Coming soon: Templates.
In my last post, Twelve Tips: How to Reduce the Cost of Your Self-Published Book, I suggested that you could use the open source programs, LibreOffice and Scribus (both free) to produce your book. LibreOffice and OpenOffice are open-source office suites that include a word processing program (Writer), a spreadsheet (Calc), and presentation software (Impress). For your ebook, I suggested that you use Writer and calibre (an ebook management program pronounced “caliber”) to produce your ebook. I also suggested that you could use Writer and Scribus to make your book interior for your book.
Later, I began to think that, for those of you without experience with these programs, it might be a good idea to make some template files to get you started. This turned out to be a bigger job than I anticipated so things aren’t ready this week. This is a look ahead to what’s coming.
Writer Templates
I am working on a Writer template that will help you upload your ebook. I’m also developing some templates that will allow you to produce the interior of you book using Writer. It is a good idea to use a desktop publishing program like Scibus for this job, but if you are forced to make do with a word processor, then the templates will let you give it a good shot. The templates for your print books will include files for the front matter and individual chapters. The idea is to simply replace my text with yours and you’ll be good to go!
Scribus Templates
Scribus has a much steeper learning curve than Writer. If you haven’t been using a word processor already then you really have been resisting the march of technology (Good for you!). For those of you have been using Word at work or at home, switching to Writer isn’t so bad: the controls are all there; they just might be in different places. Scibus is a different story (Get it, story? Har, har.) Scribus will feel strange at first, but, once you get over the initial learning bump, it will start to make sense. The coming templates will help a lot with the learning curve. I got my introduction to Scribus while making up newsletters when I was president of the local dance club, the Terpsichorean Club.
I’m making a series of Scribus templates. One is a simple template that only uses fonts that you will likely have on your computer if you install Linux and LibreOffice. I’m making some fancier templates that will require downloading and installing fonts. The idea here is like before. If you like the page layouts, then all you have to do is replace my text with yours, output a finished .pdf file, and upload it to CreateSpace.
New Books
The templates I described above use Lorem Ipsum as a place holder for the body of the text. Lorem ipsum is filler text. It’s basically fractured Latin used in graphic design to give the visual impression of a block of text without having the distraction of meaning. Lorem ipsum is based on De finibus bonorum et malorum (“On the Ends of Good and Evil), a philosophical work by Cicero from 25 BC. Words have been added and scrambled to make the text of Lorem ipsum nonsensical.
As a lark, I’m going to publish “Just Lorem Ipsum: A Hundred Pages of Lorem Ipsum” in paperback and as an ebook. I’ll put the ebook on my website as a free download. I’m going to put the paperback on Amazon. Mostly I want a physical copy I can show around and say “This was made with open source software.” If you want a copy for a writer friend as a joke then, for a nominal price, you, too, may own your very own copy!
The graphic from today’s post uses “Starsinthesky” by ESA/Hubble. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Starsinthesky.jpg#/media/File:Starsinthesky.jpg.