Online Book Editor to Save on Typesetting
One of the major costs of book production is typesetting and design. The art of book typesetting is a lofty one, with things like chapter rules, widow/orphan rules, and page bottom alignment.
Reedsy Book Editor is an app to do your own layout and make the PDF artwork–for free! Let’s say we don’t mind too much about rules, we just want to get our book formatted with simplicity. Then online tool ‘Reedsy Book Editor’ is your tool.
I tried it out, and some of the issues were:
- Inability to expand the type size, as it is set in the template style
- Difficulty aligning the table of contents (heading 2’s only would not auto-align)
- Not yet sure if PDF is compatible with IngramSpark, but Reedsy claims that it is.
Background of Reedsy
Reedsy was established (in London, UK in 2014) to give authors and publishers access to talented professionals, book tools, and free educational content. Their stated mission is to support in “crafting beautiful books”.
In Marketplace, vetted freelance professionals from over 30 countries in all different publishing specialties have profiles on the platform. I have one!
In fact, Reedsy has 150,000 authors in its community and 1,500 editors and designers and marketers and ghostwriters. You can read some author success stories on the Reedsy stories page.
Reedsy’s Other Purpose
In 2017 they started a campaign called #IWriteBecause, where the money raised goes to Room to Read: a non-profit that provides girls in Africa and Asia with access to education. (They don’t say what percentage goes to the charitable cause).
Other Handy Reedsy Tools
Some of the other handy writer tools include:
- Book Promotion Sites – lots of these are free to list on but most try to upgrade you to a paid listing. I tried eBookstage, paid the $10, but not much good in itself.
- Book Review Blogs (with number of visits, if accepting indie books, and domain authority) – perhaps the most useful place for fiction publishing authors but found a couple that suited my books. Sort by category to get reader blogs that suit.
- Reedsy Discovery helps authors get readers to give feedback on their book prior to launch. Don’t get confused; the readers will not be reviewing your book on Amazon! Voluntary readers will be giving the star rating and 200-word review on the Discovery platform. It costs US$49 to list your book for this.
Less Handy Reedsy Tools
I checked out the BookTube Channels but I felt that most were young-seeming, fiction book review vloggers, and not useful (unless they had their email address listed in the channel details, which is unlikely). You might be different, you might like this and be at one with the ‘Tube.
Title generators can be helpful if you are feeling less than inspired. This Reedsy title generator divisions into major fiction genres, so no help for me! Also, very annoying popup. (Romance title suggestion ‘Maid in Leather’… what kind of romance are you all writing these days?)
This Reedsy tool is only for readers who want to change their file format if they own a Kindle, so it is not so useful for authors: ePub to Mobi free conversion tool.
