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Jody Skinner: Creating Beautiful Formatting for Your Book · The Daily Writer

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Rider.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Each weekday, we bring you a short lesson that helps you live out the four practices of a great rider creativity, consistency, courage, and connection.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And on the weekend edition, we take a deeper dive into those topics by talking with writers and other cool people who can help us apply what we're learning.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really important, not just to talk about it, but to apply what we're learning during the week.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailywriterlife.com.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, book formatting is one of the last things that authors think about when creating their book.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it's an absolutely vital piece of the book creation process because readers are going to spend a lot of time inside your book.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes we spend a lot of time on the book cover, but we don't spend that much time on the interior formatting of the book or the formatting of the ebook because it we kind of just think of it as sort of like the last thing and we'll do it and let's just hurry up and get it done so we can put the book out there.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, readers don't spend a lot of time looking at your book cover, even though the cover is important.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: The interior of the book is absolutely vital.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I am so glad that my guest today is here to help us to get a handle on this critical area of success for your book.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Her name is Jody Skinner, and she is a proofreader, book designer, and avid reader.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: As the founder of both Skinner Self-Publishing Services and Smidgen Press, she is living her best book nerd life now.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I love that phrase in her bio, by the way.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Both companies keep her hopping from coaching first-time authors in the end stages of publishing to bringing old books back to life for the modern reader.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: A proud military spouse, Jody loves meeting new people, Ubering her three teens, and drinking just one more cup of Real Grey.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Puns are always appreciated, she says in her bio.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I totally agree.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: My family's getting really tired of my dad jokes.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you can never have too many dad jokes in your life.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's just that's what I think.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in this conversation, Jodi helps us to get a better handle on book formatting.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: She tackles such questions as how important is attractive and professional-looking formatting to a book success?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: What kinds of formatting programs are available to everyday writers, and why should we consider using the Vellum app?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And this conversation actually started out as uh as an interview about the Vellum app specifically, but we actually ended up going going off on some different directions and talking about formatting in general and why formatting is important.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I just want to say up front, I use the Vellum app to format some of my client books.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't generally do a lot of formatting for my client books, but I do that sometimes as well as for some of my own stuff.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I love the Vellum app, but I'm so glad that Jody could join us because we don't just talk about that app, we talk about this whole idea in general of why is formatting so important and why should you pay attention to it?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a blast in this conversation.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna really appreciate her sense of aesthetics and her attention to detail.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And also I want to encourage you to check out her book on Vellum.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: There will be a link to that in the show notes.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So lots and lots of good stuff in this conversation.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go right to the chat with Jody Skinner.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Jody, I'm so thrilled to have you on the show today to talk about one of my favorite tools and one of my favorite topics, which is book formatting, the app Vellum.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm excited to have this chance to dig into your brain and extract some wisdom that I need and I know my listeners need as well.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for doing this.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks for the invitation.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm super excited to chat about this.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was a really it was really fun.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't know when we connected, maybe a year ago, eight months.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's 2021, so nobody really has any sense of time.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, honestly, it's like we don't even know what what decade this is anymore.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: But we connected a while back.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it was fun to to connect because we know some of the same people, like locally outside of the internet world, and you know, and and all that stuff.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that was pretty cool.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, good to have you on the show today.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks so much.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's dive in here.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking we're here to talk about book formatting and some related things.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's kick off this conversation with with a question of uh first of all, why is it important to have a an attractive and a professional looking book?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm throwing that out there.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds like a really dumb or maybe obvious question, but I come across so many self-published books that just don't look good.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: The formatting is weird, the line spacing is weird, the margins are weird, there's everything's weird about it.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why is this something that so many people are missing?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and how critical is that to the book's success?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think the the question that every indie author needs to ask themselves is who's their target reader?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if if you want to write a book um for the, hey, I wrote a book and it wasn't, I want it on my shelf, I want to hold it in my hands, I want to, you know, hey, I want my nieces, nephews, my mom, dad, my I want them to read it and and know that I wrote this, then you're your own target reader and you can do whatever you want.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: But if you actually want your book on bookshelves, if you want people to buy it, if you want people to recommend it to others, then it's important to go and see what readers expect who are gonna pick up that genre from the bookshelf.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: So um, like when I when I I'm a book designer, and so when I pick up a new genre that I haven't formatted in before, I'm like, okay, I need to make a field trip to the bookstore.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna take a ruler, I'm gonna go to the bestseller table, I'm gonna see what's been out in the last six months, 12 months.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's 2020 again, you know, 2021 now.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was definitely more challenging to do in 2020.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I took a ruler, I took a bunch of pictures, I picked up at least a dozen of those, of those new releases um of the bestsellers to see, okay, hey, are uh are these book designers for the traditional publishing houses um what do their chapter headings look like?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um does every chapter begin on the right side of the page spread as you're looking at it?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Or with some fiction books, are they either the left side or the right side to you know maximize the the print capabilities there?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh I think a big thing for some people is is this book, is it separated, are the paragraphs sorry, separated by vertical space like an email?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Or do they use indents in this genre?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: You find a little more nonfiction that's written kind of like an email.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I want to I want to come back to that point in a minute because that is something that I geek out over about over, but nobody else in my life cares about that kind of stuff.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm thankful to hear that you have paid attention to that and that you're interested in those kind of things.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, sorry to interrupt you.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Nope, go ahead.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So let's so there's two things that come to mind, and I've got several other questions we can dive into.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the the first thing is let's talk about that issue for a second, because this is something I have talked to a lot of people about over the last year.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: But the vast majority of people, even authors, don't seem to they don't really pay attention to this a lot of times, it seems like, or or it's just not important to them.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so in your mind, what what determines whether we should lay out a book in terms of that block paragraph kind of a formatting versus I guess I would just call it traditional uh formatting where there's no breaks between paragraphs, but there's but they're indented.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: What what determines that and what's going on with that thing?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh I default um as a as a typesetter, you know, working with the rectangles of text on the page and making them follow um what the traditional publishing houses are doing.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: I default to the paragraphs with indents without the spaces between, um, because that looks like most books that you're gonna pick up from a Barnes and Noble bookshelf from whatever other booksellers are still building.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like a real book.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um now, if if an if an author really wants the the spaces between the paragraphs, you know, I'll I'll send them, hey, go to your bookstore or check a look inside on Amazon.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Does it have, you know, the print preview that you can look at or just the just the ebooks?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because most of the time, if they're if if they have a preference of I want the spaced paragraphs, um, unless they can find it in their genre, I'm like, I I really think you need to lean towards what readers are gonna expect to see.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I I think to determine that, you need to look and see what the new releases are in your genre.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: If that makes sense.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it totally does.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: It does seem to me like the only books that I have seen that that are formatted that way are obviously nonfiction books.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've never seen well, I've never seen that.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I've never seen self-published books that are formatted that way, but but I'm like, they have they totally don't have a clue about how a fiction book is laid out.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not to be negative, but I'm just saying that's what I see.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mind it when I see a book that way.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm in some ways I think it's easier to read because there's more white space on the page, your eyes can breathe a little bit more.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: But it does it to me, it does scream self-published a little bit.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not that that's always a bad thing, but that's that's the emotional response I always have when I see that.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: What is that is that how you think about that, or are you pretty neutral when it comes to just do whatever's in your genre and there's no good or bad necessarily?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a good question.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because um the there's a line between, okay, what as the author do I have a vision for?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And and and honoring that when a writer has a strong preference.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: And what is the market preference?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so trying to walk that line because if you if you feel like you're giving up everything that matters to you to whatever a market wants, then then no, I mean, that can just kill your soul as a writer.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but at the same time, if you're going, oh, this is what I would run a read and this is exactly how I would want to have it, and you're not considering your market at all, then um, I mean, somewhere in there you have to find the happy medium of what that looks like for each writer.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, but yeah, you're right.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: I have seen more of the spaces um in nonfiction books, um, in larger layout books where they may have, you know, significant sidebars of comments.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um that that space for the reader kind of adds a little bit of, hey, I need to consider between these sentences.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, so you need more room to process.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Where in fiction, you kind of just want to, you want the story to flow.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: I guess ultimately the main thing is just getting your book published and getting it out there because it's so easy to get hung up on the thousands of decisions you have to make, you know, with cover design formatting, book size, uh, all the kind of all the stuff that we have to think through.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the other thing I wanted to to throw out there uh before I get into specific formatting stuff is this idea of reverse engineering a book.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I love what you talked about, where you go to the bookstore or the library and you take a ruler and you are digging into it yourself.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: What are the margins?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: What's the actual book size?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: What's the binding like?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: What are how is this thing actually put together and then kind of reversing the process and thinking, how can I make this sort of a thing?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what steps do I need to go through to make that?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: I love that thought process.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious if you can, if you can talk more about kind of that scientific approach that obviously you have as a formatter into looking at something and thinking, okay, let's break it apart and let's figure out how we can build this same thing for ourselves.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, uh when I started my business in 2017, I was just offering proofreading.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I quickly realized that I needed something else to be able to set me apart because there's, you know, what's different from one proofreader to another?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, I did a lot of, you know, just we had specific layout stuff for my college degree.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Here you had for music recital programs.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, that was really fun.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna look into that.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I almost gave up because it is, I mean, I was trying to learn Adobe InDesign, which is very complex.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and so, you know, trying to trying to cobble together.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's not a one-stop shop for here, here's all the terminology you need to know for book formatting.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Here's all the all the terminology and process you need for so it really is kind of picking and choosing from finding wise mentors in the um already in the the design space, in the book formatting space, because I mean, a lot of times the the cover designer and your typesetter are completely different people in the traditional publishing world.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: So um to find somebody who does both well for indie publishers is kind of a gem, but um, but yeah, so not really having the time or the space to go back to college um or or to take a college course to learn formatting.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I was picking up bits and pieces and I'm like, I need to see what's going on right now because I picked up a couple of courses that I'm like, oh, these will be helpful.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it was for two versions ago of InDesign, and the the wow commands were no longer the same.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of these discount programs are discounted for a reason because they're not current.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so yeah, trying to get almost ahead of that and seeing what's coming out right now.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: To me, that just it made a lot of sense.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: It does make a lot of sense, just staying on top of things because this whole space is changing really fast.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just two or three days ago, somebody sent me this um link for an app.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's called Dabble.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's basically like it's Scrivener, except it's cloud-based.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's I mean, they really stomp all over Scrivener in their marketing.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: They're basically like, we're the simple Scrivener, we're the Scrivener that's easy to understand, that actually works, and that oh gosh.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: That and well, they didn't say actually works.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm putting words in their mouth, but but they were basically form you know framing it like that.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I can totally see that because scrivener is complicated, even though that's my tool of choice.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: I understand there is absolutely a market for something that is kind of a boiled down, simplified cloud-based version of it.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because one of the worst things that can happen to you when you're using Scrivener, if you're using Dropbox or something to sync, is when you use the the mobile version and the desktop version, if you leave one open and it's syncing, you're gonna have major problems because then you're gonna have different versions of your documents and you're gonna have to wade through them and it's a big mess.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, anyway.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, I get riled up about these things.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody else in my life is like, why are you so into all this geeky stuff?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, it's important because if if writers don't, if they run into a problem and they think they're the only one that's ever done it before, then they're tempted to quit.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so, I mean, I I help um admin uh a group of just people who use the Vellum formatting program.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're doing a lot of troubleshooting and whatever.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we do encourage people, hey, search the group first because it's pretty likely like 75% of questions somebody else probably asked last week.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, finding you're not alone in the things that are the struggles and being able to say, hey, you know what?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Don't have both of them open at the same time.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Or hey, make sure you export from Scrivener with this particular output before you import it to Vellum or whatever.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, that's the community is something that we as indie authors need because you you don't need that in the traditional publishing world as much.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, there's more expectations for doing your own marketing, even if you do get a publishing contract.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, we we have to find our people, we have to find the people that can support each other and then be willing to pass that on.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you've mentioned we're gonna dive into Vellum here um more specifically in just a minute, but you've mentioned InDesign also.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: What are some other formatting options that independent authors have today besides Vellum InDesign?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: We also mentioned Scrivener.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Scribbner is not really a formatting deal, but but are there some other options that people typically use?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean to me, you have a spectrum of things that are available to writers.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um I've kind of made it a nerdy goal to see if I can find every program that is readily accessible and that just about anybody could get their hands on.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um you have um the the spectrum of just the template formatters, like um the Read Zbook editor is one that you can just plug your text into and spit out a format.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think, I think last I checked, there were like four different templates you could use or something like that.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's the draft to digital um thing where again you import your Word document and it'll spit out a PDF, an EPUB, a Moby file.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you have Ingram Spark's book tool.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Those are all free options.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um you have Scrivener, which will do a PDF output, but you don't get to see what it looks like until it's spitted out already.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have to look over it and check it.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: So um that one obviously is not uh not a free option.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the thing all those have in common is that the the author has very little, if not zero, control over the output.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And um so that's yeah, that that that's the one end of it.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then at the opposite end of the spectrum, you have um basically absolute control over everything.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: You have um, and actually Adobe InDesign and Word are in the same um uh category for this because you have to know where to put your page headers, what should be in the footer, um, which pages can be blank, which pages should be blank.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, are are you have you numbered your pages to where they're always gonna be on an odd page?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And how did you start your is chapter one on is that page one?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Or did you start numbering page one from the very first page?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: So there are a lot of those little things that until you start looking, you don't always know.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: So um, and and Vellum is kind of in the middle of of that spectrum because you have it's a template style setup.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's got a little bit of more of a learning curve than the ones where you just paste your text in or upload a file.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: But um, when I'm working in InDesign and doing a custom format, I have oh, I meant to, I was gonna check and see how long my checklist is now.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's over 120 items of setup things of things that I check going through.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and so I typeset it, I make sure there aren't any, you know, short half lines at the top of a page.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I I make sure the spread is balanced from from the left page to the right page.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: If I hold a ruler across there, is that page gonna match up?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there is always a little bit of wobble with um with print on design.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you may have one page that's shifted slightly, but if so, then the whole page is gonna be shifted and it's not just the bottom of the page that's shorter than the other one.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: So um yeah, that those are just little touches that are nice to see in a finished book um output.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so um Vellum has a typesetting algorithm that actually does probably 80%, if not more, of what I do with an InDesign format.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna, it doesn't leave short lines hanging at the top of a page unless there's it's got its own hierarchy, which I don't know exactly what that is.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um if it's left something that would technically be an error, it's because it's prevented something else.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so, um, but it it levels up those pages across the bottom of the spread.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: It um it does a really good job with um with some the margins, like uh what probably the big difference of what I've shown people in a word format versus an InDesign format, because I started off formatting in Word and I was like, oh, I got this.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then once I learned InDesign, I'm like, I'm never going back.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um like when you look at a a rectangle of of text, it it's okay for the like the hyphens and the quotation marks to go just beyond the the edges of the text.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that that way it prioritizes the words as the main rectangle, which is a really nerdy typesetting thing, whereas word crams everything inside the margins.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so somebody was like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe that Bellum lets my quotes hang out in the whatever.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, actually, that's an advanced typesetting thing that I have a particular setting that I turn on in InDesign to make this happen.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Oh, I didn't know.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's fascinating.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: I never knew that before.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, I do.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's back up for a second.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And for those who have not heard of Vellum or or aren't really sure what it does, as opposed to something like Word or Scrivener or InDesign, you know, there's all these different tools out there.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: What is Vellum exactly and why are you such a big fan of it?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Vellum is a uh a program that was initially designed, I believe it was set up in 2013.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was designed for Mac uh platforms.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um it at that time it was an ebook only thing because the the creators had actually met up when they were working for Pixar.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And after they both left the company, um, their wives, or one of their wives, was reading an ebook and she's like, Oh my gosh, this is such a mess.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they their husbands were looking at each other and going, Hey, we can we can put out something that'll do this.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Plug your text in, and it's gonna put out something that's gonna work better than uh glitchy text and weird margins and other random.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you've read ebooks, you may very well have seen some of the ugly things.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, um, but then in I believe it was 2018, um, that people just loved their ebook outputs so much because they made it so easy.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um that uh okay, I'll I'll back up because you can just upload a Word document to Kindle Direct Publishing and have that spit out an ebook.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and it's it's doable.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: It it works, it spits out plain text and And whatever.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: But if you've got anything that's a mess in that Word document from pasting in text from the internet, you just don't always know what it's gonna actually spit out because what you put in is what you get out.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: So there was one file that I worked on that I actually put it in Vellum.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then um I exported it again to be able to work with the text because the text was such a mess.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: So Vellum actually cleans up all kinds of it, it covers over a multitude of weirdness and ebooks.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's for sure.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: But um then yeah, so about three years ago they added a print book option.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I think people sometimes struggle with the fact that, hey, I want my I want my print book to look a little fancier.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um but when it's when it's it's kind of safeguarding you from a lot of the no-nos of okay, no, you can't upload your own body fonts in here because we can't guarantee that your font isn't weird and gonna mess up the devices.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is pretty much bulletproof when you output a Vellum ebook.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: That is my only complaint with, and I love Vellum, but I would say my only complaint, it's the same complaint that people have with Apple products is that it's a very closed system.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's a limited number of options.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And every time that I see somebody who's done a book, a book in Vellum, I'm like, yep, that was done in Vellum.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: That now that's only because I spent a lot of time in Vellum.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not that's no statement on the quality at all.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I do wish that they had more options for the like the chapter headings, and you know, it did it kind of seems like every time you start a new chapter, like it's way down on the page.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I I wish they would have more options, but I understand why they don't, because that would complicate things further.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and funny you say that because um I actually reached out for them uh to them because they have a um Bellum 3.0 uh beta test in process.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm not I'm not in the beta myself, but I reached out to them and asked what uh what they're willing to to you know share publicly.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: And they're especially excited about having um heading backgrounds where you can actually upload an image behind um your page text.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh I I didn't bring my notes, so I can't remember what else there is, but between the the new headings and a couple new styles, um, there are there are gonna be some upgrades and they're hoping to have it available before the end of the year.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: So cool.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I I also wish they would they would have some more print sizes.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like their print sizes are really limited.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: I would love a five by seven size, but that's just not there.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I understand why they don't, because you can't have everything, you know, for sure.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: But what it does, it does really, really well.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: And their customer support is great.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: So if there's ever anything that you want to request, you can send them a message.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: I believe it's um uh help.vellum.pub slash contact um is where you can actually submit a request.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: You can say, hey, I think this is a bug.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Is this working right?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they are, I mean, it's not it's not same day reply generally, but they're they're good, they're thorough, and they do keep a list of requests.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: So which is cool, which is really cool.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you get enough people, they'll probably add it.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what about PC users?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this is this is an issue that I have run across many times, and I'm sure you have too, where I go on and on about how great Vellum is to somebody and how easy it is and all that.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then somebody goes, Well, I use a PC, and that kind of like kills the conversation right there because Vellum is Mac only and desktop only.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine doing this on mobile device or why you would even want to.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do you say to people who are like, Well, I'm a PC user, so that just kind of kills it for me.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: I say, Hey, me too.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: My first computer is a PC.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: And um, actually, I ruled out Vellum at first when um, because I had started doing um ebooks for clients and trying to find, hey, what's a good converter?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I was using draft to digital and helping clients through that.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: And somebody said, Oh my gosh, you need to try out Vellum.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, Oh, totally can't.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: PC.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And somebody's like, No, I I wish I could remember who told me about um finding a remote Mac server because I would just hug them and thank them because it's been amazing.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a uh a remote server company called Mac in Cloud.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so you basically you rent a Mac that's housed in somebody else's thing.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you access it from your own PC screen.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yeah, it's already uh they they Mac and Cloud and Vellum are completely separate companies, so they can't troubleshoot for the other companies' issues, but Mac and Cloud has Vellum pre-installed.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: So as soon as you get logged into Mac and Cloud, you can start because Vellum, the amazing thing about Vellum is um that you can download it for free if it if you didn't, if it's not, if you're not working on Mac and Cloud and it's already installed, and you can test every single one of the features.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's no time limit, there's there's no feature limit except for outputting books.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, which is the thing that people want to do the most.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: So Right.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I it makes sense to be able to check it out um before you hey, is this gonna be something stupid that I'm gonna hate?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: But their um their preview feature is is really is really great because you can actually look at that side preview and go, hey, what's this gonna look like on a Kindle Fire?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, what if I make the text bigger or smaller?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, what's it gonna look like at this print size versus that print size?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: And um, yeah, it's a lot some people actually will will write in Vellum because they love seeing how it looks on the finished page, and that's inspiring to them.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's addictive.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it really is.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the best way to use Vellum because there's not like a word export.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um you can export as rich text and then save that in a Word document, but it doesn't export any image you may images you might have, and you have to redo any detailed formatting when you bring it back in, but you could get it proofread that way really easily.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: I look at the people who who are writing books in Google Docs, not that you know, as I say on Seinfeld, not that there's anything wrong with that, but you know, I see people like it's an aerial font and they're in Google Docs.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just the creative side of me just goes, Oh my gosh, that is like kills any inspiration right there.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's something about being able to write in a way where it looks pretty on the page that just inspires your creativity, I think.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: And just being able, I mean, because I have I have one person that she's like, Oh, I, you know, my book's done, but I don't know what to do with it, and whatever.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you know what?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: I know you're a Mac user.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you download Vellum, stick it in here, and just look at what it looks like.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I think just knowing, hey, this could be an actual book is can be an inspiration to people.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's uh it's interesting as a PC user to decide whether, um, you know, whether or not I was willing to go over that hump of that extra access point.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's a little bit of lag on Mac and Cloud just because the computer is not right in front of me, it's in a remote location.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I'm so glad I I now have a dedicated Mac just for Vellum because but it's worth it if you're gonna do it for if you're gonna do a lot of books or you're doing client work where you're formatting books.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's worth it to buy an older Mac and just have it for Vellum.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: I know that sounds extreme, but it's but I love it so much is how I feel.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and as a PC user, um, I I have no trouble telling people, you know what, I bought my uh 2012 Mac from, you know, I've uh I think the the most reputable site that I've found so far is backmarket.com because they actually vet their people who do refurbishes.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um and they have at least a 12-month um replacement guarantee.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, but yeah, I was really impressed.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Every place else that I could find had between 30 and 90 days, and so I'm like, oh, gotta test this puppy out really hard to make sure if it's gonna break, I'm gonna break it in the first 90 days, darn it.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but no, it my my 2012 held up really well.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, these things like don't die.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to I want to get to your book uh before we wrap this up.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: I want to get to your your book on Vellum because it's really, really awesome.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: I do want to want to share a little uh a little way that Vellum has really, really helped my ghostwriting business.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I have to give Vellum props, not that anybody from Vellum is listening to this right now, but I gotta give it give them props because what I often do when I'm working with a client and they've already written some of their book is I will take a chunk of a chapter, you know, just a few pages, and I will rewrite it.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'll write it as best as I possibly can.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then I do a mock table of contents in Vellum.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I put the book in Vellum and I format it really nice.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then when I send a proposal to them, I also include a PDF mock-up of what their book might be.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this has worked every single time I've done it.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's like magic, not because I'm so great, but because Vellum is such an easy, simple tool for making something look really good.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: They look at that and they get a clear vision of what their final book could look like.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like once people get that vision, it's really hard to say no.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if they want to do a book.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I there there are just so many good things to say about Vellum.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I mean, there are some challenges too.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like um, Vellum, uh, it's not a great fit for complicated nonfiction.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, you can choose whether to set your paragraphs, whether you want them, you know, indented um with no space between, or whether you want them um just spaced and everything, you know, flush left.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you um, so yeah, there's only one level of like a bulleted in the numbered list um at present.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what the next version will have.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but so anything with really complex, with more than one level of heading um is challenging.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's really it's most meant for fiction and for and for just light informal nonfiction.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that's probably a downside, um, or or at least a limitation.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh a downside potentially could be um just the fact that there is a learning curve to yet another program.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and so I mean, that's partly why uh I was part of the um Vellum users group on Facebook and I saw that people kept asking the same questions over and over.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh my gosh, there needs to be a book for this.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked around and there was one, but it was already outdated.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so um I was like, well, if this person's not gonna update it, I'm gonna write one.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was not one of the people who was like, I want to write a book before I die.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, heavens, no, I want to proofread everybody else's books.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to write my own.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, yeah, I just wanted to make it simple for people to follow.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: It the the different learning styles is you have people who they want to get in the middle of it and get their hands dirty.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: Other people, you know, they want a book to be able to look at it and follow the instructions.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you have people who need to hear somebody talk through it or hear themselves talk through it.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: So a book doesn't answer all that, but it's at least a starting point for here's how things are gonna go.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and they do get updated so often that I have I've updated the ebook version twice this year.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm in the middle of updating the print version of my book, which is called Format Your Book with Vellum, interestingly enough.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's at the end of that, I've got extra content in the print book, which doesn't translate to the ebook at all because it's got all of the fonts as they look like in print, so that people can open it up and see, hey, what what's the readability of this one?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's got it uh in regular size as well as in um the large print sizes, which Vellum added in the last year or two was large print options.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so um yeah, it's uh it's nice to see the different things that you can have available.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I also included all of the default um chapter openers in the print version of my book, which it helps me because I'm I'm a hands-on learner, but being able to actually flip the book and go, oh, that's what this looks like.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll apparently by the end of this year I'll have to update that again.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't look forward to that.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: So but that means I think that's pretty cool because you have what I would consider the definitive book on Vellum.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: So is there any potential that they would promote your book or have some kind of a partnership where you're you have created sort of the official book on Vellum?
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll be honest that their help section um on help.vellum.pub is extensive.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's got a lot of stuff.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I won't I won't say that no, you have to buy my book because they don't talk about it.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: There are some things from a PC user standpoint that um that I bring in as a perspective of, oh, or hey, you know, Amazon has this requirement, so you're gonna want to check this for your margins or whatever else.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's um their Brad West and Brad Andelman, they're they have covered pretty much all of the questions that as far as the the basic formatting questions, their help section is phenomenal.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, this is just kind of more of a little bit approachable, a little bit more of a breakdown with my own organization of it and whatever.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: They've been they've been great to to answer any questions that um that I've had.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't they don't give you any flack for having a book based on their product, correct?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: No, actually I wrote them um before I put it out.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh especially I'm saying, hey, you know, I'm a PC user trying to write this for other PC users who may uh wanna wanna dive into this.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, hey, this looks like it could be a helpful resource.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: Good job.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, sweet.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: I love that approach.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yeah, they've uh I keep asking them, hey, you know, do you uh we're having this issue, you know, come up 12 times this week, whatever.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: I've sent a couple people your way, but whatever.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's not like I'm buddy buddy with them, but they're they're I but between uh the vellum and and their their helpfulness.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how many times do you get to to write a help desk and actually get the creators of the program go, hold on, we're gonna fix that and we'll have a you know, and then the next day there's a bug fix available.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, never, ever.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: And um, Mac and Cloud's support has been fantastic anytime I've needed anything as well.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll say I I left my, I had a because you can either buy a subscription of so many hours per day over a time period, or you can just buy, hey, I want a chunk of 30 hours.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's a dollar an hour.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sweet, that's great.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, I left my um, I didn't sign out properly.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I make a big deal about that.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: And because I have a chapter just on Mac and Cloud in my book.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: I make a big deal about here's how you log out, and you don't just close the blank.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: You have to actually log out and then close your browser window, close the server access window.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, it's it's those little things that you have to get over.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I I wrote support and I said, Oh my gosh, guys, I I left this open yesterday.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: I whatever.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Okay, cool.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna, you know, as a courtesy, we'll restore you so many hours and yeah.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's an easy bit.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Jody, this has been a blast.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I love your book.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love what you're doing by helping authors.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you're doing so many cool things.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us how we can get in touch with you and where people can find your book.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you can find me at um skinnerselfpub.com.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: And um I'm also on um on Facebook as um at Skinner Self Publishing Services.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think I have all those words on there.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh my book's available on Amazon in both uh ebook and print book form.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: I believe it's also um at other booksellers.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I listed it through Ingram.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm making a list of all my things that I have to upload updated versions to.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, it's called Format Your Book with Vellum and by Jody E Skinner.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's another Jody Skinner, but it's not me.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: So bottom line, would you say the the price tag of Vellum is worth it for people who are just getting into self-publishing?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think it is, is it still$229 for the app?
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: It is$249.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's what$199 if you only want to output ebooks.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, which if you're somebody who is gonna make a bazillion bucks off of Kindle Unlimited and you want to put out a new book every month, you maybe don't even need the print um version, but uh$249 then for the um yeah, for the uh ebook and print.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we mean$249, not$2.40.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: $249.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Which is it's a really expensive for an app, but well worth it in my opinion.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, especially if you're gonna put out more than one book.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna only put out one, then you know, uh it may be worth looking at somebody to hire it out.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of authors who already use Vellum and they're like, well, hey, sure, I'll format your book for whatever.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can make you can make your money back to them by just doing formatting work for other people.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's for sure.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, it's it's been a good um investment in my clients.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, eventually uh I'm beginning a study of HTML and CSS, so I can actually code books, ebooks and stuff like that too, because they're they're basically like mini websites, which is why they end up being so complicated.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, yeah, it's it's worth it's worth considering what the payback's gonna be.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, because I want to talk about back matter, because that's probably the biggest draw for fiction authors, especially, um, is being able to update all their back matter in in very short order and not having to pay a formatter to go, hey, would you go look up my book from last year and my one from the year before that?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because I need to update all my, I need to update my bio, I need to update my links.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so having that control in Vellum, because it's as simple as removing the existing one and having the file already formatted in another vellum setup where you just drag it across and you park it right in and your back matters updated.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: So Jody, thanks again for doing this.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: This has been an absolute blast, and I appreciate uh you taking time to do this.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, hey, it's fun to nerd out about this stuff.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes people's eyes just glaze over.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: I learned some stuff too.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great day.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, wasn't that fun?
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: I always enjoyed talking with Jody.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: She is so cool and just so laid back and so much fun to talk to.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: I love talking about this stuff because I'm a fellow book geek and a fellow book nerd for sure.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's always fun to geek out with somebody else about this kind of book stuff.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: That I mean, let's let's just face it, as writers, most of the people in our everyday lives do not geek out about this kind of stuff, but we do because we're book nerds and because we love all this stuff.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it's always fun to uh nerd out over the book stuff.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: My big takeaway for this conversation is this, and some of you are not gonna like this, but that's okay.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because I because I love you and I care about you guys, uh, and I always want the best for you, and I always want to tell you the truth.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the truth is that you need to probably start using the Vellum app.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you are not formatting your own books and you're having somebody else do that, it is so much fun to play with this app and just to uh be able to see the cool formatting that you can do with it.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: It is uh kind of expensive, it's like$200 something dollars.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that's a pretty steep price tag for an app.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it is also a Mac only app.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you know that's why I say half of you will not like this because probably half of you use Mac, half of you use PC.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: But as Jody mentioned, there is a way to use Vellum on a PC.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can use the Mac and Cloud feature, or I'm sorry, the Mac and Cloud service, and uh and Vellum is already on there apparently, which is pretty darn cool.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to encourage you to check out the Vellum app and uh you can find the link to that in the show notes and just start using it, start playing around with it.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I may have mentioned this in the in the uh interview, but I oftentimes use the Vellum app to format a little bit of a client book and send to them when I'm talking with them about being a prospective client.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I gotta tell you, it it really does work.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever people get a vision of what their book can look like on Vellum, it has like a magical effect because it's it looks great, and it looks like how their final product might appear on Amazon or in a print book.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's pretty darn cool.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this was a blast having Jodi um here on the podcast, and I always really love talking with her.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure and check out her websites.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: There are two things.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is SkinnerSelfpub.com, and the second is smidgenpress.com, and there will be links to both of those in the show notes.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I want to make sure and give a huge thanks to Jodi for being a guest on this episode.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh hope you all enjoyed this.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, again, I had a blast, and it was so much fun to have this conversation.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I will see you all in the next episode.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 43:01
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• 43:05
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• 43:14
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• 43:21
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• 43:25
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• 43:29
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• 43:37
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• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.