Any other questions are the normal 2-3 days turnaround. Of course you'd be thrilled with 2-3 days in tradpub. You'd be lucky if it was 2-3 months. I wish Amazon all the luck in the world with this but they don't need luck because they're doing it the old-fashioned way with hard work. It makes all the whining and projection by tradpub all the more pathetic.
Recovery for tradpub is possible but since they are still in denial--like Greece--and don't want to make the painful changes necessary, like a plane in a wing stall too close to the ground, they will crash. Some will walk away, damaged but able to continue. The companies who are not that close to the ground, could save themselves if they took action now. I don't see that they will as they chase after 50 Shades haircuts.
If that isn't symbolic of tradpub now, I don't know what is. It could have been that famous vampire series that started as ebooks then went to paper and isn't quite as hot as it was. If that had worked, they'd be Vampire Chasers. Instead of developing something that will be hot, tradpub simply follows the trends. Now it's easy to see the trends because you look at the Amazon bestseller list. Doesn't that tell us something, too? They hate Amazon and get all their business clues from Amazon.
I'm probably spending most of this month reviewing everything. The excuse is Kobo but it needs to be done.
At some point Table Of Contents will be required not a suggestion. So as I go through each book I'm adding that.
Here's how you clean the whole TOC thing up. When you create it, instead of putting it up front, put it in the back, after The End. When you're done, click on Bookmark at the top of the TOC page. Go back to the beginning and make a new page after the title page. Click on (this is only for Word) create Hyperlink. It will ask you what you want to call it. Contents is good, if you think your readers will understand that means the table of contents. Less blue mess is better, right? There will be a choice to the left that says Place In Document. Choose that. You will see in the list underneath Bookmarks. Click on that. If you named this page TOC or Contents or whatever, click on that. Word will link the two pages. You're done.
Update: There seems to be some confusion about this. You have a link to the Table of Contents right after the title page. All the reader needs to do is touch it. They will be brought to to the TOC. They don't know where it is, they don't need to know. I'm sorry. I don't know how to explain it better than this. It's there. But you don't have to see it on your way to the text and some people object to all that front matter. The fact is, 2 pages of links at the front of the book decreases the sample text a reader can download. Would you prefer the reader get frontmatter or would you prefer the reader get your first chapter?
This
Or this
Which looks better to you?
Up the date: I hear tell Smashwords doesn't like the ToC in the back. I know it was pointed out to me there with my last book there that my formatting was all "wonky". Apparently their meatgrinder expects a certain formatting and I was doing it wrong. So I said a couple words I won't repeat here and unpublished everything. Do what pleases you. This was just an alternative.
No comments:
Post a Comment