray tag then pasting is the solution. It has another occasional tendency to include later chapters twice (especially with PG australia sources). Again, pasting is a quick workaround.

But the Book Cleaner files are very useful when the source files behave themselves.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Patricia

Sometimes when one puts a file into BD it becomes one long paragraph. If you can't find the stray tag then pasting is the solution. It has another occasional tendency to include later chapters twice (especially with PG australia sources). Again, pasting is a quick workaround.

The trick with PG Australia HTML files is to open them in a text editor and delete the advertising script functions at the start and end of the file (everything between the "<script>" and "</script>" tags). They are what often confuse BD; it works fine if you get rid of them before opening the file.

[Hadrien]

New blog post about self-publishing on Feedbooks: http://blog.feedbooks.com/?p=106

There's now 2 different help pages:
- one dedicated to self-publishing: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/self-publishing
- another one about our publishing feature in general: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/publishing

I'll do another help page dedicated to public domain books next. Most of the tips concerning formatting (blank lines, emdashes etc...) will be very similar to what you usually discuss here with BD.

[Patricia]

Thanks, Harry. I've tried that and you are right. It works for me 99% of the time. When it doesn't I just paste. But I'll try to be more precise with the deletion in future, so it will probably work all the time.

[crutledge]

Hello All,

While using BD I called up the Spell Checker. It reports no dictionary. However there is a file in BD folder entitled "custom dictionary.dat." This leads me to believe that a dictionary can be installed. By some means, it is entered into "custom dictionary.dat." and performs spell checking.

Does anyone have any information? I assume that a spelling dictionary is different from a normal (??) dictionary. If a dictionary is obtained, how is it activated for BD?

Thanks,
Charlie

[Mel]

Are there any particular steps to getting an illustration in a mobi book or things I need to check? Over the long weekend I worked on 4 different books with varying degrees of success. All four look fine in BD. The first one came out fine. The second one MobiCreator insists on replacing the author's picture with the cover art. The third looks fine in BD and as a web page but the art disappears in MobiCreator. The fourth one the art disappears when viewed as a web page. Any hints on where I am missing a step?

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by Mel

Are there any particular steps to getting an illustration in a mobi book or things I need to check? Over the long weekend I worked on 4 different books with varying degrees of success. All four look fine in BD. The first one came out fine. The second one MobiCreator insists on replacing the author's picture with the cover art. The third looks fine in BD and as a web page but the art disappears in MobiCreator. The fourth one the art disappears when viewed as a web page. Any hints on where I am missing a step?

This clearly sounds like "The Mystery of the Missing Link" to me. Ya know, whenever Mobi creates a book, it creates its own folder in "My Publications" containing, in principle, all the files this book includes. But not all the images are moved to that same folder (Why you ask? Answer: Don't know). Result: Missing pics in the book.

Solution: When creating the file in BD or however you do it, just keep the source file and the images together. Then copy and paste the images to the new My Publications folder created by Creator after import of the source file. Bingo!

PS: If there is an error in finding the relative pics, Creator gives you the detailed info on where it looked for the images in its error messages. Just look at those to find the exact links if you have taken pics from outside your rootdirectory. You might have to change the more complex links (well, that shouldn't happen if you are consequent) with your associated editor to have them show up in the book.

So as a general rule, keep your images in an images folder in your root folder, then do a copy and paste to the My Publications folder.

PPS:You do not need your roots folder anymore once the ebook creation has been done as you can use the My Publication folder as the place where all your source files lie.

PPPS: Make sure you edit the html file in your MyPublications folder (not the one in the roots folder) when changing any pic links.

Sigh, it sounds more complicated than it really is. Honest!

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by crutledge

Hello All,

While using BD I called up the Spell Checker. It reports no dictionary. However there is a file in BD folder entitled "custom dictionary.dat." This leads me to believe that a dictionary can be installed. By some means, it is entered into "custom dictionary.dat." and performs spell checking.

Does anyone have any information? I assume that a spelling dictionary is different from a normal (??) dictionary. If a dictionary is obtained, how is it activated for BD?

Thanks,
Charlie

I don't know about the standard dictionary but the custom one would be where you would add your own words.

[patdunn20]

So can you create books for the Kindle? is there a link where I can find out more? Thanks,!

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by patdunn20

So can you create books for the Kindle? is there a link where I can find out more? Thanks,!

Kindle can use MOBI format eBooks from Mobipocket. As a matter of fact the Kindle format is MOBI with slightly different DRM. You can read about MOBI format in the wiki along with how to generate eBooks and there is a forum devoted to this format. Amazon owns Mobipocket, by the way.

Dale