Now why in the world won’t let let me post my response? Maybe because I combined both replies it’s too long? I’ll try splitting them up.
Hi Anne-Marie,
:D Somehow I knew I should have posted the other screen shots – I was just running quick and grabbing them off the online previewer under my KDP account, but I’ve got drop caps and everything – here ya go. If anyone wants the specifics of how I have things set up, I’ll do my best to answer. But here are a couple of more pages for you.
My Acknowledgments page
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Drop caps
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Chapter One with chapter subheadings (Place and time – just basic stuff)
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This one is a little harder to see but my scene breaks are a Victorian flourish. I used a font instead of an image.
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And I have these set up as InDesign templates so I can easily switch from epub to a layout for PDF so I can publish print books on Createspace (I have running headers on that option).
I write/publish both contemporary suspense/paranormal and medieval historicals so I have templates set up with fonts appropriate for the medieval.
Now this did take a lot of work to set up, but honestly Anne-Marie – it’s all your fault! lol!
I’ve gone through your lynda.com courses David, Mike – just about all of them I think – backwards forwards and sideways and went through and set everything up just the way I wanted it. Several different times. ;)
I write the books and have a freelance editor, when she gets done with the copyedit, and I get it back as a Word doc. I accept the edits then pull it into Indesign and go to town.
I must apologize for the confusion. I say Kindle Gen because Kindle Previewer has two options one with Kindle Gen and one without (at least when I downloaded it a long time ago – it automatically updates so I don’t hardly pay attention to that part anymore – they may not offer two files to download. I use the Previewer with Kindle Gen so I just call it that. So yes, I do use the drag and drop functionality.
But I also use the epub checker you recommended in one of your vids – Pagina epub checker. The only thing I have to fix is the font stuff because I’m using a lot of specialized fonts here as you can see, and like I said this is reflowable. Haunted Heart – since it’s a paranormal with ghosts, I purchased (or was that one Google fonts – I can’t remember) a “spooky” font for the drop caps. Normally I just use a basic script like on the chapter titles for the drop cap. So I check everything in the epub checker because I had to tweak the fonts. Now that I have the templates set, that usually goes right the first time. Then I use the Kindle Previewer with Kindle Gen – drag and drop to check the thing in it, and I transfer it to my own Kindle and I view it on Kindle for PC.
As for fixing errors, it depends on what the error is. Before I had my templates figured out in InDesign I’d see the drop caps go funky or whatever. I’d go back to InDesign to get the style set right. Fix the problem from the beginning that way I won’t have to edit code because problem fixed. Ya know what I mean? But I never once did a percentage with the drop caps.
Oh and I’m also formatting for Smashwords too – I’m still working on getting the ID format back into Word (using your rtf templates idea). I can upload an epub to Smashwords, but the other formats they offer won’t generate from that. They only generate from Meatgrinder and a Word doc. That’s a little too much work for me and the epub gets me into iBooks, Barnes & Noble and so forth, so I haven’t tackled that yet.
(I started with just Kindle Gen early 2013 then downloaded the previewer later, and the command line Kindle Gen doesn’t work if you don’t have it as “c:\kindlegen”. Anyway I was using Word to format back then UGH! But I do remember if you’re using the command line of Kindle Gen alone it will give you a log TXT file of errors it found.
I hope this makes more sense. Now my latest challenge has been to get my InDesign templates to work with Scrivener. I just got that program a week ago for my birthday and I know I can produce epubs with it too. But I just busted my buns learning ID, so I’d rather use it to format. lol! So I was able to import the ID templates into Scrivener – most retained formatting – on some Scrivener gave me a VBA error code (it’s complicated), I have yet to do a full compile on it to see how it goes – but I haven’t finished writing the book yet. lol!
So I hope I clarified that for you. Again my apologies for the confusion.
Cheers,
Kathryn
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