FORMATTING YOUR BOOK FOR KINDLE For Those Who Are Not Whizz-kids On The Computer

With the difficulty of landing a publishing contract, many writers are going it alone on the self-publishing trail. I'm one of them. And I have to say that when I had finished the writing and needed to find a way of getting it 'out there' it was like hitting a wall. I had no idea how to get up and over it, or round it, or through it. It seemed impenetrable.

But bit by bit, I managed it, as many others have. But not without tears and tantrums a-plenty. How the computer is still in one piece I do not know!

To save others the trauma of fighting their way through this wall, I thought I would explain what I have learned.

The following applies to Amazon Kindle and is for those who are not computer buffs. That probably means the older ones among us, because the kids can all make a computer whistle 'Dixie' as it dances up the street! So this is the guide for those who don't know how to do hardly anything!

The work starts as you write your book. Already written it? Well, you'll no doubt have to make some changes.

Kindle does not recognise the tab key. So if you have used it for your paragraph indentations, each and every one of them will have to be re-done. I use Word 2003, so the instructions here are for that. No doubt other versions of Word will not be too different.

Go to the start of the word which begins the paragraph and backspace so that it is now on the margin. Go into Format > Paragraph > Indents and Spacing and on the bit which says 'Indentation' go onto 'left'. Change the figure in the box to whatever you want - I use 1.0 cm for indents. Click OK. Your paragraph will be indented. All of it. Do not panic. You have a hanging paragraph. Now click unhang. If you do not have that on your toolbar, you need to put it there. (Tools > Customise > Format and on the right hand column scroll down until you reach 'unhang'. Click and drag it to your toolbar.)

Sadly you will have to go through this palaver for all the paragraphs in your book. But if the book is not already written, doing it once for the first indented paragraph will do. You will notice that every paragraph will automatically indent when you hit the 'enter' key.

While you are in the 'paragraph' box, right at the top click 'Line and Page Breaks' and make sure everything is unchecked. You do not want 'orphans and widows' messing up your formatting, which it does; likewise 'keep lines together'. You may need to do this for every section of your document. You cannot rely on highlighting All (ctrl+A) and then doing it. If you haven't yet typed anything, do it as you indent your first paragraph.

Note: The first paragraph of a chapter or a new scene is not indented.

To remove the paragraph indent again, Format > Paragraph > Special and in the drop down box click 'none'.

A word about spacing. It's got to be single line spacing, even between paragraphs. Use double line spacing only when there is a change of scene, and you may want to put in then a few asterisks, or dashes or whatever takes your fancy. Up to you. But if that bit ends up at the bottom of a page, the reader will not be alerted to the change of scene without some indication.

Only one space between words, please. And British writers, especially those who have been taught to type and put two spaces after full-stops, question marks, exclamation marks, colons and so on, DON'T. I know it's a bind, but you have to learn not to do it. A bit of retraining needed here. The reason is that when you justify the right hand margin, the computer automatically shuffles the words along and you have these huge great gaps in the line where your extra space is. You might be able to find them all by using Find/Replace. I went through it several times using this method putting a full-stop and two spaces in the 'Find' box and a full-stop and one space in the 'Replace' box. Ditto for question marks etc. And don't forget after speech marks.

For Kindle, do not put in page numbers as the pages adjust automatically on a Kindle as the reader adjusts the font size. That is also why you do not want 'orphans and widows'.

Start each chapter on a new page. At the end of each chapter Insert > Break.

There is a way of inserting a 'Table of Contents' whereby the reader can click on a chapter heading in a list at the beginning of the book and go straight to that chapter. I haven't figured that out yet, but there are on-line tutorials for that.

When you are happy with your work, justify the RH margin. For those who do not know, the command looks like this:

Click the one on the right.

Don't forget to proof-read your book.

Don't forget to add the title page and copyright page etc.

At the point where you want the book to start, (normally at the place where it says Chapter 1) Insert > Bookmark and add the word START.

Right, now you are almost ready to go. Now you have to change your document to an HTML Filtered file. To do this, open your book file. Click 'Save As'. Now at the bottom of the box, beneath the bit which says 'File_name', there is a drop-down box which is labelled 'save as type' and beside it it will say 'Word document' in a drop-down box. Click the arrow. Click 'Web Page, Filtered', because that is what you want. (It took me three days to find this. I know, I know, but I just couldn't figure it out! Trial and error got me there in the end!) Click 'Save'. You'll get a warning about 'office specific tabs', but just click 'Yes'. You will still have your original Word document, and now you will have a new one next to it with a symbol which tells you it is your HTML Filtered file.

Now go to KDP Amazon (Kindle Direct Publishing) and if you have not already signed up etc. do it now.

As you fill in the on-line form you will upload your cover file. And when you are asked to submit your interior file on the form, it is already there on your computer and waiting for you to upload it. Go through it on the proof-reader to make sure it looks OK.

Fill in the rest of the form. Click 'Publish'. But don't panic, because you can change your file at any time - such as if you suddenly discover some glaring error! (I found to my horror that I'd left the T out of GENTLEMAN OF FORTUNE on the title page! I looked on Amazon, and there it was(n't)! I soon got that rectified.)

Have a glass of wine (or cup of coffee if you prefer) and a large slice of cake. You deserve it!


Evelyn Tidman is the author of GENTLEMAN OF FORTUNE The Adventures of Bartholomew Roberts, Pirate and ONE SMALL CANDLE The Story of William Bradford and the Pilgrim Fathers - www.evelyntidmanauthor.com

Does Wrongdoing In Religion Mean There Is No God?

'I don't believe in God. Religion causes all the wars in the world.'

A generalisation? Of course. Perhaps, like me, you have heard that said many times as a reason for not believing in God. Obviously, not all the wars fought in the world are because of religion. Nevertheless, many feel that because people who claim to represent God slaughter one another, or do other things which they know to be wrong, that there cannot be a God. If there is a God, they reason, then his people would not be doing these things.

They are right to a point. HIS people would not be doing these things. But it doesn't mean that God does not exist. Why?

Everyone who has connection with Christianity in any form knows that Jesus said 'You must love your neighbour as yourself,' and he gave the story of the Good Samaritan to prove the point. Love of neighbour is fundamental to Christianity, just as much as love for God. Love for one's neighbour does not allow a person to kill someone else, or even to hurt them, except in self-defence, or in defence of one's family. Yet the two most murderous wars in history broke out in countries which are predominantly Christian. The first and second world wars had Christians on each side killing each other. Catholics killed Catholics, Protestants killed Protestants. The various churches in each land involved preached that it was one's duty to kill those on the other side.

But, a person may ask, what would happen if people refused to defend their country because they were Christian?

The simple answer is that if all Christians on both sides had refused to fight, there would have been no war.

A friend of mine, now dead, had been a nineteen-year-old in command of a tank division in France during the second world war. One morning, as they were preparing for battle, he watched and listened as an army chaplain said prayers for the men about to go into the battlefield, asking for God to help them. My friend felt that God had no part in this, so he left them praying and went over the hill to see what the Germans were doing. And there he saw an army chaplain also saying prayers for the German soldiers. He asked himself, which side was God on? Could God have been with both sides? Or either side? Would God bless those about to kill others? What about those who died, were they blessed? When a tank received a direct hit, and bits of bodies were scattered around, was God with them then? My friend had the unenviable task of writing to the relatives of his slain men to explain how their son/husband/brother had been killed. By the time I knew him he was anti war - and anti God.

So, then, who is responsible for wars? Is it God? Or is it people?

Take another reason why people stop believing in God - the misconduct of those who claim to represent him. What about priests in various churches who have been accused of sexual misconduct, particularly with children? Of course, those in control of the different religions cannot oversee every single thing an individual does. There are always going to be those who rebel. But what do the various churches do about it? What can they do?

In the first century, Christians were exhorted by the Apostle Paul: 'I am writing you to stop keeping company with anyone called a brother who is sexually immoral or a greedy person or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner, not even eating with such a man . . . "remove the wicked person from among yourselves."' - 1 Corinthians 5:11-13. Surely such a person should not only be removed from the church altogether, but also be dealt with by the law of the land? But what has happened? The scandal appears to be that such men have been moved from the parish where they committed the act to another parish where they continued their disgusting conduct.

Would God approve of dealing with it in such a way? Clearly His Word says not.

So, then, do the actions of the various churches prove that there is no God? Not at all. They prove that these ones do not represent Him.

Jesus said: 'Be on the watch for the false prophets who come to you in sheep's covering but inside they are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will recognise them. Never do people gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles, do they? Likewise every good tree  produces fine fruit, but every rotten tree produces worthless fruit.' (Matthew 7: 15-19)

The warning is clear. What we see is people who claim to represent God, but who clearly do not. But we are brought up to believe that this or that church represents Him so that we do not check any further, and then we are shocked by what we see.

Is it an evidence that there is no God? No. Because certain ones misrepresent Him and break his laws does not mean he does not exist.

It means that they are not the ones God is using.

Automatic Tweets - A handy tool, Or A Hidden Danger?

In the world of social media, Twitter has become one of the leaders. At its best it allows people to interact with like minds right across the planet, allows people to tweet about what interests them, about their books, their crafts, their art, their music, their businesses and reach potentially millions of people.

How does it work? Well, for the uninitiated, it's an I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine world. To reach those millions of twitterers, we need our tweets retweeted by kind individuals. So then we retweet for them in return, then they do the same again, and others join in and so it grows.

But all this retweeting is time consuming. You can spend hours just keeping up with the retweets. And, well, many of us have other things to do.

So someone devised a way of tweeting and retweeting using an automated system.

How does it work? Well, basically you allow the automatic retweeter to take over your Twitter account. You put in some tweets of your own which it then churns out in rotation every hour or so, twenty-four hours a day. And when someone retweets for you, the automatic retweeter picks it up, and retweets their last tweet. Simple. Saves you hours. Or so it seems.

So what are the drawbacks?

Well really, the automatic retweeter does not discern what the last tweet of the retweeter was. If it is an automated message about someone's unfollowers, or if it is a personal message to someone, or a tweet of thanks, it will retweet it. The problem is that person is hardly going to be thankful for such a retweet and probably will not retweet back for you. Unless they also have an automated retweeter, in which case it is a case of a computer talking to a computer!

But isn't Twitter a place to connect with people? Or is it becoming just computers talking to each other?

But what if the person's last tweet was something you disagreed with? Religious perhaps? Or political? Or worse, what if it was pornographic?

Can't happen? Oh yes it can! It happened to me. I was with an automatic retweeter for just two days, and it retweeted something on my Twitter page which was in the realm of eroticism, with a picture. I was horrified, and I deleted it. I also left the automated retweeter immediately.

But worse, I have been on other Twitter pages since and come across hard core pornographic photographs, which I assume the person knows nothing about and probably would not have retweeted themselves. Oh yes, they have been automatically retweeted. Twice I came across this in just one week.

Could this happen to you? Could you be unwittingly retweeting porn?

Perhaps it would be a good idea to check your tweets and see what the automatic retweeter has been doing in your name.

To use an automated retweeter or not is a personal decision. But be warned, it does have its drawbacks.

By the way, if you do leave the automated retweeter, you may find, as I did, that those it picked up who retweeted for you seem to be lost to you. I found I was not getting notifications of retweets. You have to go into settings on your Twitter profile, and Apps and disallow those particular apps. I also had to get regular retweeters to unfollow and then refollow me before it would work properly again, while I did the same to them. A pain, but it worked in the end.

MIRACLE OF LIFE

I've got two new grandbabies, twins Fearne and Freya, born just over a week ago. They were born early because my daughter had pre-eclampsia, and they are adorable tiny scraps of life. Fearne is doing well, feeding well, and will soon go home from hospital. Her tiny sister is now also on the mend after an eight-hour operation to repair a tracheoesophageal fistula. (See previous blog 'Praise for the NHS'.)

And that has set me thinking about how a child is formed in the womb. Perhaps it is something we take for granted. We assume everything will go right, and we will have a perfect little baby at the end of a pregnancy. And most of the time that is the case. But it's when something goes wrong that it highlights the miracle of why it goes right most of the time.

What do I mean?

The condition that tiny Freya had is not common, but is also not unknown. In TOF as the cells are dividing to form the baby at the stage soon after conception the oesophagus and the stomach do not join up. Freya's intestine also was not joined to her stomach. Both have been repaired by surgeons and they expect her to make a full recovery. We ask: why did that happen? But perhaps the question we ought to ask is: how does it usually go right?

I'm no scientist, but it seems to me that the different components within the body must develop independently of each other. So, the oesophagus from the throat is one stage; the stomach is another stage; and a third stage must be the bowel. Maybe there's more stages than that, but let's keep it simple! Then they all join up. (Or in Freya's case, they didn't.)

So we all know what happens when a baby is conceived. Two cells become one, then they start multiplying. At some stage the cells start to form the baby, the sac, the placenta. Within the baby part, a brain, heart, internal organs, eyes, ears, limbs, spinal column and so on all come into being. I've always thought: What makes those cells do that? What programming is it that forms the different parts of the human body?

The answer is DNA. Well I cannot go into the complexities of DNA here, it is far too complicated for me! But I found some interesting quotes you might like to consider.

Did DNA come about by mere chance?

Quote: "DNA is packaged within the chromosomes in a manner so efficient that it has been called a 'feat of engineering."

Question: So how could such an organised structure come about? By blind chance or by design?

Quote: "DNA contains all the instructions needed to build a unique human body and maintain it throughout life."

Question: How did those instructions come to be in the first place? Blind chance, or by design?

Quote: "For DNA to work, it has to be copied, read and proofread by a swarm of complex molecular machines called enzymes, which must work together with precision and split-second timing."

Question: Could a highly complex and reliable machine come about by mere chance? Or did it have a designer and builder? What then of the more complex DNA?

The more scientists find out about the human body, the complexities of the brain, the eye, the kidneys, heart, and other organs, the more they find out about all living things, about the earth itself, about the universe, the more wonderful it seems to me. Science is showing us more and more that there is design in everything around us. And where there is design, there has to be a Designer.

That's why I believe in a Creator, someone with the wisdom and power to work it all out.

Perhaps we should find out more about him.

PRAISE FOR THE NHS

How many times do we hear the NHS being rubbished because of this or that failing. Well I for one have nothing but praise for the NHS.

When other countries have to pay for their medical care, in Britain everyone pays National Insurance throughout their working lives. Not only do we get social care, including old age pensions, but whenever anyone is ill they are treated without charge, without anyone demanding if they have insurance. And they get the best care, regardless of cost.

Well, OK, perhaps there are some who would disagree. But just this week my family is truly grateful for the NHS.

Over the last few weeks our daughter, who already has two children, was taken ill with pre-eclampsia and admitted to hospital. But as her condition worsened she was given an emergency C-section on Sunday, and identical twins Freya and Fearne arrived into the world at 34 weeks and 2 days gestation. Baby Freya weighed in at 3lb 5oz and Fearne at 3lb 14oz. Small babies, but not dangerously so.

Still they were worried about our daughter. She had constant nursing throughout that night and the next day. Every attempt was made to relieve the hypertension. And at last on Monday evening it began to stabilise.

Which is amazing considering what happened next. On Monday morning the discovery was made that little Freya, the smallest twin, had something wrong. Her oesophagus did not connect with her stomach. So within hours a specialist ambulance arrived and whisked her and her daddy off to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital where the specialists are.

Tuesday little Freya had an eight hour operation to connect her tubes. And at the expense of the NHS her daddy could have a room and stay at the hospital with her.

Today she is still sedated, and being intravenously fed, but she has survived the operation.

Meantime, Mum and Fearne are doing well. Mum is much recovered, and Fearne is thriving.

What skill the surgical team has to operate on such a tiny baby! And how grateful we are to all the staff at both hospitals for the care they have given my daughter and her husband and her babies.

Thank you NHS.


Evelyn Tidman, bringing history alive.  http://bit.ly/TBB3qa