So, I went through my first book, made corrections in the Affinity Publisher book for book one Mystery of the Knowing. I wanted to make an Epub. Easy right? WRONG! After 3 days of working on formatting, trying different programs, uploading to my Kobo almost 30 times, and even trying to create it in Draft to Digital, I finally gave up!
       These are the reasons it is not working I have come to the conclusion of. The way I made the first book was a huge mistake because I made the edits not in the documents, but in the Affinity Publisher program!
       In case you didn't notice, the formats Affinity Publisher will convert to are pretty impressive and very useless really for writers who want to make their own books! Why? Because you can't turn them into an Epub or anything useful but a PDF and I have found over the years so many glitches in that process.
        To get a decent Epub you want to start with a decent DOC. and does Affinity allow you to do this? NOPE!
All you get is a PDF and if you made all your edits in a PDF, you got it! No file that can be converted easily! And I do mean easily!!!
        I tried everything to do it and looked at countless YouTube Videos.  I watched one ancient video by a woman who explained how to do an Epub using 3 other programs! Nope, that is the second problem!
        The more conversions you make, the more mistakes and glitches you are going to get!
        I took my Affinity book file and converted it to a PDF. Easy right? Then I used Adobe to convert the PDF to the Doc file. You would think that would work right? Nope, glitches galore!
         Then I put the file into the Kindle Create for Ebook conversion. Think THAT would be it right? Check out my first book. It said it was fine in the launcher (although the format glitches I noticed in the previewer were NOT in the copy I uploaded. I know this to be a FACT!). Nothing I can do about something if it is correct in one place and turns out incorrect in another right? I left the book. I was so completely and utterly disgusted!
         I tried to use the said file in Draft to Digital. Well, the Epub also was a joke! I finally took it down!  Total mess! I wasn't putting my person proofing through that after I had gone over the file a zillion times myself! NOPE!
         So I made my next book in LibreOffice Writer and not word. I did the edits all in the program before uploading to Affinity for a draft. Will I make the corrections in the book draft? You can bet I will NOT! Affinity Publisher is good only for one thing, FORMATTING THE BOOK! NOT for editing if you want a file you can use to make an Epub out of!
          I am looking at getting Scriverner. It has made some really cool changes! I had it briefly before but was too difficult to navigate. Now however, they have made it so that it might get rid of my editing and Epub creation headaches! One thing for sure, I shall NEVER use Affinity Publisher for anything but formatting a book ever again! EVER!
          That first book was an easy thing to write. From then on, it all went downhill. I used to blame myself only, but now, I don't. The programs are half ass and glitchy. They are NOT doing a proper job and that isn't on me or on you if you are finding you are having the same difficulty.
          This first book was YEARS in the making. I learned a good deal and I watched a good deal also change. My timing in life has never been great and now in the book making world where the market is saturated with books, marketing is a full time job! It is nuts. I have had my book out since October and it has about 3 and 4 reviews and has made me maybe fifty dollars! Oh, I now know how to market my book. I also know what it entails. I also see how much the printing cost as gone up with Amazon and other sites and how much you now make on a book. It is ridiculous. The days of making big bucks off your writing in the INDIE market unless you have someone to support you while you get set up, is gone. It will NOT be sustainable without a great deal of effort. This is a fact now. In the beginning, there were those who rode the wave and had a great time financially. Now however, that is all changing AGAIN.
            The bottom line is I am NOT in a position to do this for anything other than a hobby! Oh I am creative, I am ambitious, I am determined but one thing I have learned is you have to know when to say when and throw in the towel. I have sacrificed to do this writing. I lived in a tent for Pete's sake to save enough money to get to a place cheap enough to keep my living expenses low. For what? Days of headaches knowing there isn't enough time to get the do the writing and the marketing and the making a living and keeping food on the table. I write and I enjoy it. IS it worth it at this point. I can honestly say NO! I do it because I love it but no more pressure to put it out there. No more pressure to Market. No more pressure to do any of it. I am tired of the online headaches, the hackers, the bloody sign in problems (get your phone stolen and have to change your phone number and see how many places you can get into in another country!).
      

I am using the FIRST affinity publisher and not the new one. It is a matter of principle with me. They promoted they were the fight against Adobe and how they have become so greedy wanting you to rent the program and not buy it. So the makers of Affinity came along and said, Hey, we are going to make it so you only have to buy it and not rent it. This is all fine and dandy. They they have the updated versions. Then suddenly, they don't have any more updates, they just come out with another version.

Nope, I shall stick to the old one which I am still figuring out and frankly, there isn't a program out there that doesn't glitch! Just make something into a PDF and see!

So, I have learned to keep notes. I set up a series of books I keep all my metadata in (they are in my low content section on this website...I am old school, I want a hard copy!). These help me to keep the sizes of the books the same, margins the same (unless I decide to change them for some reason, and so on. It makes like so much easier.

I also do NOT make the book until I have done almost all my proofing and editing in Open Office. The less changes I have to make in Affinity Publisher the better.  Partly because I made the mistake of using a Canadian dictionary in my first book and it just came up as error everywhere no matter how I changed the preferences in sooo many places on Affinity Publisher! So I do it elsewhere and then disable it in the flight preview section. It is just easier. I use UK English for the most part because it is almost the same as Canadian Grammar but of course, the book still gets words highlighted in US grammar! I ignore it now for the most part and at least I get no yellow or green dots coming up saying there is a spelling issue. To do this, I customized the preflight messages.

Now setting up the book can be tricky. Make sure you put in bleeds and click it when you make the PDF. Also make sure you have the book size where you want it. If you have to change it, I recommend doing the book again. Trying to deal with all the sizing of text boxes, which I have found no way in that program to do as a group, is a pain! I could put the text box in the master pages but I find it screws up the chapter beginning pages. I just can't get it to go quite right.

After you have your bleed and margins in, then click and make the book show in facing pages and edit the masters again. I find when I don't they save funny and can get crazy. I just find it easier for me. Who knows for you made you can set it up as facing pages and it doesn't glitch when you make it single pages to make the PDF to upload. I found it sent the pages all over the places and I have just too many exceptions with images, etc. If it works for you to set it up as in Facing Pages to start then go for it! Whatever works!

I put all the pages from the masters as even or odd and do not put in the beginning chapter page until the very end. Every time you add pages especially when you ware working on the book in "facing pages" it will only add pages from one side so you have to right click and then hit "apply master to all pages" and select the one you want. This will sort the blank pages out but unless you want to exclude you will also be you might as well just do the chapter pages last mind you: ALWAYS MOVE THE TEXT USING THE ENTER BUTTON DOWN TO THE PLACE YOU WANT THE BEGINNING OF EACH CHAPTER TO START before moving on to the next chapter, otherwise you will have text possibly needing to link again and it screws things up. And trust me, making the text box in one place will also lead to more issues. Just enter until it is where it is you want it on the page.

The other thing I do is I like chapters. They may go in one at a time however it is important to link them when you add so edits and inserts flow or you may find the end of chapter 13 down at the end of the book! A real drag!  And remember. to post text and have it flow to the next page, just hold shift key and hit the little red triangle in the flow text on the side of the text box. Took me four videos on You Tube to find that little tidbit! Crazy! It is so important, but no one else seemed to think it was! Then your text will flow to the next page!

Also, because so many computers are not that great at managing a book formatting program, I don't link the chapter until after I have checked to make sure nothing glitched when I added it. Sometimes the writing program will do something funky in Affinity Publisher and make it not stay true to the formatting you have checked. You also may want to check to make sure the hyphenation is checked so there are no unsightly holes when you do the both side justification. And don't forget your widows and orphans! So just make sure you are in your text tool, and click on the chapter you just put in. Select all or control "A" and highlight everything. Check your font, the size and all other formatting. I do this usually before I flow it to the other pages. Then you can link it to the previous and carry on.

So make your really big decisions before you start the book process and have almost all your proofing and editing done. It will really help.

My first book took me forever partly because it was always crashing. I should have not done the edits in the program. Life would have been so much easier! This next murder mystery took a 16th of the time to make and I don't know about you, but I want to spend more time writing and less time formatting.

Next time we shall talk about the back blurb. Oh isn't that a challenge! Happy writing!


   

           I promised I would talk about all the mistakes I have done with my first book and what I do differently now.
         First, I will talk about SAVING FILES~you would think this isn't an issue, but as you do edits, things get lost or misplaced. I remember making an entirely new proof of my book from an older version. I have a friend who helps me proof since I can't afford to hire someone and she is quite used to doing it so I am fortunate. Even so, mistakes get made and I made the mistake of jumping the gun on ordering my first proof. I was impatient and wanted it in my hands immediately. HUGE mistake. I ended up doing about 10 proofs! Ridiculous!
          So this time around I did a few things differently. First of all, they say just get it down on paper and worry about the edits later. NOPE! I am more careful to have all names decided and places and other aspects of the plot so I don't have to go back and change so much or find things later on. If I do something unexpected to my layout, I make a note of it. Same with any changes. I note everything now.
           To begin with I use  LibreOffice. Writer The way it is made is much less complex and the coding is not what my son calls spaghetti coding like the more recent Word is. That one was just too much for my computer to handle, the style presets kept disappearing and that blessed space between every paragraph which is set as the default was a real pain to fix.  LibreOffice Writer still has the space between but it is so much easy to do. The program isn't perfect and it does has its limitations but it is free and it works. So I can't get a default set up (haven't really tried though!) of the formatting I want however I just make the changes for each chapter before I write it. Right click on paragraph, go down to bottom to "edit style" and make any changes you want there. I put my indent at 6 and check the box that says no spaces between paragraphs, and the space between lines I want, I then change the font to the one I purchased and set the spelling to what I want and size of font. Takes about two seconds and saves me tons of headaches!  I know how to do it in Word but for some reason when I use Affinity Publisher to format the book the newer Word program just does not jive well without a lot of fiddling. I have no use for that.
        I also also call each file folder E1 or E2 or E3 and so on. This means Edits 1 or so on. This way, when I get something back from my friend done, I can check it and save it in a different spot to keep from confusing things. In all my files, I have an "OLD" folder. I don't want anything anywhere that may confuse me. LOL I am easily confused especially when I have spent hours on the computer!
         Finally I have found a way to do the edits so that I shall need fewer proofs. I send all the chapters off for my friend to look at and correct. There is often a great deal to fix and she will, of course, miss a lot. I then look it over and send them back but I found there was just too much being missed so I started doing two things. The first thing is I only use "Find and Replace" sparingly because it really can be a sucky outcome. It can change the flow and the character of the words too much. IT is handy if you think you are being redundant with some words though. Finally I have learned to skip, you just hit find again and it will move on so you aren't replacing things you shouldn't replace!
         Once you have done everything you want to do there, you then open it in a read aloud program and have it that you have the read aloud on while you follow it in your other document. You would not believe how much the mind fills in and how many mistakes you will find because you can tell when you hear it, it isn't correct! I just use a free one and not the really good ones but in time I will have that but that's for later when I start making audio books.
         The last thing I started doing is going with one chapter back and forth at a time. This means my friend does it, I copy and save it as an E2 or E3 and look it over and send it back. Just the one chapter. I don't move on until I am satisfied with that chapter! I find it means there is far less messing about once you get into formatting the book in a publishing program. I will go into this at another time.
          When you are editing, having that gallery of characters and their names makes life so much easier. Also it you get caught up in what your writing, sometimes you can accidentally put in a wrong name. It does happen but not good! lol
          There are tons of things to think about when editing and it is nice if you have someone you can discuss things with like whether that was believable or that person was too this or that for the scene. I hope everyone has someone like to help them with this part. It is the most important part of writing. I also learned that not everyone is as good at proofing as they think so never take what someone says as gospel. Check it yourself also. Lastly remember the old saying, "Too many cooks spoils the broth" because this is also true of editing.
          Oh yes, never forget SAVE<SAVE<SAVE and back things up. I didn't and I lost a very valuable gallery because the program glitched! Also never open from "recent". Go to the file and open it from the source, it will also glitch less often.
          Well, time to get back to it. Have a great time writing!

One of the things I find most interesting about writing is how lost you can get in it! I always do a mind map of whatever I am writing. I have it figured out as I go along loosely. Of course things change as I realize connections change and characters need to be added or mistakes need to be corrected.  And there is this lovely thing called "plot armour" as my son calls it. He hates when out of the blue without any lead up, how the protagonist suddenly solves the murder or something else like this. Well, my mysteries have a paranormal element so that keeps it fun trying to make sure everything is accounted for from the dead AND the living! lol
     I actually create a visual gallery of my characters- those that are the good guys, the bad guys and the possible red herrings. Add to this I also do pen and ink drawings in my books that usually are some how related such as a setting or something. So this is a warm up really to get me ready to do the writing. Then, I can usually write a few chapters at a time, averaging the word count to the amount I want. I can refer to my gallery, my time line, my tension within my plot line, etc. This means I am less inclined to make mistakes because I am tired or whatever. By the time I sit down to write the book, it is already done in my head...as well as the next three.
      So once the book is written, then the fun begins. EDIT EDIT EDIT. I will have more to say on this another time. For now, lets just say, it is a very necessary evil especially when you have issues with your to-be verb tenses and you keep slipping into past tense when you are writing it in the present!
      The next book in the series I am doing is very different that the first. I won't say how, but the tone and the content is different. The ending is still interesting, but in a totally different way. Once more Martha will save the day!
       Next blog I shall talk about second books and learning from mistakes....or so I hope! Take care and have a great day!

I am currently living in the golden triangle for coffee in Colombia and it is coming into the rainy season...in other words, fall winter. Summer was extremely hot so a nice 75 degrees F is not bad at all. The thing is though, where I am is called Colinas De Cafe or coffee hills. It is higher up and boy, the thunder and lightening is close! Blew out a transformer! I now am the proud owner of a power surge protector/power station just in case! Last night the banging from the thunder was so loud it kept waking me up! This is life in Colombia!

I wasn't going to talk shop about books on here but I do want to mention new research is showing trends are now running towards shorter length books! Some feel it could be because of box sets however I think it is just folks have so little time. During Covid, there was plenty of time during lock down but now everyone is off to the races.

I do want to mention my book, Mystery of the knowing is NOT 12 pt font. It is 13! this means it is a bit of an easier read and for folks like me who suffer from eye strain because of being in front of electronics a lot, it is a fast and easy read!

Oh and for fun, I shall be doing some little blurb videos on Tik Tok soon. That should be a hoot!

It has always been easy for me to come out of the closet on being gay, but on being intuitive? NOPE! I was not raised to talk about it. It just IS!  In future I MAY be doing some readings online. I do have an obscure website...not sure yet how I feel about that! Time will tell!

So have a great rest of your weekend and see you mid week!

I have decided to come back and start writing blogs again on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have edited my banner because I no longer feel like I am rambling along as the fool. I know too much now to think I can optimistically walk off that cliff!  So instead I am going to put a beautiful simple scene I wouldn't mind exploring although at the moment I am in between a small and larger city on the side of a mountain in Colombia.

I don't care any longer whether what I write is well received or even if it is found. I write for one reason and one reason only, because I love to do it. I have spent far too much time thinking "I don't know enough". What I am finding as I read what others are writing, hell, I know more than I thought!

Sure I will continue to make mistakes but that is simply life and frankly, cannot be avoided, no one is perfect. I am tired of agonizing over my every word wondering if it is correct grammar or if it is going to met with good responses.

One thing as an artist I should have applied to my writing that I learned a long time ago when I started painting, once it is out there, it is out there and fair game for anyone to make any comment about. There just isn't any way around it. If I want to have my say, then why shouldn't anyone else?

These little writings are not going to be long and detailed and indeed, they may not be very informative in terms of technical things such as how to market or the other mysteries of selling. Trust me, I am NOT the person you want to read up about that topic. I think most of my sales on Amazon have been me buying books for my friends!

The thing is, my lack of sales isn't going to lead to me making a you tube video about what a waste of time writing your own books as an INDIE writer! I do it, as I said, because I love it. It gives me a sense of purpose and grounding and makes me feel like I am doing something in my old age...okay, not THAT old an age, lol, but what I am saying is, I would rather be creating books, than sitting around complaining about how awful the world is and how it is falling apart.
So if you find this site, and you want to read my little burbs, thanks, if not, have a great day! Cheers! RB

Recently I moved from BC back to Nova Scotia. A 6 day car trip. It was great. Missed all the snow and rain. Dry pavement and clear skies most of the way! I had a great deal of time to think as I drove those very long flat prairie highways or through the never-ending Ontario roads.

One of the decisions I had to make, is what I am doing with this blog and website. Most of the course I was taking about blogging talked about having a purpose, becoming the best you can be in one area, making yourself noted and then doing things to make money on it.

I COULD do this. I know I could. However the question is, IS THIS WHAT I WANT?

I called my blog "Ramble Writings" because I wanted it to be a pleasure to write it and not work. As time went on, it because a way of sharing my mistakes so that others may learn from them. I never intended it to be perfect, a sample for other writing projects or anything like this.

I chose "The Fool" in the tarot cards to symbolically acknowledge I am walking into the unknown with only my wits and my optimism!

One thing I learned a very long time ago, when you take something you love, and make it into a profession, you run the risk of it becoming just another job.

I looked at different sites where I could create articles to contract, or edit and help with term papers and so on. Even go on Fiverr however in all these scenarios, it turned what I did just into another job which I do not want.

 
I also do not want this for blog writing. I know I should have a "professional" website. Lord knows, I get enough offers to help for payment! Thing is, I am not where I want to be yet. I only have so much energy because I have to keep a roof over my head and my car going. 

I have made sacrifice after sacrifice for my work over the years whether it was painting or now creating books. I am getting older and I am only willing to give up so much or go so far for this or anything else. Right now, at least in Canada, things are extremely expensive and finding places to live are now not cheap. Not in the least. Greed under the disguise of inflation has given many opportunists free reign at the expense of the little guy's basic needs.

Having said this, I think there is always going to be some sacrifice when it comes to doing what you love. It may mean giving up certain things or living in a certain way. It is also a gamble. Will it be accepted? Will it allow me to make enough money to survive? Will I be able to do this full time down the road?

These are all realistic questions however I have found, in the end, it all boils down to why I write to begin with as it does for any person who is creative. We do it because it is part of us. It is part of who we are. It goes deeper than a simple persona or something we identify with. I think it comes down to a much deeper value system that goes beyond simply meeting the needs of living or even living comfortably!

When you only have a finite amount of time to do something, and only a finite amount or energy and resources, there comes a point where you have to be realistic and make decisions and set priorities.

I have several children's books and a murder mystery in the works besides the two I have uploaded on Amazon. I simply don't have the time to get intensely into blogging. It is not where I want to put my time. I love the fact the books are like projects. I can see a beginning, middle and end. I don't want to get into a never ending major intense blogging set up.

So, my blog shall remain Ramble Writings. I would like to open it to other wannabe writers are a place where they can SAFELY expose their work to the public.

I will explore this concept in the near future. I am clear on one thing however:
1) It will be a place to share WITHOUT judgment or review. A place where you can share a sample of your writing that is YOUR writing. It may not be perfect and the grammar may not be perfect but it will be a place where you can share your voice!!! A safe place to put your work out there. Nothing more, nothing less.

If you want to write, then write! I may set parameters to keep the content low, however it seems a natural progression from supporting other Indie Publishers/writers to having a safe place to say they were online without having to get into making their own blog.

No money will pass hands however it an be a place where it is archived online so you can say, go check out this here and see my work if you want to hire me or something like that.

Details to come but first, I need to get myself situated and grounded again. Take care of my basic needs so I can move on to the needs of my fellow ramble writers!

Until then, KEEP WRITING!!!!

If you are in the same boat as me, you are working a regular job, trying to find time to write and edit and publish your own books. If I was retired or able to just work at the book gig then it would be different, however often we only have pockets of windows of time to actually do anything.

It isn't easy to juggle everything and there is so much I am finding that is expected even in the marketing aspect of this.

For instance, I am taking a course on blogging that is really not bad on Fiverr.

Oh, what is Fiverr? Fiverr is a Freelance Marketing Place. It started with being about to hire someone to do something for you for five bucks! now it is more just the name and most folks have packages so you can get things like you book placed on different blogs or websites, I got translations done there and some other things. It is a handy place to find professionals who can do all sorts of things for you!

Anyhow, so it seems, there is SOOO much now that can be done with these blogs to make them better and so on. The thing is, I don't have time right now.

And you may not also. From one person I listened to, there are now over 150,000. books on Amazon and more coming every day. That is a great deal of competition! And getting the algorithm to work on Amazon to get views requires reviews. These reviews are supposed to only be done certain ways which is fine however everything takes time!!!!

Currently I am getting ready to move across the country. Even writing this review right now is difficult. I understand completely all you people out there working on doing what you love and making a living. Costs of living is NOT going down!

But hey, maybe more folks will want to get lost in books! lol Want to escape. That is where we come in!

When return to Nova Scotia, I promised myself I would work on getting my murder mystery out there and another started and done. Who knows, the pace of life is much slower than BC, maybe I will!

Remember you are not the only one juggling! So many people are! The only thing I can say is like on that movie Nemo...JUST KEEP SWIMMING! or in this case, just keep doing!!!!

Good luck, I will be off here to get settled. Another adventure!

I just started creating an ebook of Lake of the Spirit Bear. I was side tracked and dragging my heels on it because it will look very different from the actual children's book however I was just on Facebook and clicked on an ad about a workshop a woman is giving on how to do two tiny hacks and use books she didn't even create to turn them into ebooks and give herself a 5 figure income! God, people simply do not have an morals at all any more!

Needless to say, I am going to get back to it and get my book Lake of the Spirit Bear out there as an Ebook. I will use Draft2Digital (not Draft2Design which is so close but something else! oops!), to get that book out there. Be damned if I am going to labour over a book and let someone with loose morals and slick with a click to take what I did and turn it into her income. Gad, yeck!

Draft 2 Digital comes out of the UK and is a fast growing company who are working on their distribution platform. Who knows, I may even use them to do my murder mystery if it keeps improving the way it is. They even have a beta version for doing physical books in the works. Not sure I would go that far just yet, I know the head aches I had with Ingram Sparks! They seem pretty open to suggestions and if they can give you the option to chose a launch date or not, I might even consider it. Like Ingram Sparks though, right now they put deadlines on things I do NOT like.

So just a heads up for all those folks like me, dragging their heels (and working all day!) to get a move on if they are considering making an ebook!

Good luck!

I think credit should be given where credit is due and I must say, my customer service experience with Amazon has been top notch. They do have a community of followers you can tap into for threads and so on, and they do have very good succinct information very easy to find and follow, however I have also found that I love the way you can book a phone call instead of waiting and listening to terrible music, or worse, ads! I usually get a call back well within the half hour and all the folks I have talked to have been fun and knowledgeable. Sure one was totally off with the whole page count thing (I was correct the first time and never should have second guessed myself!!! Extra pages were not needed! Oh well, what is done, is done!!!).

When compared to so many other places which leave some obscure contact info hidden in layers at the bottom of a page and expect you to spend ten hours reading other folk's threads to get info, Amazon has the decency to actually give you a live person to talk to! At least on the call back.

So as far as I can tell, right now Amazon is my favourite site to use to upload books, the customer service at Draft2 Digital is a close second which is developing a pretty solid marketing platform.  Blurb is a nightmare...they want edges on books down to the third decimal and my Affinity programs round them so because of this, I can't even upload a simple PDF, it always comes out incorrect and I am NOT getting involved with Adobe whom they are affiliated with or use their own program. Add to this the random way they have things concerning sizes and page count, and the previewer is useless. Nope. It used to be so easy, I have a proof from them however something has happened. Probably starting getting kickbacks for selling or promoting the softwares I mentioned, either way, not worth it.

LuLu is fine for folks who want a few copies for personal use however quite pricey. And as I said, some sites help you do it all and are like a publisher, editor, distributor, press, etc. Only problem is, they cost you. I met one woman who had her book about her dog done which was cute but it cost her thousands of dollars! Nope, not happening!

I love the fact you can now do it yourself in all areas...and yes, editing IS a pain and yes you have to edit, edit, edit however that is just the way she goes! I don't know if I want to look at my first series set when I get the books, because I fear what I may find!!!! I am just too picky and there is so much that can glitch up even during the making of the PDF!

I figure if someone else can do it, then so can I...and slowly but surely, when I have time, I do! One day I might be able to give up my day job, however that isn't happening yet!!!

Hang in there, it does get easier!