17 Comments

Awesome resource, oh and I didn't know you were publishing a novel here serially and that it was fantasy Mr. Malone, you should tag me with it, as I could market it week after week on both Sword & Saturday and Warrior Wednesday, might get you a few extra readers!

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Hey!! Thanks. I would definitely appreciate that. Its on my private Substack but it’s all free. Just gotta subscribe to read it!

https://havek.substack.com/welcome

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Subbing now

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Awesome!! I approved the request. Let me know what you think. :)

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Gotcha! I’ll add it to my next mega-review.

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Thank you!! 🙏 Can’t wait :)

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Wow, this looks very handy! I agree that Scrivener sucks at formatting (partly because of how I’ve organized my book). I export it to Word and reformat it there before exporting it into something else. It’s a job. I’m still likely to use InDesign to create my interior book design, but I might play around with this just to see how they compare! Nice to know there are options out there. InDesign is definitely not for the faint of heart, haha, but it gives users minute control over every aspect of the design. That may not always be necessary. This seems very user friendly.

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I need to teach myself indesign. Especially because I want to do special things with future books and it’ll need to be through that instead

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It seems intimidating at first, but once you get a feel for the basics, I predict that you’ll love it. I taught myself via trial and error. It’s doable! The program also features some handy tutorials. Give a shout if you need any help!

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Definitely! Thank you 🙏

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Jul 2Liked by Winston Malone

This is amazing. I’m not ready to format yet, but have already been shaking in my boots at the thought of it. I already have a Reedsy account, looks like I know what I’ll be testing out for a first attempt!

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Oh good!! Hopefully it makes the process easy for you. Let me know if you have any trouble or specific questions once you get there, Sara.

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This is one of my big disappointments with Scrivner. For all of its amazing features around organization, it's terrible at formatting a manuscript. I've tried to take it as far as I can, but I'll end up having to export to another format and use OpenOffice to really make it shine. Most of the book formatting platforms appear to be focused on an easy plug-and-play style for indies, but I want ultimate control over everything. I wish Adobe InDesign weren't subscription based, else I would go for that.

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I'm with you on this one. I'm thankful there are tools that easily convert manuscripts into publishable formats, but the limitations can really make or break the uniqueness of the novel. I have Adobe InDesign and am too intimidated at the moment!! I'll either have to learn it or cancel... too expensive.

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Jul 1Liked by Winston Malone

Very useful, Winston, thanks for this! I never tested their book editor, but it sounds like a great tool. I use Scrivener, which has more features, but more is not always more... As far as I understand, Reedsy book editor puts the manuscript in a format that is directly uploadable to Amazon for publishing, right? I mean, do you have to download it as Word and then upload to Amazon, or can it go directly?

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Hey, Zoe! Thanks for sharing that you use Scrivener. It's a popular tool. As for the Reedsy editor, it says the following on the Export page:

"Every book written or uploaded with our editor can be perfectly converted, ready for submission to online ebook stores and print on demand services. Select the export format and options you would like."

I haven't used a Reedsy exported file to publish anything yet, but I would assume it functions on par with other platforms. If there's anything wrong with the file, services like IngramSpark and Amazon KDP should alert you during the uploading process.

The biggest benefit here is that Reedsy is free, whereas some services use this feature as a means of charging for their product. So that's a win.

Let me know if you run into any problems or have any other questions. I'll try to answer to the best of my ability. Thanks!

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