I know that I am opening myself up to a lot of slings and arrows, but I have a real problem that I am trying to sort out.
I would like some advice from Authors who have published their books for online sales. I'd also like to hear from Readers who spend a lot of time reading those e-books, too.
< < < < > > > >
If you reach all the way back to the pulp writers of the early 30's and later, there was a very successful and regimented format to write in.
Potential authors learned in that style, and their main goal was to get published in the cheap and very small books that flourished back then. Tiny primordial ancestors of today's mainstream paper monsters. Detective fiction, adventure stories, ghost stories, war stories. They all flourished on the tiny little leafs that they got crammed onto.
Authors HAD to write to a specific paragraph length, and handle dialogue a certain way, or they just didn't get snapped up by the publishers. You either conformed, or were out. Period.
Be as wordy as you like, because you got paid for each and every one, but fit to what the typesetter's demanded or else!
These days, especially with free sites like Lit and others, the Readers custom format how they want YOUR words to appear on THIER screens. Or online publishers do the hard work, and spend a lot of time editing and formatting their purchased material, to fit on various screen sizes and devices.
< < < < > > > >
The truth about my new novel is that I don't KNOW where to plan that it will end up!
Back in MY 'old days' writers stuck to the set style used everywhere, and they got published in hardbacks and paperbacks. The material was WRITTEN for the rules of the destination. No long rants. No short one line paragraphs. Dialogue scrunched together to reduce the hard page count. Very little 'open' space for the readers to rest their eyes.
< < < < > > > >
On my mainstream Sword and Sorcery novel, I am writing IN a paperback template created in InDesign. I can SEE when I have issues with run on paragraphs, or too choppy dialogue hand offs. That is all well and good.
I used the first book of my favorite modern Fantasy trilogy to copy the dimensions, gutters, headers, footers, page numbers, and chapter break specifications. It is going along just fine!
The Erotic Novel?
Not so much.
As an experiment, I recently took the simple and printable (8.5"x11" with .5" margins) Erotic text and flowed it into a copy of my Sword & Sorcery novel template. When I made a PDF to send it out to a pre-reader, I got a horrible shock!
It 'mostly' flows very well, but there are some sections of long descriptive narrative that look like the old "tombstone" effect in newspaper galley type. Other places, the long sections of dialogue overwhelms the page, making it hard to see the identifiers, that keep the person speaking firmly in the reader's minds. The 'breathless' sex scenes that before 'raced' down the page, now just LOOK horribly sketchy and broken up.
< < < < > > > >
So if you just don't see how this could be a problem? Take a typical paperback book's text, and flow it directly BACK into a format specifically meant for an iPad!
Then see what you get!
< < < < > > > >
So for those of you that Write for eBooks, or those of you that read them all the time? - - -
• What is the 'general' width and height of the screen on the most heavily used devices?
• How do you tailor your writing (if you even do), to be read on something as small as an old iPhone, to tablets and iPads, to laptops and full size computer screens?
• Do you write in a template that keeps you 'visually' on track, or is your normal style so rigid that it just isn't a problem for you?
• Or do you just write what you want, and let the people who are going to publish it, hack all of your hard your work to pieces to make it fit?
< < < < > > > >
InDesign suggested a 2732 x 2048 pixel size for an iPad Pro. For traditional 'Web Pages' they suggest a 1920 x 1080 pixel page.
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Especially since I 'like' how my erotic story reads as it is, (letter size page) but I am now convinced that I need to change the Erotic novel's style to be more "Reader" and "Sales" friendly.
I would like some advice from Authors who have published their books for online sales. I'd also like to hear from Readers who spend a lot of time reading those e-books, too.
< < < < > > > >
If you reach all the way back to the pulp writers of the early 30's and later, there was a very successful and regimented format to write in.
Potential authors learned in that style, and their main goal was to get published in the cheap and very small books that flourished back then. Tiny primordial ancestors of today's mainstream paper monsters. Detective fiction, adventure stories, ghost stories, war stories. They all flourished on the tiny little leafs that they got crammed onto.
Authors HAD to write to a specific paragraph length, and handle dialogue a certain way, or they just didn't get snapped up by the publishers. You either conformed, or were out. Period.
Be as wordy as you like, because you got paid for each and every one, but fit to what the typesetter's demanded or else!
These days, especially with free sites like Lit and others, the Readers custom format how they want YOUR words to appear on THIER screens. Or online publishers do the hard work, and spend a lot of time editing and formatting their purchased material, to fit on various screen sizes and devices.
< < < < > > > >
The truth about my new novel is that I don't KNOW where to plan that it will end up!
Back in MY 'old days' writers stuck to the set style used everywhere, and they got published in hardbacks and paperbacks. The material was WRITTEN for the rules of the destination. No long rants. No short one line paragraphs. Dialogue scrunched together to reduce the hard page count. Very little 'open' space for the readers to rest their eyes.
< < < < > > > >
On my mainstream Sword and Sorcery novel, I am writing IN a paperback template created in InDesign. I can SEE when I have issues with run on paragraphs, or too choppy dialogue hand offs. That is all well and good.
I used the first book of my favorite modern Fantasy trilogy to copy the dimensions, gutters, headers, footers, page numbers, and chapter break specifications. It is going along just fine!
The Erotic Novel?
Not so much.
As an experiment, I recently took the simple and printable (8.5"x11" with .5" margins) Erotic text and flowed it into a copy of my Sword & Sorcery novel template. When I made a PDF to send it out to a pre-reader, I got a horrible shock!
It 'mostly' flows very well, but there are some sections of long descriptive narrative that look like the old "tombstone" effect in newspaper galley type. Other places, the long sections of dialogue overwhelms the page, making it hard to see the identifiers, that keep the person speaking firmly in the reader's minds. The 'breathless' sex scenes that before 'raced' down the page, now just LOOK horribly sketchy and broken up.
< < < < > > > >
So if you just don't see how this could be a problem? Take a typical paperback book's text, and flow it directly BACK into a format specifically meant for an iPad!
Then see what you get!
< < < < > > > >
So for those of you that Write for eBooks, or those of you that read them all the time? - - -
• What is the 'general' width and height of the screen on the most heavily used devices?
• How do you tailor your writing (if you even do), to be read on something as small as an old iPhone, to tablets and iPads, to laptops and full size computer screens?
• Do you write in a template that keeps you 'visually' on track, or is your normal style so rigid that it just isn't a problem for you?
• Or do you just write what you want, and let the people who are going to publish it, hack all of your hard your work to pieces to make it fit?
< < < < > > > >
InDesign suggested a 2732 x 2048 pixel size for an iPad Pro. For traditional 'Web Pages' they suggest a 1920 x 1080 pixel page.
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Especially since I 'like' how my erotic story reads as it is, (letter size page) but I am now convinced that I need to change the Erotic novel's style to be more "Reader" and "Sales" friendly.
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