Archive for 'Tech Tips'

Don’t Be a Pill

You’ll see lots of posts on publisher sites about “difficult authors.” Don’t be one! Why? Because editing and publishing a book is as much about getting along with the author as it is about working with the book.We have been blessed so far with several really wonderful authors, but have also had to reject authors […]

Formatting for EBSCO

EBSCO requires specific formatting in pdf submissions. As of this writing (11/2012), they accept only pdfs, no epubs (though this may change soon). The specific requirements are: page numbers on all pages; minimal margins (half inch all around); and pdf bookmarks. This is how I make an EBSCO-friendly file based upon my workflow from InDesign, […]

So You Want to Start a Press

So You Want to Start a Press

We’ve learned a lot at BDP here in our 8 months of operation, so I thought I’d share some of our insights with those of you who might be dreaming of starting their own small press. One thing is for sure–there are more good books than publishers, so if you can’t find an established publisher […]

Footnotes and References in Ebooks

With a few caveats, making footnotes and similar cross-references in ebooks is pretty simple. The idea is to use html anchors, which can be inserted directly into your html (if you’re doing it that way…) or by using Sigil (if you have exported an epub file from InDesign, for example). Both your text editor used […]

Endnotes and Footnotes

In e-books, footnotes don’t work well–so notes should be endnotes. This includes footnote-type remarks, references, etc etc.

We don’t much care how you format them, as long as there is *something* identifying each note in a way that can be searched and replaced. For example, bracketing the numbers with parentheses or brackets is OK, as […]

Ur grammer sux

While we’re pretty tolerant of sloppy formatting here at BDP, since we know we’re just going to remove it all anyway for the e-book conversion process, we’re much less understanding when it comes to basic abuses of the English language. You don’t have to be perfect, especially when it comes to debatable issues such as […]

Making Epubs From InDesign

InDesign has a feature to export Epub files. However, these files are not usually publishable as is. Post-editing is necessary to clean up the format and restyle the file.

The most obvious issue is a lack of page breaks at chapters. This can be taken care of in Calibre, by […]

Naming your computer…

This is a short one…

We recommend that you don’t name your computer after a brain eating amoeba, or after the symptoms caused by a brain eating virus.  Computers seem to pick up on that and act accordingly…

Formatting a manuscript

Formatting a manuscript

The goal of a manuscript is to be read–so it should be readable. Everything else is secondary. A few things make documents readable:

1) A 12-point serif font. There are many that are OK. The Times family is fine, or Garamond, or Minion. Courier is OK–but why? It looks like a typewriter and makes poor […]

Celebrate the First!

Celebrate the First!

…The first Amendment, that is. Happy Canada day and Independence Day to all our North American readers & writers, and remember to keep us free by speaking your minds.

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