Publishing a book with Writer - wish me luck!

Writing a book, Automating Document Production - Discuss your special needs here
Post Reply
Moe Shinola
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2012 6:49 am

Publishing a book with Writer - wish me luck!

Post by Moe Shinola »

I want to prepare the pages of a short book of poems & 1 short story that my mom wrote years ago and finally wants to see in print. I'll upload the PDF to Magcloud(most likely) and have them make 5 or 10 perfect bound copies. I've been researching different freeware publishing programs, like Serif(not able to DL from their site) and the Adobe Creative Suite 30-day demo(same problem). Also DL-ed Scribus, but the tutorials indicate it's for brochures and anyway they're confusing. A friend chided me for starting this project in a word processing program, but then she went to a swanky publishing institute and looks down on word processors, I guess. If anyone has a word of encouragement or any advice I need before I get too much farther into this, please feel free. I've also been listening to Hamish MacDonald's DIY Books podcast which has some great advice for 1st-time publishers. Thanks for any good word you can offer and best wishes!
"The law speaks too softly to be heard amid the din of arms"
-Gaius Marius, Roman soldier, Consul
OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Window 7 Professional
User avatar
Hagar Delest
Moderator
Posts: 32627
Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2007 9:07 pm
Location: France

Re: Publishing a book with Writer - wish me luck!

Post by Hagar Delest »

Learn about styles first, it will spare you time later if you need to make global changes to your formatting.
There is a link at the top of the Writer forum to the online guide.
LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 on Xubuntu 23.10 and 7.6.4.1 portable on Windows 10
rudolfo
Volunteer
Posts: 1488
Joined: Wed Mar 19, 2008 11:34 am
Location: Germany

Re: Publishing a book with Writer - wish me luck!

Post by rudolfo »

As long as you have content that is in a rectangle format (paragraphs of text, most tables, pictures or graphics in a rectangle format) and some headings in between OOo Writer is good enough for you. Multiple columns on a page would be still okay. But headings that spread over 3 columns while the rest of the page is following this 3 column layout are more difficult. This is where a desktop publishing software as Scribus has its strengths. Also if you have text that should flow around a round picture, this is an area where a DTP program is the better choice.
But usually if you are writing a book "everything is happening in rectangles", so OOo Writer should get it done.
OpenOffice 3.1.1 (2.4.3 until October 2009) and LibreOffice 3.3.2 on Windows 2000, AOO 3.4.1 on Windows 7
There are several macro languages in OOo, but none of them is called Visual Basic or VB(A)! Please call it OOo Basic, Star Basic or simply Basic.
User avatar
TheGurkha
Volunteer
Posts: 6482
Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2008 12:13 pm
Location: North Wales, UK.

Re: Publishing a book with Writer - wish me luck!

Post by TheGurkha »

Backups.

And plenty of them.
Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, LibreOffice Version: 4.3.3.2
Gurkha Welfare Trust
EdIsenberg
Posts: 83
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 6:19 am
Location: Central New Mexico, USA

Re: Publishing a book with Writer - wish me luck!

Post by EdIsenberg »

Where to begin?

First, I echo The Gurkha & others: make backups with different file names that include a version # or version date. Do this anytime you've made a major change, especially relating to formatting and other global changes that might inadvertantly screw up something already done or something to be done later.

Second, create a spreadsheet that includes the following columns at the very least: DATE, DAYS SINCE LAST DATE, AND WORK DONE. In the WORK DONE section write down what you did. I'm enclosing an image of my NOTES spreadsheet to give you an idea:
Image of NOTES spreadsheet (smaller).jpg
There are so many other things you should do, much of them having to do with how you organize your writing. For example, I have a great many spreadsheets that keep track of important things, such as a list of characters, a novel timeline that goes back before the actual story begins to show important events that would later be important, Sources, etc.

Here are three images of the same spreadsheet, showing the left, center and right portions, and only going down just to the prologue. I'm sorry they are so small; there's a limit to the size of an uploaded image.
Oops: WIll have to post another message for the right side and some final coments.
1s - Scenes, Plot Events, Settings, Character Arc, Opening Scene Evaluation.jpg
2s - Scenes, Plot Events, Settings, Character Arc, Opening Scene Evaluation.jpg
Edward D. Isenberg
MS Windows 10
OOo 4.1.2
LibreOffice 5.2.7.2
EdIsenberg
Posts: 83
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 6:19 am
Location: Central New Mexico, USA

Re: Publishing a book with Writer - wish me luck!

Post by EdIsenberg »

3 - Scenes, Plot Events, Settings, Character Arc, Opening Scene Evaluation.jpg
There's more you should keep track of, but it could fill a book!

If you wish to contact me feel free to do so. I think there's a way to do that person to person. If not let me know and we'll figure a way w/o me giving my Email address to everyone.

BTW, my science fiction novel, The Guardians, should be available on Amazon & Kindle by the end of August.

Ed Isenberg
Edward D. Isenberg
MS Windows 10
OOo 4.1.2
LibreOffice 5.2.7.2
John_Ha
Volunteer
Posts: 9583
Joined: Fri Sep 18, 2009 5:51 pm
Location: UK

Re: Publishing a book with Writer - wish me luck!

Post by John_Ha »

You have made an excellent choice with AOO Writer - it will be very good for a book as it is very stable and fully production worthy.

See [Tutorial] Authoring e-Books in AOpenOffice (epub, ebook) for an author's thoughts.

Richard Farr's You are Here was written using Writer and he came to this forum for help with formatting it.

The three most important things to do are backup, backup and, finally, backup. Save each day's work as a new, separate folder or ZIP file so that you can recover your work from any day. For example if your book is saved in C:\My Documents\My book, then each day take a copy of ...\My book and save it as ...\2017 07 05 My Book. Also, backup daily to to something external to your PC - an external disk or, preferably, the cloud (eg Google Drive or Dropbox etc). Think about what would happen if your PC was stolen or you got hit by ransomware.
LO 6.4.4.2, Windows 10 Home 64 bit

See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.

Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
Post Reply