I Did It?

My paperback is still "in review", but I managed to format it and upload it successfully! Oh, there were hitches for sure. I took KDP's blank template and pasted my manuscript into it, which sounds so simple, right? Wrong.

First of all, I don't know any books that only have ten chapters, but that's all the template made allowances for, so in the contents section, I needed to add thirty more chapters, except of course the chapter titles wouldn't line up, plus forty chapters encompassed two pages. So, I ended up with about thirteen chapter titles nicely justified and the rest off-kilter. KDP told me to stick the page numbers for each chapter in once I was done loading everything. Okay. I was skeptical, especially since my Word pages didn't even show their numbers. But I'd deal with that later.

Then came pasting my chapters into the template one at a time. Since the template only went up through Chapter Ten, I needed to start a new chapter title and leave a consistent number of lines between each. (Sure, it would seem logical to read the instructions first, but I didn't even know there were instructions.) So, I counted the number of blank lines the template left between its pre-formatted chapters and mimicked that. Then each new chapter needed to be changed to the correct font and heading type. 

Once I finished that, I was dubious that the entire manuscript would look right, but I had no way of verifying, until I stumbled upon "page view" and switched to that. Now, I not only could see where each chapter began on a page, but it also showed me the page numbers.

Some chapter titles didn't start on a new page (just as I suspected), so I fixed that. Here's how KDP says to format new chapters:

1. Highlight and copy the last chapter.
2. Put your cursor at the end of the last chapter.
3. Hit the Enter key.
4. Paste the copied text.
5. Put your cursor at end of the second to last chapter.
6. Go to the Insert tab.
7. In the "Pages" section, click Page Break.
8. Hit the Enter key to insert space above the last chapter title. Not sure how much space to insert? See the other chapters to compare 

Okay ~ what?  "the end of the last chapter; the end of the second to last chapter" That's just a bunch of nonsense. Second to last chapter of what? My head hurts just trying to decode the instructions. My way was much easier.

Then came adding page numbers to the table of contents. I was still bothered by the off-kilter formatting, and I did try to fix that, to no avail. So I deleted the whole table of contents completely. Why does anyone need to know what page a particular chapter starts on? Use a bookmark! In the end, I was still left with three blank pages at the beginning, that, try as I might, I wasn't able to delete, so I just left them there.

Then I crossed my fingers and tried uploading. My manuscript was accepted in a flash! 

Now, I still don't know if it will pass review, but I was able to order a proof copy that's supposed to arrive on Tuesday. It could turn out to be pure crap ~ who knows? If that's the case, I don't know how I'll rejigger the manuscript to look right or if I even possess the ability to do so. I'll worry about that on Tuesday.

Once I reached the pricing screen, I hadn't a clue. KDP takes 40% of the royalty plus printing costs for each copy sold. For a book with my number of pages, printing cost is $1.00. To try to get a handle on proper pricing, I scanned a list of Amazon's women's fiction books for their paperback pricing. It was all over the board, and pricing didn't seem to be based on whether it was a newer release or an older one; it was arbitrary, between about $10.00 up to $20.00. Thus, I went with $17.36, for no apparent reason; I just had to pick a number. If I ever manage to actually sell a copy, I'll net $7.94.

So, I did it (?) I don't know how the physical book will look in the end, but I got this far. Let me just say, it wasn't easy. It was the opposite of easy, and I managed to waste $147.00 on Atticus in the process. (I'm still mad about that.)

I'd decided that if I couldn't format the book with KDP's template, it was the end of the line for my paperback aspirations. But I was going to give it a good try. So far, so good.