6 | Gather Content

Now it’s time to gather up all the content for the soon-to-be e-book.

Section Checklist

1. Story

2. Front And Back Matter

3. Why Label Front And Back Matter Sections?

4. Add A Title Page

5. Add A License Page

6. Optional Front Matter

7. Add An About The Author Page

8. Cover Art

9. Other Images

10. Content Ready?

Story

By 'story' I mean the actual story content (story block) itself, including any pro- or epilogue.

If users have a completed or partial manuscript ready to use as a crash-test dummy, great.

If not, an RTF version of A Scandal In Bohemia stands at the ready. (Scroll to the bottom of this page to download.)

The Scandal file includes a number of things that will require special attention, including scene-break characters, an image and two different types of block quotes.

Whether using the Scandal file or a different project, the story itself must be saved to the production desktop folder with (Surprise!) a specific name. (Remember, it’s the prefix that counts in the production folder.)

ACTION list: Save The Story File

• • Save a trial version of the story content to the desktop production folder.

  • Name the file story_projectx.

  • Filetype (.doc, .docx, .odf, .rtf, &etc.): doesn’t matter yet.

ACTION list: The Sequel

• 1. Before adding any additional content to the story_projectx file, use SaveAs to create a working copy.

  2. Name the copy matter_projectx.

  3. During the following steps, please work only in the matter_projectx file. This preserves the story_projectxfile intact, just in case of screw-ups.

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Front And Back Matter

‘Front a/o back matter’ refers to content included in e-books that isn't story. Sometimes front and back matter are promotional in nature, sometimes they’re technical or legal information.

If an item traditionally appears before the story, it’s front matter. If it comes after the story, it’s back matter.

Lots of people have lots of different opinions about what belongs in an e-book, and where that content belongs. Everyone believes they’re right and that everyone else is wrong.

I’ll not debate the merits of one additional-content style over another. Users need to learn how to add content, not necessarily what to add.

The tutorial takes a happy-medium approach and adds Title, License, Acknowledgements and Dedication before the story block (front matter). An About The Author page is added after the story block (back matter).>

While working through this section and adding front and back matter, please do not waste time formatting anything. The only formatting that matters is italic or bold font, and the content’s physical position in the projectx file. I cannot possibly express how little formatting matters where we're going.

• A special supplemental section on front and back matter issues has now been added.

  • Do not include a Table Of Contents as front or back matter. This e-book feature is created later in an e-book-friendly way. (Which often differs from the author-friendly way).

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Why 'Label' Front and Back Matter?

In the following steps, the tutorial calls for users to add labels at the beginning of each front and back matter section. Because this tutorial is way too long and way too detailed, this is one bit of explanation I had hoped to leave out. Based on feedback, however, I can't leave out the explanation, so bear with me, here.

Every section of front or back matter added to the file must have a 'label' added above it.

Think of these labels the same way each chapter of the book is labelled with a header.

The title page must have 'Title' before the title-page content. The licensing page must have 'License' before the licensing-page content, and so on.

The text used for these labels should be whatever you want the table-of-contents entry to be. The tutorial uses very straightforward labels like Title, License, Dedication, Acknowledgements and About The Author.

Other producers may have other preferences. That's fine. As long as there's something there to label the content, we're golden.

Adding these labels (and tagging them as HTML headers later) is, quite frankly, a dirty trick played on Sigil to make it do some heavy-lifting for us. Here's a much longer explanation of why it's done, and what to do if something goes wrong. (I can pretty much guarantee that new users do not want to go there.)

Keep in mind that these labels will not ultimately appear on the finished-e-book page itself, but the labels will still appear in the e-book's table of contents.

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ACTION: Add A Title Page

A title page should contain the book’s title, any subtitle(s), the series name and number, if applicable.

Again, do not bother with formatting. This is handled later while we're working in Sigil.

Example:

ACTION list: Adding A Title Page

• 1. Please add a title page to the matter_projectx file.

  2. This should include the e-book title, subtitle (if applicable), series name and number (if applicable), and the name of the author(s).

  3. Place the label ‘Title’ above your title-page content, similar to the example below.

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Add A License Page

Again, everyone’s got their own ideas about what belongs on a licensing page. If you need a sample to go by, download one from the bottom of this page. (Remember, download the TXT file directly to the desktop production folder.)

ACTION list: Adding A Licensing Page

• 1. Add a license page to the matter_projectx file.

  2. Add the label ‘License’ ahead of the content, similar to the example shown below.

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Optional Front Matter

In this section, the user can opt to add a Dedication page a/o an Acknowledgements page.

These are completely optional pages, though very popular with authors. Both front-matter pages are included in the Scandal file to make plenty of header tags and table-of-contents entries to practice on.

ACTION list: Adding Optional Front Matter Content

• 1. Continue to add all desired front matter to the matter_projectx file.

  2. Label each section with an appropriate section header, similar to the Title and License pages.

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Add An About The Author Page

Depending on how users decide to structure their e-books, this will likely be the first thing readers see after THE END.

ACTION list: Add An About-The-Author Page

• 1. Add an ‘About The Author’ back-matter page to the matter_projectx file.

  2. Make sure this page has an “About The Author” label, similar to Title and License pages.

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Cover Art

A practice Scandal cover is available for download below. (Remember: download the JPG to the desktop production folder.)

Cover-Art Guidelines:

• • Cover art should be JPG filetype. Some retailers also allow PNG.

  • Cover art should be 6x9 aspect ratio.

  • Cover art should be at least 500px in height. Make sure to research the cover-art requirements for each retailer. They’re all different, and requirements change every so often.

  • 72dpi is fine for this tutorial. (Print generally accepts nothing less than 300dpi, but this is detrimental in e-books.)

Please note that if preparing files for a retailer, DO NOT embed cover art into an e-book file. Embedded cover art adds a ton to file size. Which is bad.

If, on the other hand, a file is made for a contest prize or other promotional purposes (anything but retailer upload) DO embed the cover art. Leaving it out would seem unprofessional.

ACTION list: Gathering Cover Art

• 1. A copy of the cover-art must be placed in the desktop production folder.

  2. Recommended: Rename the cover art file cover.*** (The *** represents the cover-art file's filetype.) OR simply slap a cover_ prefix before the existing filename. This makes life ever so much easier for fatigued eyes later.

Early heads-up: MOBI files without a specified cover-art file will return a warning. Don’t worry. KDP attaches the cover for you. The MOBI file is still 100% fine.

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Other Images

For projects containing images, find all image files and copy them into the production desktop folder.

The Scandal file includes a practice image. Anyone using the practice file should also download this image file (img1.png) and save it in the desktop production folder. This image can be downloaded at the bottom of this page. (Remember, download the PNG file to the desktop production folder.)

ACTION: Gather Other Images

Copy each required image file to the desktop production folder.

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ACTION: Content Ready?

At this point, please ensure that all desired content has been added to the projectx file. This should include the story in its entirety as well as all the front and back matter, including title, license, dedication, about the author and whatever else the user intends to publish.

ACTION list: Content Ready?

• 1. Double-check that all front and back matter has been added to the projectx file.

  2. Double-check that all front and back matter sections include a header label.

  3. Using SaveAs, create a copy named full_projectx in the desktop production folder.

  4. Filetype (.doc, .docx, .odf, .rtf &etc) still doesn't matter.

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