Formatting Woes

Challenges abound when trying to format my novel for publishing. First, I had to copy my DOCX over to LibreOffice due to Microsoft "disappearing" some of my text. ("Disappearing" sounds like a mob hit.) I'm not sure what LO saves documents as, but it's something obscure, which the Kindle Create app doesn't support. It only allows the uploading of DOCX, TXT and RTF files. So, I tried converting my LO doc to a supported type, but I still couldn't upload it.

So, I bit the bullet and copied my LO document over to Word (which is ironic). Before I tried uploading that into Kindle Create, I wisely checked the word count to ensure it hadn't put out a hit on my manuscript again. To my surprise, all the words were there.

Then came the more frustrating step. Kindle Create played weird games with the formatting. I always configure my manuscripts the standard way ~ 12-pt. font size, Times New Roman, double spaced, first paragraph indented. Well, Kindle Create didn't like that. It just formatted my manuscript willy-nilly; some paragraphs indented to 8 instead of 5, sometimes double-spaced lines and other times single-spaced. Some words were scrolled up to 18-pt. font. 

It was a mess. With a manuscript of more than 100,000 words, I couldn't manually fix everything that went wrong, and even when I tried, my fixes didn't work. To tackle the weird indentations, I went back into my DOCX file and justified everything to the left margin; then uploaded again. It worked, but it looked crazy. Every book has first line indentations, and I wasn't looking to start a new trend.

And using Kindle Create's formatting functions for line spacing is an exercise in futility. Some paragraphs ended up being smushed together, while others were spaced miles apart.

So, what am I currently doing? Going page by page in Kindle Create and creating 5-pt. indentations for every new paragraph. I'm only up to Chapter Fourteen out of forty. 

Mind you, this is my third upload. I had to discard the first two because they were hopeless.

After my first failed attempt, I went looking for another formatting app. This led to another dead end. Everyone on Reddit raves about IngramSpark, so, desperate, I signed up for an account. I don't get it! I have no idea what they do or what they charge, and I wasn't about to dedicate funds to the exact wrong service. Bear in mind that I was pulling out my hair by the time I signed up with them, but now I need to delete my account. 

I had tentatively planned to release my book on March 1, and by the time I finish formatting it, the calendar will have, in fact, turned to March.

I never had problems with Kindle Create before; sure, a couple of minor glitches, but not a complete freak show. I don't know if my large word count is causing the app to go haywire, but lots of people have written manuscripts as long or longer than mine. 

Despite the long, tedious process of fixing every paragraph, I have to keep at it. I can't find a (free) alternative to Kindle Create.

This has really put a crimp in my plans.