Once we’re done writing a book, it’s time for eBook and print edition formatting. Going back through again and again to check all the small details and make sure it’s all correct can be a frustrating time sink. I’ve found that if I try to check on everything as I read back through, I tend to miss things, so I developed a process where I go through once to check on just the headers, another time to check just the footers, a third time to check on just the formatting of the chapter titles, then again for whatever else might be required in that particular book. Very time-consuming.
It got me thinking about a post RJ Crayton wrote a while back about doing a story bible. The story bible is more about the content of the book: the names, ages, descriptions of the characters, relevant plot points, dates, locations — anything, really, that you need to keep track of while you’re writing. I realized we could do a similar thing for the double-checking process at the end, and it was really brought home to me when I was beta-reading a book for a friend and I found glaring inconsistencies throughout. One chapter header was bold, the next was not; one chapter header had two blank lines after it, the next had none. I realized a detailed checklist could help a writer go back through the book and catch (hopefully) every little formatting slip-up that sometimes slips in. Continue reading “Book Formatting Checklist”
Yesterday, we talked about 
Long ago, before I’d thought about writing (and long before the internet and eBooks), I needed a spot of extra income. It had to be a job I could do from home at night, what with the whole single-parent thing, so I took a course in proofreading and copy-editing. Those were the days of the marvellous red pen and lovely squiggles in the margins…yeah, I took to it. I worked mostly with academic departments and non-fiction publishers in England, learned my trade, advanced to pukka editing and earned my extra pennies.