Novel Manuscript Preparation.

c2011 (S)


I've been working over 'Horse-Catcher' before submitting it again.

Here are some perspectives on 'standard manuscript format,' including SFWA members Vonda M. McIntyre and William Shunn.

For one thing, it reminded me to have a cover page.

In the past, I was using three asterisks for scene breaks, and that differs from the norm, which is to use a number sign '#' indented to match paragraph indentation.

One of the things I noticed about Mr. Shunn's format is that he seems to be using the 'define paragraph' function where I normally just use five space-bar hits for indentation. I would never use a half-inch indent as he does, bearing in mind it is a manuscript and not an actual book. His way may be correct.

Going through the book it looked like I would end up with about seventy-five chapters. This is far too many chapters for a book of this length. Tedious as it is, far better to reorganize the material before submission. Twenty-five or thirty chapters is plenty.

There is also one short chapter that is nothing but exposition. Luckily, it's the only one. This chapter might get deleted, or more likely redistributed throughout the story. Even then, much of it is expendable if the same material is covered elsewhere or brought to light by events rather than some invisiable narrator.

Other than that, I've spent four or five days rewriting and editing, and I stand as much chance as the next unknown author of landing the big publishing contract.

With a crowded marketplace and plenty of wannabe authors attending convention after convention, building personal relationships, or attending panels and asking questions, this writer needs whatever edge he can get.

Kobo not recognized by PC.

My twelve year-old nephew got a Kobo for Christmas and his uncle Louis was all excited. The device comes with access to a free library numbering in the millions.

It's a nice-looking device and I had no trouble setting the date and time.

How to set up a Kobo e-reader is here.

The boy's father lost patience even with this, but he is avowedly computer-illiterate and not interested in getting involved with them. Even he was happy to buy the device for the nephster.

The Kobo was not recognized by my brother's laptop, which is connected by wireless to the internet.

I took the thing home to my place, and hooked it up to my desktop Windows PC, which is connected to the internet via cable. The machine was not recognized by the PC, and I got appropriate warning boxes popping up on my desktop.

It's too bad, really, as I would have liked to see my nephew reading Alexandre Dumas, Robert Louis Stephenson, and Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and a host of other classic authors.

As it is, I think they're going to take it back and try out a cheap touch-screen pad-type device.

During the course of my own amateur attempts at trouble-shooting, I downlaoded Kobo's free application, 'Kobo for Desktop.' What I was planning to do was to click and drag free e-books and load them onto an SD card, which the Kobo is equipped for.

That might have worked, but does not solve the real problem of going online and downloading books, free or otherwise, to the Kobo.

The free Gutenberg Adobe Digital Editions read fine on my desktop. My own product, also free, 'The Stud Farm,' doesn't seem to have any page-turning carets or buttons or any other form of icon. I can look at the cover, the middle of the book, and that's about it. The exact same Kobo file download reads beautifully in Mobipocket Reader, which I also have on my desktop. This is the way I normally test read Epub versions of the books I upload to Smashwords. It's all part of quality control.

I can't say for sure if the problem lies with my own eight year-old PC, or the Kobo app. I have sent an e-mail inquiry. If the problem persists, or if I can't fix the problem, then I will shut off the distribution channel for Diesel and Kobo until it is fixed. Because the Kobo has a button to turn pages, I am sort of assuming the product works in the actual reader.

Without a working Kobo to test with, that is an assumption, and I hate assumptions.

First you might try this: How to synchronize Kobo with Kobo Desktop.

Or download this free Pdf;

http://download.kobobooks.com/learnmore/kobo2_pdf/Kobo_ereader2_QSGuide-EN.pdf


Here is an e-mail response from Kobo regarding my desktop app
:

Hi Louis,


Thank you for contacting Kobo Customer Care with your concern.

We are sorry to hear that you are experiencing technical difficulties with your eBook.

Please delete the book from your library and reinstall it back to your device.

Then go to your list of purchased books and BOOKMARK the eBook it will then appear in your I'M READING PAGE you can then sync it to your desktop library and then to eReader.

We do apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,

The Kobo Team

As a service to others in a similar boat, here is where you can ask a Kobo technician.