The Ripper Trilogy

For the many thousands of readers who have read Ripper’s Row for free and would  like to continue reading the story of Jack the Ripper as he battles the vampires who have killed his true love, you can now get all 3 books in 1 volume – The Ripper Trilogy.

The Ripper Trilogy contains the complete texts of Ripper’s Row, Ripper’s Revenge and Ripper’s Wrath.  It is available now at Amazon for the Kindle platform, and will be available in coming weeks in print.

Many thanks to all of you who have made this series of books so successful. Both Shawn Weaver and I appreciate all of the comments regarding the books, and will be working to create other books that you will enjoy.

Thanks again for reading!

~Donnie

Ripper’s Wrath

Ripper’s Wrath, the final book in The Ripper Trilogy is now available at Amazon for the Kindle platform, Barnes & Noble for the Nook, and at Kobo Books for the Kobo readers.  It will also be available at the iBookstore, Sony and other eBook  retailers in the coming weeks.

The paperback version will be available on Amazon by the end of January, 2013.

The description for Ripper’s Wrath is below, but before you read it, I’d like to give you my take on it first.

What started out as a short story written by myself and Shawn Weaver turned into The Ripper Trilogy – Ripper’s Row was the first book, followed by Ripper’s Revenge, and now the trilogy wraps up with Ripper’s Wrath. These books have been great fun to write, and I fell in love with the characters early on.

About halfway through Ripper’s Row we decided that we would make a trilogy out of this story line. Early on, we focused on the action and slowly began to build the characters. We intentionally did not fully develop the characters as the intention was to let them develop through their actions – and I think we did that. In the final book, readers will learn much more about Jack and what drives him. Helena – the White Witch plays a much bigger part in book 3, and Dr. Watson shows why Holmes puts so much trust in the man.

Ripper’s Wrath completes the story line that started back in book 1, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Jack and Helena – perhaps others – will not continue their war against vampires and other Shadow Beings who prey on innocent humans. It is my hope that there will be more books featuring these characters. I know that I will come to miss them, and I have a good story in mind where Jack and Helena will face an evil so powerful that Jack’s blades alone cannot stop it.

Stay tuned to this website for updates on future books, and I would like to personally thank everyone who has been reading The Ripper books. I hope you enjoy Ripper’s Wrath. Early readers report it’s the best book so far.

Here’s the description for Ripper’s Wrath:

After destroying William Carpenter, the Master Vampire he followed from London to America, Jack Morrow, also known as Jack the Ripper, finds that his foe had powerful allies in New Orleans who mean to avenge their fallen leader. He soon finds himself tangled in a dangerous web of vampires and Vodou cultists who will stop at nothing to kill Jack the Ripper and end the wrath he has brought upon them.
Among the Ripper’s new enemies is a powerful vampire who appears as a nine-year-old southern girl, determined to avenge her fallen Sire. She calls upon Victor, a Vampire Elder and his devious clan to assist in killing Jack the Ripper, but Victor’s plan changes when he decides that the Ripper would make a powerful addition to his clan, and is determined to turn him from vampire hunter to deadly vampire slave.
The vampires align themselves with the powerful Vodou Queen of New Orleans, who has plans of her own for Jack the Ripper, who has burned her mansion and disrupted her comfortable lifestyle in his attack on the vampires she harbors.
Along with his mentor Helena, a powerful White Witch, and Dr. Watson, associate of the famous Sherlock Holmes, the trio must fight their way from New Orleans to Memphis. They are hounded every step along the way as Jack battles the growing army of vampires, while Helena challenges the Vodou Queen in a psychic battle that rattles the physical world.
Can Jack survive the onslaught before him? Can he save the soul of his beloved Sarah and her sister Samantha as she unknowingly steps into the hands of Vodou Queen, Marie Laveau?
Join the harrowing journey of Jack the Ripper as he cuts a swath through America, searching for salvation from the blood sucking hoards that hunt him and the mystical forces of Vodou that trap the souls of those he loves.

The past two weekends I have attended two live writer’s meetings. Yes, live, breathing humanoids -not avatars – shaking hands and dispensing wisdom.

While for most of us writers maintain some kind of online presence in social media, blogs, online meetups and the like, it was very refreshing to attend these live events.

I have learned a lot from my online activities, but being in the room with a great speaker brings it to another level. You can hear actual passion – not denoted by an inadequate emoticon. A genuine smile conveys so much more about a person than a yellow smiley-face – even if it is animated. Shaking hands and handing out business cards was for that time much more satisfying than exchanging links in an email.

At one of these events – The Green Pen Writer’s Conference in beautiful Frankenmuth, Michigan, I was also a speaker. I got to do a session on Print-On-Demand book printing and another session on eBooks – two of my passions. I have worked hard to develop my methods of creating eBooks and Print Books, and I love to be able to share what I have learned with others in a meaningful way. I hope that the sessions that I spoke at prompted those in the audience to do something with that knowledge, and perhaps share it with others. The best part about a live event, is that I didn’t have to type out everything I had to say, as I would in an email or other online form. I could speak freely without a limiting word count, and recount experiences that I have learned from to others.

Writing can be a tough business to break into, so I urge all my fellow writers to look for live events and speakers – then actually go there and partake in the wisdom being dispensed. Listen to the questions, and ask some of your own. Then, shake someone’s hand, or pat them on the back before you hurry home to blog about it.

The movie is based on a novel by the same title, written by Seth Grahame-Smith, who also wrote the screenplay for the movie version. 

The premise of the movie is that early in young Abe’s life, he has an encounter with a vampire that leads to the death of a loved one. From that day forward, Abe is determined to destroy the vampire responsible for the death which leads him to encounter a number of vampires along the way.

As I watched the movie, I could not help to draw some parallels between Grahme-Smith’s story and the “Jack the Ripper” series that I co-wrote with author Shawn Weaver.

 Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was first published early in 2010, and our “Ripper’s Row” was first published in October of the same year with the sequel, “Ripper’s Revenge” published in 2011.

Of course Grahame-Smith took one of America’s most beloved historical figures and showed us all a dark side of Abe, where the 16th President of the United States secretely hunts vampires. Weaver and I took one of the most infamous characters of all time – Jack the Ripper – and told a story that shows the good side of Jack and why the famous murders took place.

Like Abe, our Jack is bent on vengeance for the death of a loved one killed by vampires. The two stories take place the late 1800′s, so much of the background settings are similar as related to transportation and the state of technology.

In AL:VH, Abe had grown up with an axe in his hands, and the axe becomes his weapon of choice for vampire hunting, and he weilds it with the grace of a dancer and the skills of a ninja. Our Jack is good with blades – knives and razors – and uses them just as effectively. In fact, Abe has a specially-modified axe with a hidden gun barrel in the handle. Our Jack has specially designed blades that are hidden up his sleeves abd can be deployed at will.

Of Course AL:VH takes place in America. Ripper’s Row takes place in London, and the sequel, Ripper’s Revenge moves Jack to America in pursuit of his adversary.  Both Abe and Jack have mentors who taught them about vampires, and are with them throughout the story. Both Abe and Jack are absolutely determined to fulfill their missions, although each would rather have never known about vampires in the first place.

One of my favorite scenes in AL:VH is a battle with vampires aboard a moving steam train – close quarters vampire fighting at it’s best. In book three of our Jack the Ripper series, (in the final draft) Jack also encounters multiple vampires aboard a moving steam train, and has a tremendous battle both on top and inside the moving traincars.

So while there are many similarities in the stories in AL:VH and our Jack the Ripper series, they are an equal number of differences between them. I look forward to reading AL:VH now that I’ve seen the movie, and I believe that any fans of AL:VH would also find “Ripper’s Row” and “Ripper’s Revenge” an interesting read.

The story started in Ripper’s Row will be finished in Book Three (as of yet untitled), and Ripper’s Row is currently FREE as an eBook on Amazon and other eBook retailers. “Ripper’s Revenge” is currently priced at $2.99 and available at Amazon, B&N.com and numerous other eBook retailers.

I hope all of you “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” fans will take a look at Ripper’s Row and Ripper’s Revenge – you may be happy that you did.

~Donnie

In the first few hours of becoming FREE, Ripper’s Row has moved to #631 on the Amazon overall Free Kindle books list, #10 in the Horror>Occult category, and #14 in the Genre Fiction>Historical category.

Ripper’s Row features the historical “Jack the Riper,” stalking vampires in Victorian London, and was followed by the sequel, “Ripper’s Revenge,” which has Jack the Ripper following a dangerous and cunning Master Vampire to New Orleans, where he is being protected by the reining Voodoo Queen.

Work will begin on the third book in the series after the first of the year.

For now, if you have a Kindle, jump over to Amazon.com and pick up a copy of Ripper’s Row for FREE. If you have a Nook or other reading device, you can go to Smashwords.com and download a copy in various formats for FREE as well. But hurry, Ripper’s Row will only be free for a limited time!

So many people have the dream of writing a book that it’s almost a cliché. The “Great American Novel” and all that. “Everyone has at least one book in them.” People dream of holding a book in their hands with their name on the cover. Dreams abound, where the dreamer is sitting at a table, signing copies of their books while a horde of admirers stand by waiting for their turn to get the autographed tome. It’s a big dream, a worthy dream, and an achievable dream for those who really work at it. I mean, REALLY WORK at it. It doesn’t come easy, as any writer who knows the business will attest.

Penguin book publishers have launched a new self-publishing platform through its writer’s community website, Book Country - http://bookcountry.com/  No problem there, they are not the first to offer services for wannabe authors to enable them to realize their dream – or more realistically – enable them to work their butts off to see if they have what it takes to make the dream come true. (They are not going to do it for you!)

The problem lies in predatory practices and the outrageous fees being charged. What would someone pay to have a chance at living their dream? What would a writer pay to see their book in print and on the electronic bookshelves at retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble? The answer is: a lot.

The publishing deals that Book Country is offering authors adds up to some serious cash. Far more than what the services are worth in the real world of publishing, and with no guarantees of success (which don’t exist in publishing).

While the Book Country news is being touted all over the internet as purely a rip-off, it’s not the only scam out there, nor the most expensive scam out there. There are more companies out there that specialize in preying on wannabe authors that I could reasonably name. It’s an old practice, dating back far before self-publishing authors had so many options.

If a wannabe author gets ripped off in 2011, it’s because they didn’t take the time to research their options. While the Book Country news puts them into the spotlight right now, there are many companies ripping off authors for a lot more cash than Book Country does. An author needs to be informed of the options, and make the decision to go with what works best for them. There are forums out there that will steer authors in the right direction, and the internet has enabled numerous service providers, like myself, to offer their services at reasonable rates.

A number of bloggers have spelled out the details of the Book Country deal, and I won’t go into the details here except to say that what they are charging is far in excess of what is realistic in this day and age. I’ll provide links to the details at the end of this post.

If you are an author who wants to get published, or self-publish your book, please, PLEASE do some research first. I provide eBook formatting services for a number of clients, and well as print book layout and cover design – for far less than others charge. See my page here for project pricing. Then, click on the links below to read more about the Book Country deal, from those who have written about it elsewhere. By all means, open your eyes and do the research before jumping into this business.

David Gaughran goes into detail in this great post.  Joe Konrath talks about it here, and Katie Salidas explains it here.

Don’t get ripped off… research… due diligence… WORK!

~Donnie

Truth is; I am a nice, reasonable guy. A nice reasonable guy who loves to read and write stories that take the reader away from cozy and comfortable, and to a place where life is more difficult and challenging. A place where danger awaits at every bend in the road, and vile creatures exist who have evil on their mind. A world where you have to stay on your toes to survive, and every breath could be your last.

Perhaps there remains in my DNA, some fragment that was passed on from my distant ancestors. Those ancestors who didn’t need a scary story to get their adrenaline pumping through their veins because a saber-toothed tiger just ate one of their clan. They saw it happen, and they know the beast is still nearby-and still on the hunt. Or from the ancestor who went to war with a horde of barbarians who knew no morals and killed and tortured for the sick thrill of conquest. No, those ancestors didn’t need a guy like me to make up stories to tell around the campfire. They lived in a time when being scared and wary was a way of life, and necessary to stay alive. Those who were not afraid in those times had a name - victims.

But now things are different. We live in a civilized society, and for the most part, we lead pretty easy lives. We don’t have to walk the path in the forest gathering berries to survive, knowing the saber-tooth is nearby and still hungry. The horde of barbarians has gone the way of the mammoth, but we psychologically have replaced them with hordes of fictional zombies. We need something other than exercise to get our pulse rate up. We need an element of the unknown to keep us guessing, and second-guessing ourselves. We need something to scare us other than the price of gas. We need something for our brains to chew on, in which no answer is right, wrong, or even possible.

The lady I mentioned above will go on to tell me that she reads romance novels and poetry. She may mention that if I ever write a romance novel, she would be happy to read it.

Our conversation has lost a bit of the niceness it began with, but I tell her that I have written a romance story.

Her eyes brighten just a bit, and the smile returns to her face. Then I tell her that in my romance novel, the hero is battling an evil vampire who killed his fiancé, and if he kills the vampire he will free her soul from an existence in Purgatory. But the vampire is protected by a Voodoo Queen who controls an army of Zombies…

The confusion returns to her face, then to the verge of repulsion. She says it’s been nice talking to me, then turns to the person in front of her and starts another conversation, probably about romance novels and poetry. Another lady of about the same age taps me on the shoulder. “Do you really write books?” she asks.

“Yep,” I reply. “But probably not the kind of books you read.” She goes on to tell me she’s a huge Stephen King fan, and here I was thinking she looked like a nice, reasonable woman. We hit it off, then we go on to talk about Aliens, Bigfoot and Werewolves.
~Donnie

My current website is under construction, and probably will be for a few days. My old site had not see any changes other than new blog posts and a few updates, so I felt it was time to revamp my online presence and give everything a new look.

The new site will have a few new features, and a new look. I think this one better fits the theme of the Horror, Paranormal and Thriller genres that I typically write in.

So please bear with me for a few short days as I get everything sorted out and all of the pages rebuilt. In the meantime, my od site is still active at http://donnielight.wordpress.com

~Donnie

Under the Dome

As an Indie Author, I have become heavily involved in eBook formatting. I have spent many, many hours fretting over my eBook titles, making sure that my CSS is set up properly, making sure my Chapters start on a new eBook “page,” and pouring over my eBooks looking for anything that might have gone awry.

If you are an Indie author, I’m guessing that you too, have been there, done that.

Because I’m not (yet) a “Big-Time, NY Published Author,” I feel that I have to make sure I present my eBooks to the reader in a format that is pleasant to read, stable, and as perfect as the platform allows. I believe that ANY author should strive to offer the best formatting possible. If a reader notices or comments on the formatting of an eBook at all, chances are, you have a problem. Good, quality eBook formatting means that the formatting is “invisible” and it’s the story that stands out. Formatting problems will be noticed, and if there are many of them, they become a distraction to the reader taking the focus off the content.

I know this from experience—as both a reader and Indie author/eBook creator. I have purchased eBooks that were simply unreadable. The formatting problems were so overwhelming that I could not stay focused on the story, as I found myself trying to read around some inserted text that obviously should not have been there, or trying to follow the flow of text that ended in the middle of the line and picked up again halfway across the next line down.

Here’s the funny thing: I read many Indie published eBooks, as well as my share of Publisher-created eBooks, and in my experience, I see many of the worst formatting issues from “professional” publishers.

This seems odd to me, and brings up an eBook that I am currently reading, written by one of my favorite authors. The eBook is Stephen King’s, “Under the Dome,” published by Simon and Schuster Digital Sales, Inc (as listed on the Amazon Kindle page).

I’m a huge Stephen King fan. As I sit in my office writing this, I am 3 feet away from a bookshelf that is dedicated to this author and holds a hardcover copy of every novel and non-fiction book he has written. I had not yet read “Under the Dome,” and was looking forward to the experience. By the way, I paid $9.99 for the Kindle version of this eBook, definitely on the pricier side of what I normally buy, but hey—it’s Stephen King. And eBook pricing is a topic for another article…

Hyphenated

As I began reading the eBook, I first noticed what I thought was some quirky spacing within the sentences. Then I noticed this pattern repeating itself. It appears that there was a space between words and the following punctuation marks, especially question marks and exclamation points. No biggie—it didn’t detract from my reading very much, but it did cause me to pause and wonder why this was happening. Then I ran across a hyphenated word in the middle of my eBook screen. There was no plausible explanation as to why this word was hyphenated, and there were many more of them as I progressed through the book. I also noticed in many cases it seemed like a paragraph break was missing, as dialog from different characters was  jumbled together, making it difficult to follow.

“Under the Dome,” is, by design, laid out in parts, chapters and sub-chapters. I have no problem with that, but it seems that major parts and chapters start on a new page, but the numbered sub-chapters do not, often causing a number to appear at the bottom of the screen I’m on, while the text starts on the next screen. Again, this is no biggie, and the book is readable even with the formatting issues I’ve described.

Broken Lines

My gripe is that I paid $9.99 for this eBook, and it came from a Big Publisher (with Digital Sales, Inc. in the name no less) and the formatting has some issues. It looks to me like the publisher simply took an electronic document created for print (which would explain the hyphenated words) and then did a quick conversion to an eBook format without really spending anytime to check the results. The spacing issues and unnecessary hyphenation, as well as starting all chapters on a new page could have been done with little effort. Give me 15 minutes with that file and I’d have it fixed—worthy of Stephen King and making the $9.99 price tag more bearable.

I see poor formatting from professional publishers more often than I do from Indie authors. I’ve seen eBooks where the header and footer information, including page numbers, author name, and title are embedded in the flow of the content—page after page—showing up hundreds of times. I find this unacceptable, and will return eBooks formatted like this to Amazon, demanding my money back. When I see these kinds of formatting issues, I know that the publisher simply took the PDF file created for print, and blindly converted it into an eBook format, sans any quality control on the finished product.

In making ready to write this post, I visited the Under the Dome page on Amazon to see if anyone else complained about the formatting for this particular eBook. I did a quick search on the word formatting in the over 1,300 reviews, and found a number of reviews in which formatting was mentioned. Here’s an excerpt from my favorite:

As for Kindle formatting, the publishers must be smoking crack if they think readers will pay $16.99 for such a poorly formatted book (or for ANY eBook, for that matter, but that’s a discussion for another day…). I was completely shocked that such a huge, mainstream book had so many problems. From words that were clearly incorrectly scanned to missing paragraph breaks to basic misspellings, UTD had so many problems that it was actually distracting for me. It was confusing, trying to figure out where one speaker left off and another picked up because their comments weren’t broken down into separate paragraphs.

Apparently, the price of Under the Dome was reduced from $16.99 at some point, so being a little late to this one saved me $7.00.

I know that this Indie author—and thousands of others—spend countless hours making sure that the quality of the eBook they present to the reader is “professional” quality, and can compete with what the New York publishers are putting out there. If the Big Houses continue to put out shoddy eBooks, chalk up another advantage to the Indies.

Ripper's Revenge

I recently published an eBook titled “Ripper’s Revenge,” with co-author Shawn Weaver. I created a Kindle version, as well as a Nook version, each with appropriate links to my other titles on the respective sites. I checked and triple-checked the formatting, and poured over the results with considerable care.

The bottom line is this: If you rely on a simple “conversion” process to turn an electronic file into an eBook, chances are you will have formatting issues. In the realm of eBook creation, simple, fast and easy rarely equate to quality eBook creation.

In my humble opinion, eBooks need to be crafted, and require as much attention and knowledge as laying out a good quality print book. If you format your own eBooks, learn what makes them work, and what causes them to fail, and spend some time making sure your eBook formatting puts the focus on your story, not on the mistakes that are inherent in simple conversion process. The internet is full of great articles and support forums on eBook formatting.

At this point, I’m only 80% finished with Under the Dome, but I am enjoying it a great deal. As with virtually every Stephen King book I’ve read, not only is the story intriguing, but it’s a lesson on how to write great stories and keep the reader anxious for more. Thank you, Stephen, for another great story and writing lesson. Hopefully, your publisher and others will learn to put some effort into their eBook titles and create a digital product worthy of your ability.

Or, you might consider going Indie, and having some control over a finished product that has your name on it.

If this particular publisher reads any of the reviews for this eBook, I have to believe they know about the formatting issues. Why have they not addressed it? Is it apathy, or something else? Am I missing something here? Have you ever returned an eBook because of the formatting?  Would you?

Creating Ebooks

I’ve been doing a lot of ebook formatting lately, and with each new project, there is a new lesson to learn, or a new barrier to cross. This has given me a lot to write about when it comes to ebook formatting, so I thought I would do an overview of the process, then cover some specific issues I have ran across recently.

Virtually every e-book reader platform utilizes some form of HTML as the programming language. Your goal then, in creating e-books, is to generate the cleanest HTML code possible that can be read by the largest number of devices – dependably. The method described below yields the cleanest, most robust HTML code that I have found.

The Genesis – every ebook in existence started in much the same way – an author recording his thoughts in some fashion. Regardless of whether that author initially wrote on paper, at some point, every ebook was entered into a word processor.

As a writer myself, I spend a lot of time in front of Microsoft Word, carefully crafting my story. I’ve been using Word for years, and I know a lot of the functionality that helps me save time and frustration when I’m writing. But once the story is written and it’s time to create an ebook, my time with Word is almost over.

There are a few good habits to remember when you are writing your book in Word, and a few things that you should avoid. My books will all become ebooks in the end, but I also create print books from my Word file. So, while I’m writing I have three goals in mind:

1) Finish the story

2) Have my Word file ready for ebook conversion

3) Have my Word file ready for print book production

When I’m writing, I do not concern myself at all with the formatting on the page. I set my line spacing to a comfortable level, set my view to page width, and I turn on “show non-printing characters” so I can see the symbols that are encoded into the document. To do so, click the “Pilcrow” button on the “Home” tab in the “Paragraph” section.

My only concern is that there is a paragraph return at the end of each paragraph, and of course, the rest of my punctuation is in place. Beyond that, I’m not concerned with page size, margins, headers, footers, page numbers, Chapter Headings, indents, or anything else.
(*A note on Indents – save yourself time and trouble by NOT using spaces or tabs to indent the first lines of your paragraphs. Word has a function to set this and it’s simple an consistent, as well as adjustable. Look it up…) 
That all comes later and will save me a ton of time if I ignore those things while writing the book. The only “formatting” thing I do is create a blank line before and after the chapter headings, just to create some white space around them, but even that is not necessary. Bottom line is – write the story and don’t worry about making it look pretty, or formatting it along the way.

When I’m finished writing, I’m going to check a few things. I have my copy of Word set up with all of my preferences and auto-correct features, but if I am formatting someone else’s work, I do the following:

• Using Word’s “search and replace” feature, I’m going to find all occurrences of the double quote marks, (“) and replace them with double quote marks. I know it sounds silly, but this will invoke Word’s “Smart Quotes” feature and replace all double quote marks with proper curly quotes. I get a lot of books to convert that have a mix of quote mark styles, and this will make them all consistent – and – pay dividends in future steps.
• I will do the same thing with single quote marks.
• I will then type three periods in the “find” box, and a proper ellipsis in the “replace” box, then hit “replace all.” (There is an actual ellipsis character that is three dots… but when properly done, the dots cannot be separated and become a single character. This prevents the dots from separating one line to the next. Details in upcoming post.)
• I will then “find” all — double dashes and “replace” with a proper “EM Dash” which is a single, longer dash.

Once this is done and I feel it’s ready for e-book and print book creation, I save two versions of my Word file. One will be called “My Story Ebook.docx” and the other will be called “My Story Print.docx” At this point, we have two versions of the same file, each of which will be formatted differently from this point forward.

I will create my e-book now, from the file designated for the e-book version.

With my e-book file open in Word, I’m going to prepare the text for creating a NEW e-book source file. This file will eventually be an HTML file, but NOT converted to HTML through Word. When word converts a file to HTML, you get a boatload of unnecessary “junk” code added to the HTML that just bogs things down and makes the HTML bloated and slow. What we are shooting for here is a “clean” HTML file, that is free of all the junk tags that Word adds to it. I will then “massage” this clean HTML to create a fully functional “source” file for further e-book conversion. This file will be free of all the formatting from Word, and will perform very well and dependably.

At this point, I’m going to urge you to read on here, but the details of this process have been covered very thoroughly by friend and fellow author Guido Henkel on his blog. Click here for specifics on this process, but I also urge you to read Guido’s entire series, titled “Take Pride in your e-book formatting.”  Read it. Study it. Get to understand it and you will be formatting like a pro.

If you took the time to read Guido’s excellent formatting articles, then you are up to speed. If not, I will continue with a high-level overview of the process, and include more details in future posts, expanding on some of the things I’ve learned from Guido, as well as a few things I’ve discovered on my own.

With Word still open, we are now going to add some HTML tags directly into our Word document, which we will then copy and paste into a programming editor. When we do this, we will lose ALL of the formatting created by Word – all italics, all bold, all headings, all indents – everything but the text. But don’t worry, it will be easier than you might think, and makes for a better e-book.

Again, this is covered in Part VI of Guido’s formatting series.

What we are going to do, is let Word’s powerful “find and replace” feature help us prepare the HTML we need and save a bunch of time, and preserve some of the desired formatting we want to retain. We are going to give Word’s “find” feature the task of finding all italic fonts, and wrap them with the italics HTML tags <i></i>

With the cursor in the Find Box, hit CTRL+i and Word will look for all instances of italic fonts.

find italics

In the replace box, we type;
<i>^&</i>
Then click “Replace All”

This is a set of HTML tags for italics, and between them is a wildcard search term that will look for all italic fonts and wrap them the the tags.

This will preserve the italics font style when we take this text into the HTML editor.

When you go looking at your text in Word, all cases of italics should now be wrapped in tags.

In Guido’s series, he suggests not wrapping bold text with the proper tags. <b></b>
He has a reason for this – which he explains in the series. Most novels do not make use of bold fonts, except in Chapter Headings. If the only bold text you have in your book are Chapter Headings, then follow Guido’s advice, and we will handle them differently. However, I have formatted a number of e-books that utilize bold fonts – in blurbs, in quotes, in references, etc. If you have bold text in your book, I suggest following the same procedure and wrapping them with tags now. Chapter headings will be handled differently anyway.

To find and wrap all bold text, type CTRL+b in the find box, and <b>^&</b> in the “replace with” box. Then click “Replace All.” Now all bold and italics are wrapped in tags, and ready for the programming / HTML editor.

Now, still in Word, select all text (the entire document) and copy it to the clipboard. It’s time to move to the programming editor and finish the work.

At Guido’s suggestion, (since I’m on a PC) I downloaded a copy of jEdit – a free programming editor that works nicely for this task. Download and install the program, if you haven’t already. You will also want to install an available plugin called “JTidy” which will do a lot of work for you with a single click.

In jEdit, open a new workspace/file. (File/New)

Now paste the entire text from your book into jEdit.

What you should see is that every paragraph of your book is on a single, long line. Don’t worry, in just a minute it will look fairly normal again. While it’s in this state, we need to identify each of those lines as a paragraph for the HTML file. To accomplish that, we will use the “search” features in jEdit. Here’s a close-up screenshot of how it should look:

jedit

Now we can quickly wrap all of these lines with HTML paragraph tags.

In jEdit, go to “search” on the menu.

Then click “find” in the drop-down menu.

This will open the “Find and Replace” dialog box, and you have a selection to make.

Below the main dialog window, you will see a series of check boxes for search options. We will want to click on the option for “Regular Expressions” for our next search string.

With the “Regular Expressions” box checked, we will now enter in a wildcard “search for:” string and “replace with:” search string.

In the  Search for: window, type ^(.+)$, and in the “replace with” box, type <p>$1</p>

Click on “Replace All” and each paragraph line is now wrapped with <p> tags so that HTML will recognize each paragraph as such.

The next step is to let jEdit know that we are working with an HTML file, so we need to wrap everything with the proper HTML identifiers. One click with the jTidy plugin will do the trick. On the jEdit menu, go to “plugins” and then select jTidy from the menu.

Search and Replace

On the jTidy flyout, select “Tidy Current Buffer.”

This plugin now has placed the proper HTML code into the file, both above and below your ebook text.

jTidy has also done another task for us that is greatly beneficial: It has converted all special characters into “named entities.” This means that all double-quotes, single-quotes, ellipsis, em-dashes, and other special characters have an HTML name and are now embedded in your document. Using this technique yields the most dependable, cross-platform HTML file that you can create.

Next step is to save the file as HTML.

On the jEdit Menu, go to “file” and then “save as” and select a name and location for your file. Make sure to give it an HTML extension. The name should be “my story.html”

Once you hit save, you will notice another difference in the look of your jEdit file – all of the tags turn blue, and all of the names entities turn magenta. All of your HTML tags are in place, and everything is looking good and ready to make the last tweaks.

Now it’s time to create your CSS “styles” as Guido describes in Part VII of his series. Read that now if you haven’t already.

CSS styles can give you an incredible amount of control over how your ebook displays on various devices, and is well worth playing with and experimenting with to get your ebook just right. Guido does an excellent job explaining styles, and I will create another post to expand on what Guido has explained so well, with examples that I have used to make my ebook formatting the best it can be.

At this point, your HTML source file can be converted by a number of different methods into a number of formats. Again, that will be covered in a post coming soon.

~Donnie