3 days to free book promo on amazon!

Part II - The fascinating experience of being a self-published author.

DISASTER.

So, I followed the fantastic 100+ page pdf by Mark Coker on how to format my ebook for Smashwords.

I read the manual word for word. I crossed the t's, Dotted my i's, hooped my o's and looped my y's. I followed it verbatim. I made premium status without hiccup.

...Same with formatting for the Kindle. Oh, how I smiled...

Easy.

I swaggered away from my laptop into the kitchen for a glass of vino.

Then, came the POD version via create space...

All fine - and then. waahh...

3 days later...(still) waahh...

How can it be that the single, most onerous task I encountered in this whole formatting process, was getting Header's and Footer's to work on Word?

Word is staple, Word is faithful....Word's Header and Footer section is illogical.

Page Breaks don't make sense or work like they should. Odd/Even page options are confusing and don't work like they should. The page number icon doesn't work like it should. There are confusing terms that don't do what they should. Why is this aspect of Word so non-linear and illogical?

3 days it took - trying to get Roman Numerals on the first 5 pages,  creating the desired page break, and then making it so the page numbers start from 1 and go 1,2,3,4,5 rather than 1,1,1,1,1.

My grand design to get my name on one Header and my book title at the top of the adjacent Header were catapulted into the stratosphere. As soon as I got those bad-boy numbers working at the top of the page, I honestly dare not touch, or even breathe at the computer screen. It was a gentle hover over to save...and then, send.

Honestly, using the pilcrow and meatgrinder was a doddle in comparison with Headers and Footers for the print version of Mis-fit, Misplaced.

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