What To Do If You Lose Track Changes and Other Tips

I’m currently in the phase of motherhood where I’m more Taxi Driver than Helicopter Parent. It’s not an easy stage, but giving up some control and allowing my kids to navigate the world on their own more and more these days gives me the time to absorb truckloads of writerly content while I’m battling highway demons. 

Not only are audiobooks my new favourite, but podcasts are hot on my car stereo rotation. And while listening to Dear Rach and Soph, I learned how to solve a problem I had when I hired an editor and sent her back a clean manuscript. Face plant! 

My last blog was all about my failed manuscript. It wasn’t an easy blog to write and it hasn’t been an easy time in my life. But since I opened up about my situation, it’s been easier for me to move on. 

Step one was to reacquaint myself with my manuscript and decide what to do with it. 

But how can you read a manuscript with fresh eyes? 

Try listening to your manuscript while driving. 

Here’s how it’s done: All you need is the Word app on your phone and connectivity in your car. Then you access your manuscript on your phone, via any file-sharing source like Dropbox or email, etc. and once it’s in Word, hit read aloud. 

Yes, the voice can be a lot robotic, but this is a great way to hear your words in the most usual way, and I find it helps me pick out things that I may have missed while staring at my computer screen while I was writing and editing my little heart out. 

Another way you can read your manuscript with fresh eyes is on your Kindle or the Kindle app on your phone. 

This is a cool way to see your words with fresh eyes. It even looks like a real eBook, minus the cover art, and you can highlight, bookmark and do everything else you can on a Kindle that we all love, like reading in night mode, commenting, and checking words in the dictionary, etc. 

Here’s how it’s done: Open your manuscript via email or any file-sharing app you have on your phone, hit the share button and share to Kindle. 

It’s that easy. All the formatting is done for you! 

After listening to my failed manuscript, I had plenty of food for thought which has helped me to determine that I want to give this manuscript another edit before sending it out again. 

So with that decision, when it comes to editing, looking at your characters is a good place to start. 

Highlight keywords throughout an entire document 

During #editTillEaster this year, I talked about the shrunken manuscript technique. While learning and sharing about this, I worked out how to highlight keywords throughout an entire document, such as character names. At the time I was using this technique to see when certain characters of mine disappeared. Whoops! 

Here’s how it’s done: In Word, first you select the highlight colour you want to use, then you go to edit, find, advanced find and replace, and the replace tab. Type the word you want to highlight in find and make sure the same word is in the replace bar. Then you’ll want to make sure the replace format, highlight is selected and click replace all. Then when you shrink the manuscript (or zoom out) you can easily see when a colour vanishes from your pages. 

Saving the best till last, here’s what to do if you lose track changes. 

Gosh, I wish I had known this earlier. 

If you don’t know the story, when I worked with an editor, I resolved thousands of edits and sent her back a completely clean document. I’d done all the work but there was no way she could see what I’d changed. Triple face plant. After I panicked, I went back through the manuscript and highlighted what I knew the major changes were, looking back on her original comments. Time consuming and not as detailed as track changes. 

Now I know the solution to this problem. 

Rach and Soph is a new podcast I have come to love, and in Episode:8 Rejections, Submissions, and The Editorial Process from about the 47th minute they are just talking casually about track changes when Rach says, “My publisher or editor said, look, leave track changes on if you can. If you can’t stand it, then don’t.” Then soon after Soph says, “The other thing you can do is not track the changes but then do a compare/merge.” When I heard this, I had a major lightbulb moment. Never again will I fear losing track changes. 

So what is this magical feature? 

All you have to do is open Word. You’ll find the compare or combine button in the review tab. Click compare or combine, choose the original document and then the revised document you want to compare or combine with. Then a new document will be created, full of track changes showing any differences.  

Too easy! 

I hope this has been helpful and that at least one of my tips was new to you so that you may continue writing your way onward and upwards, despite any troubleshooting or rejection. 

Write on, Kelly 

P.S. If you enjoyed this blog, I’d love to connect with you. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts or any other tips. Tell me what you relate to. Let’s talk about writing.

Kelly Sgroi is based in Melbourne, Australia. Represented by Beyond Words Literary Agency, Kelly is looking forward to what comes next in her writing journey. She’s an enthusiastic member of the writing community and is published by WOW! Women on Writing, Dream Journal, The Endometriosis Foundation of America, Endometriosis Australia, and a few Medium publications. Visit her website at www.kellysgroi.com

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Leave a Comment editing tips, kindle, Microsoft Word, Rachel Johns, Track Changes, writing tips

Tips for Formatting Your Manuscript

When I was in graduate school, I fell in love with designing the written word. I took a class on document design and created a compilation of my writing to print and send out to agents and publishers. (Whether or not I thought I would be discovered with that compilation is for another post.) Electronic books were on the horizon, but I was working with print.

Interested in print or e-books? Photo credit: flickr | kodomut

Fast forward ten years and the professor from that class has contracted me to design a book. Yes, a print book. It's a strange place to be in because, well, I am also dabbling in designing e-books. WOW has a great addition to how to format for Kindle or Nook. But keep in mind that there are overlapping design concepts in both print and e-books that you can apply as you write:

• Consistency: When you plan your book, add details about how you want your chapter headings. Maybe you want chapters and numbers. Maybe you want the chapter title with a single numeral above. Decide what it is and stick with it. Throughout the entire manuscript.
• Font: I've had to break my kids' of their desire to write reports in Comic Sans. I'm not that much of a meany that I always insist on Times New Roman. But there are happy mediums in the font world. Select one and stick with it throughout the manuscript. If you can't decide between two, use one for your chapter headings and one for your text. Just make sure it's legible.
• Page breaks: In Microsoft Word, CTRL + ENTER gives you a page break. With a Mac, insert a page break. Remember to insert one at the end of your chapters. Hitting a return until you hit the next page makes for inconsistent formatting. 
• Page numbers: You may notice on e-readers that page numbering is different than with a print book. But when you're writing a draft or working on a print project, use page numbers for your own reference. It's especially useful if you print out your manuscript.
• First paragraphs: At the beginning of each chapter, the first paragraph isn't indented like the following paragraphs. In Word, you can create a special style for that paragraph that does not include an indent and apply it at each chapter.

Those are just a few suggestions at styling your manuscript for future design--whether print or electronic. What questions do you have about formatting a manuscript for print or e-readers? (I'll try to get an answer by the next time I post!)

 Elizabeth King Humphrey writes and edits in Wilmington, North Carolina. She's making plans for a full summer of writing.

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4 comments ebook formatting, Elizabeth King Humphrey, ereaders, kindle, manuscripts, nook

Friday Speak Out!: Old Dogs, New Tricks, Guest Post by Jo Barney

Old Dogs, New Tricks

by Jo Barney

I’ve sold thirty books. I apparently have taken the first step on my path to fame and fortune. My efforts to format The Solarium have resulted, after weeks of swear words salted with hot tears, and one faulty embarrassing edition, in my e-book being offered by Amazon.

Unfortunately, two friends downloaded the first version which was published without indentations. I hope that reading whole chapters as one paragraph didn’t make them as annoyed as I get when I try to read Kafka. But for $2.99, maybe they were willing to struggle a little.

I managed to get a Kindle helper to put the paragraphs in for me after I had tried to do it myself five times over three days. I think my pathetic email got to him. Seeing them magically appear lifted the heavy cloak of obsession that I had worn for week. The sunlight almost blinded me.

The euphoria didn’t last long, only until I reluctantly began to preview the published second version, as Kindle requests. I couldn’t imagine, now that it had paragraphs, that anything else could be wrong with my perfect story. Just in case, I kept a pad at my finger tips for notes. Seven scribbled pages later, I understood that I couldn’t let anyone else buy what I had twice prematurely clicked the “Publish” button on.

I had left out words and whole lines, missed a couple of blank pages, misnamed a key character, repeated words like “laugh” too many times. Punctuation marks had corrupted or disappeared, victims, I supposed, of an earlier editing session.

However, once I corrected all this and published a third version, my indentations for paragraphs disappeared again. My Kindle helper gave me a solution which wiped out the photo I was using as an inside title page. My efforts to add the photo didn’t work, even after he sent me directions three times.

So I published the book anyway, imperfect like me, but okay, and it’s beginning to sell. I learned a couple of important lessons in this weeks-long process which I’ll pass along to anyone thinking of formatting and publishing an e-book on her own:

     1. Never click the Publish button until you have re-read your manuscript so many times your eyes itch and then wait a day or so and read it word-for-word one more time

     2. When you have a problem, don’t think you have to deal with it alone; ask someone. Kindle help was great for the most part. Just make sure you’ve done the editing before you ask.

* * *

Jo now has two e-books published on Kindle and on iBook, The Solarium and Graffiti Grandma. After teaching and counseling for years, she began to write nearly full time, publishing essays and short stories and winning a few awards along the way. The urge to write a novel led to four of them. The urge to publish led her to investigate the opportunities of electronic books. Now she’s fully into the marketing of these books and she finds this new venture as challenging as any other aspect of writing. Her blog is breakoutnovelarace.blogspot.com.
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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!

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2 comments ebook formatting, ebook publishing, Friday Speak Out, Jo Barney, kindle

26-Year-Old Amanda Hocking is Making a Million Dollars a Year Publishing Her Own Books to Kindle

It's an amazing success story! An unheard of twenty-six-year-old woman sold 900,000 copies of nine different books since she first put her work for sale on April 15, 2010. There are paperback copies that sell for $8.99 and $9.99, but the ebook editions are the ones selling like wildfire at $2.99 and .99. Just check out the local news story in the video below:



Amanda Hocking tried to go the traditional publishing route for eight years but received countless rejections. She never thought of self-publishing as a viable option.

"Everything I'd heard about self-publishing is that is was impossible to make a living, reach readers, or produce a quality product. But last year, I heard about how some others like Joe Konrath and Karen McQuestion are doing well with ebooks. So I thought I had nothing to lose."

So how did she sell so many books? She worked it via social networking, of course!

"I didn't really have a strategy. I think one of the advantages I have is that stuff considered marketing is stuff that I do a lot anyway. I've been active on social networks and blogs for years.

"I also send ARCs out to book bloggers. Book bloggers are a really amazing community, and they've been tremendously supportive. They've definitely been a major force that got my books on the map.

"When I first published, I did do a bit of promoting on the Amazon forums, but they're not really open to that, so I haven't really interacted there much at all in months. I hang out at Goodreads, Kindleboards, Facebook, Twitter, and I blog. And that's about it."

She now has an agent who is working on selling the foreign rights to her books. She plans to continue self-publishing, but isn't turning her back on traditional publishing.

"As amazing as this ebook revolution has been, it's only 20-30% of the market, and I'm not going to ignore the possibilities to reach the other 70-80% of readers. However, it is hard to compete with what my books are already able to do with Kindle and PubIt."

While that may be true, rumor has it that she's been shopping a four-book series to major publishers and attracting bids well over a million.

It seems we are entering a new and inspiring age, where traditional publishing certainly isn't the last word. Being rejected by a publisher isn't the end of the line. If you have the drive to do it yourself, why not? Publishing, marketing, and creating websites is the cheapest and easiest it's ever been. And in most cases it's free. If you have any thoughts on this topic, we'd love to hear them!

To find out more about Ms. Hocking's books, visit her Amazon Author's Page.

Quotes from The Huffington Post interview, Meet Mega Bestselling Indie Heroine Amanda Hocking.
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Class: Social Networking for Writers: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and More! Learn how to leverage the power of social media with this four-week e-course.

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2 comments Amanda Hocking, ebook publishing, kindle, social media book promotion, success story, YA

The e-book Revolution: Publishing Wars, Kindle, and Readers

Until recently, publishers didn't take e-books seriously because they only accounted for less than 1% of books sold. But now, according to Jonathan Kirsch, host of The Politics of Culture radio show, everyone in the publishing industry is paying attention to what he calls the "e-book revolution." He says it started with Amazon's kindle e-book reader--a product that did for e-books what iPod did for music. And last Christmas, e-book sales outnumbered print sales for the first time in history!

In Jonathan Kirsch's radio show yesterday, he interviewed New York Times digital media columnist Motoko Rich, Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital blogger Peter Kafka, and e-book reader/fan and author herself, Dora Levy Mossanen about kindle, e-books, and ibooks.

Early adopters or mainstream?
Where e-book readers used to be for early adopters, it appears they have migrated to the general public. And surprisingly, these adopters are not the young and tech savvy, a lot of them are in their fifties and sixties and simply love books. With over three million sales in e-book reading devices (e-book readers) it's surprising to me that I don't see people using them in the general public. You'd think I'd catch people reading in restaurants on their lunch break, in the doctor's office, or at a bus stop. But although e-book sales represent the fastest growing proportion of the publishing market, they still only represent about 5% of total book sales, according to Motoko Rich. Rich also says that even though e-book sales occupy a lot of mind space and are the leading cause of anxiety among publishers, it isn't the way the majority of the world reads. In fact, three million e-book readers is small potatoes compared to the forty plus million print sales.

So what's the attraction to e-book readers anyway?
Author Dora Levy Mossanen talked about how she loved the ease and speed of the kindle--being able to carry twenty books with her at all times to fill the small pockets of her day by reading, being able to download a book within 30 seconds from any location, and having her newspapers delivered to her each morning. On the downside, she missed having a book cover and an author photo, which she often sought out in her local bookstore.


Will kindle stay on top?
While kindle is the industry leader, Peter Kafka argues that a multi-purpose devise (such as Apple's forthcoming iPad)--with its ability for web browsing and video in addition to book reading--will eventually displace a single-purpose device (such as the kindle). But for readers, committing to one e-reading product is pretty much the only option we have right now. There are many e-book readers--Barnes & Noble's Nook, Sony's Reader, Amazon's kindle, Apple's iPad--but as far as I know, they have format issues and aren't truly compatible with one another.

As far as reading quality, the kindle seems to be far superior except for the fact that it doesn't have a backlight option, like some others, which would be ideal for reading at night, say, in bed, where you'd still need additional lighting without waking up your hubby.

Publishers, Pricing Wars, and Consumers
For the book-buying audience, purchasing a new book at $9.99 as opposed to a hardcover print book at $24.95 is an attractive option. According to Motoko Rich, Amazon was actually losing money because they currently pay publishers a wholesale price that is about half the list price of a hardcover book, which typically ranges from $25-$35. So, Amazon was losing about $2.50-$4 every time they sold one of those $9.99 books. That freaked publishers out because they thought the $9.99 price was an eroding of value of what a new book was worth. NY publishing houses were concerned that they couldn't sustain the current business model that requires editing, copyediting, marketing, overhead, author advances, etc., so they wanted to take control of pricing. But they came to an agreement with Apple so that when the new iPad comes out in March '10, publishers will be able to set the consumer price according to hardcover book pricing. What that means to the book-buying public is that books bought on the iPad will most likely be a little more expensive than the kindle--approximately $12.99-$14.99. It's still less expensive than buying a new print book, but it will be interesting to see how current e-book buyers react to the increase.

From an author and writer's standpoint, Dora Levy Mossanen says, with price points and publishing wars, she feels the pain for her writer friends who have a hard time finding a publisher in an industry that's turned upside down, but at the same time she recognizes the value of e-books and knows that the trend cannot be stopped. She feels that the new digital trends and formats allow authors to tap into an audience they might not otherwise reach.

Another good point for authors and publishers is that with e-books they have very low overhead and no worry of book damage or returns, so that may make up for the reduction in price in the end.

My take?
The e-book revolution is here and in full swing! I'm happy to be on the verge of a change in publishing and can't wait to see the advances in technology. Like anything, there will be a standard model set in place soon and e-book reading devices will become synchronized in formats in the future and, hopefully, will continue to offer low prices and eco-friendly options to hungry book lovers.

Now, I want to know: do you read e-books? Do you have a kindle or another e-book reader? What's your preferred reading device?

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6 comments Amazon, e-book revolution, ebook, ebook publishing, kindle, price wars