Shattered, Software, StoryBox, Uncategorized, Writing

Publishing From StoryBox Easier Than Expected

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I wrote Shattered completely in StoryBox. I’m sure none of you are surprised. What may surprise you is just how easy it was to publish the work to Amazon and PubIt. Smashwords took a little extra work, but because of how StoryBox exports, you’re starting with a pretty clean file to begin with. (Note that everything described in this post is using version StoryBox 1.3.105 (coming soon!))

So, just how easy was it to put it on B&N and Amazon?

First, if you don’t already have your defaults this way, you want to turn off “Preserve Formatting” for each of your scenes. You want to turn it on for each of your Chapters (which will become your chapter headings), and probably for your other, non-scene documents (title page, etc…)

Second, go through your Chapter pages and set the font larger. The actual font size used on export will be relative to your default text font.

Third, import the image for your title. It should be of an appropriate size. In the document properties, click the “cover” checkbox.

Fourth, if you want to use an image for a scene separator, import your scene separator image and click the “scene separator” checkbox.

Fifth, add SB Code where you need it. [br] for line breaks, [url] for urls.

I put my title page information in the Story node. I added a Document for my copyright page and put that ahead of the first chapter. Also, added one for a dedication. You don’t want these to be Chapters, unless you want them to be in the table of contents that gets generated.

Now, the best part. From the Project menu, select Export. You will need to export twice. Once for most normal ePub readers, and once for uploading to Amazon.

First, for normal ePub readers, select ePub from the File Format drop down. Make sure “Include Body”, “Include Children”, and “Convert To Typographer’s Quotes” are checked – they should be by default. If you are using an image for a scene separator, select “[picture]” from the Scene Separator drop down. Click Export, and you are ready to upload it.

For Kindle, the process is exactly the same with one extra step. Tick the “Prepare For Kindle Conversion” checkbox before you click Export. You don’t have to do this, but if you don’t, there will not be any space around your scene separators. You can upload the ePub directly to Amazon.

One thing to keep in mind when using images for scene separators. Don’t use a transparent .png file for the kindle version. It will turn into a black box when Amazon converts it. Use a .jpg with a white background. Ticking the Scene Separator box on one image removes it from the other image, so you just have to make sure you tick the proper box before you export, unless you use the same image for both kindle and ePub. This is a particularly annoying feature of the Amazon conversion. If you convert an ePub to mobi using Calibre, the transparent PNG’s work fine on the device if you use the USB cable to transfer it.

Smashwords takes a bit of extra work because they require a .doc file. Export a third time to .rtf. You don’t have to worry about removing the SB code you added for the ePub export. StoryBox does that for you. Then open it in word follow the Smashwords guide. You should NOT have to use the nuclear option, but you will have to set up your styles. When you’re done, save as .doc and upload!

Software, StoryBox

StoryBox Status

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It’s been awhile since the last update, and you might be wondering when the next one is.

The answer? Soon, I hope. I upgraded to some new underlying libraries, and the vendor made some changes that I had to accommodate. The changes turned out to be fairly significant, so I’ve been using StoryBox and testing it as much as I can. I don’t want to release it and find I broke something critical with the change.

Also, I will be releasing Shattered in the next couple of weeks and I’m using StoryBox ePub export for dealing with B&N PubIt and Kindle, and I’m working out the kinks.

The next update probably has the largest number of changes of any update since I started publishing StoryBox a year and a half ago.

Writing

Workshop Causes Identity Shift – Story @ 11

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Sometime during the week, something pretty amazing happened. I don’t know when, exactly, but I do know when I recognized it.

After the last session, we sat around and talked. Two other pro writers showed up and joined the conversation. At one point, we were talking about the traffic in the Seattle area, and I said, “I don’t have to worry about the traffic, since I’m a writer and I never have to leave my basement.”

Now, if you know me, You know I’ve said nearly that same thing many times in the past. About 10 seconds after making the comment, I stopped and said, “Woah – I said ‘I’m a writer.'” Here’s the deal. Prior to the workshop, I would have said, “I’m a programmer.”

Sometime last week, a switch in my brain got tripped and I now identify myself as a writer before anything else.

Writing

Writer’s Marketing Workshop Aftermath

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It’s late, or early. I’m in bed after the last day of the workshop. I can only say, at this point, that I think attending a workshop like this provided more challenges to me and my writing than any of the alternatives I’ve tried.

I committed story six times this week. Freaking incredible. I have proposals for six new novels sitting in my bag, and I can’t wait to start writing them. I know how to pitch them. I know how to blurb them. Hell, I have incredible blurbs and tag lines for all of them.

Oh, and the other writers that participated? One and all, they wrote some incredible proposals for books that I can’t wait to read. Fifty four new novel proposals in total. Just an amazing amount creativity and energy permeated this place.

I may write more about it in the future, but as of right now, I feel blessed to have participated.