A Novel - Formatted for Self-Publication

Finished getting the novel Devil Music, by Carly Orosz, formatted for self-publication with the help of Custom-book-tique.

We needed several different formats in order to distribute the book both physically and digitally through multiple distribution channels / vendors. Since we've not done that before, we looked around online for a professional formatting service and eventually settled on Custom-book-tique (we worked with Maggie Pagratis). The manuscript already had location-specific formatting done correctly (e.g. italicized paragraphs and underlined words). Carly, as the author, answered about a page of formatting questions, such as font preferences and physical book dimensions. Custom-book-tique then got Carly's manuscript formatted correctly in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI formats, and formatted as a 5.5" x 8.5" trade paperback to the technical printing specifications of CreateSpace (which are also PDF files, one for the cover and one for the interior). This included getting the synopsis onto the rear cover of the print paperback.

Maggie Pagratis also did the leg work getting Devil Music started as a "project" on CreateSpace, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), and Lulu (an easier way to get an ebook listed on the Apple iBooks and Barnes & Noble NOOK book store) for us.

We received all the final files in their final formats, as well as the formatted Microsoft Word files used to create them. The source Word files were especially important as I was able to revise these Word files as additional mistakes were found (fortunately only 4, single-character typos) and re-export as/print to PDF to get PDF format documents. I then used Calibre (open source ebook software) to create new, revised EPUB and MOBI file types, including a separate image file for the cover (watch the image size to avoid bloating the ebook!).

This cost $1,400.00 $USD and was well worth it.