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That's... Really out of character for them. I wonder what the hell happened
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Mar 3, 2023 03:00
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KrunkMcGrunk posted:That's... Really out of character for them. I wonder what the hell happened Disconcerted by the comment that the same thing happened to someone else. I sent in a query suggesting they might want to respond to this one, no reply.
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Mar 3, 2023 16:28
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Angela posted a follow up a few days ago: https://angelahighland.info/2023/03/01/followup-on-the-draft2digital-situation/ It's not exactly great but I suspect everybody Clarkesworld to D2D are scrambling to respond to all the AI spam. She does have a that market consultation, even if it gives the convinced D2D/Smashwords more market power to compete against Amazon is still a danger. Everybody owns their little slice of the vertical and there aren't good alternatives.
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Mar 3, 2023 23:21
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Unusually, there are two submission opportunities for self-pub this month: 1. The Fantasy Fellowship has just opened up submissions for their Indie Spotlight series. https://twitter.com/fanfellowship/status/1634192394806501376 Any spec fic is eligible as long as it is already published and either first in series or standalone. 2. BookTuber Bookborn and her husband Zack Argyle (who is a self-pubbed author) is running the Indie Fantasy Fund again this year https://twitter.com/SFFAuthor/status/1631036066491940864 Any fantasy book is eligible as long as it is completed. It does not have to be published yet; they will accept books at any stage of the publication process as long as you can present a clear plan for how the funds will be used. I just submitted mine today.
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Mar 10, 2023 23:04
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I’m trying to decide between two possible directions for my book’s cover, and I’m just… stuck right now. I know I want some kind of border that will carry over to the other books in the series (which haven’t been written yet). I’ve made a few different borders, but I’m not sure which ones work, or if any of them do. Here are the two top contenders right now: a more formal border and a more natural one. Neither of these is finished, and I’m not satisfied yet with either of them: the gold one will be more of a dull bronze, for example. I just wanted to get some feedback before I pick a direction to waste hours more of my time on this. The book is an urban fantasy/romance. The type (except for the main title) is just a placeholder. So… which one is better? Or do they both suck?  
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Mar 14, 2023 16:37
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newts posted:I’m trying to decide between two possible directions for my book’s cover, and I’m just… stuck right now. I know I want some kind of border that will carry over to the other books in the series (which haven’t been written yet). I’ve made a few different borders, but I’m not sure which ones work, or if any of them do. The yellow one draws the eye, but the shape is very boxy in a bad way. Have you tried the bottom shape in the yellow color?
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Mar 14, 2023 16:42
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The golden border sucks. The grey leaves are fine. "Lily C. Strauss" type needs to be thicker, I think. Raven & Crane needs some heavy shadow behind it and/or a black outline so you can actually see the "-ane". Also, I guess in general the name of book completely covering up the character's face is not great. Like, why even have someone on the cover if you cover them up completely?
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Mar 14, 2023 17:18
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Thank you, both!Megazver posted:Also, I guess in general the name of book completely covering up the character's face is not great. Like, why even have someone on the cover if you cover them up completely? I guess this is kind of a foible of mine: I don’t really like to see the main character’s faces. I prefer to imagine for myself what they look like. Plus, as hard as I try, I can never get my picture to look the way I imagine the character. But I realize I might be weird, so I’ll consider moving the text so his face is not covered. ETA: Face uncovered. Don’t know if I like the spacing between the words, but not sure where else they would go. I suppose I can still change the title  
newts fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Mar 14, 2023 |
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Mar 14, 2023 18:20
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newts posted:ETA: Face uncovered. Don’t know if I like the spacing between the words, but not sure where else they would go. I suppose I can still change the title I'm bad at covers but my thought is, have you considered swapping the placement of the text? Instead of having the series name take up so much real estate?
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Mar 15, 2023 12:39
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I thought about moving the series name up, and ‘Bones’ down, but it just didn’t look right. I might still try it again. Here’s the latest iteration. Moved some text around. Adjusted his face a bit—it might still need something. Added a bird thing at the bottom. I’m not sold on the font for the series and author name (Lato), but I wanted something simple to contrast the hand-lettering.  Any crits and opinions welcome! I can draw decently but I have zero graphic design skills beyond the ability to recognize what looks good/what looks like poo poo. I think I actually like the original title word placement better (with every word on a line). Except the ‘of’, which sits in a weird place on his neck. Tempted to change the name of the book to ‘A Heart Made of Bones’ just so I can separate ‘made’ and ‘of’ on either side of his neck. newts fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Mar 16, 2023 |
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Mar 16, 2023 20:33
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newts posted:I thought about moving the series name up, and ‘Bones’ down, but it just didn’t look right. I might still try it again. My $0.02: Don't change the title. It would lose some punch with the additional word. Can you inch the author name and the first title line down a smidge each, and Bones up a little? Then maybe just raise "Raven & Crane" up a tad? The text looks vertically "clumped" to me. I'm not saying put everything at equal spacing from the next line or anything, just small adjustments. (You might be able to get away with leaving the author name where it is and moving the first title line down, as the color might prevent it from getting lost in the border.)
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Mar 16, 2023 21:31
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Admiralty Flag posted:My $0.02: Don't change the title. It would lose some punch with the additional word. I second these suggestions. My only addition is that the lines on the left half of your Raven & Crane logo that surround the "1" are a bit thin. They're getting lost, at least to my eye, and don't read as anything but a scrawl. I have to zoom in to make out the detail. Zoomed in, I do like the design of that logo quite a bit.
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Mar 17, 2023 01:43
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Thank you, both! I’ll try out your suggestions when I have time to play around in Photoshop a bit more (maybe tonight) and post my results.
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Mar 17, 2023 01:52
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Results: First one is with the text spaced a bit more vertically + logo adjusted. Second is the same as the first, but with hand-lettered author and series name (rather than Lato). Let me know what you think.  I can always shrink the hand-lettered text down and change the color, I just haven’t bothered yet.
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Mar 17, 2023 16:33
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The right one is a no-no. Well, personally I think I'd put 'a Heart of' above the hands with the light and 'Bones' below them, and just shrink and shunt the series name way below.
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Mar 17, 2023 17:46
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I like the hand-lettered author and series name personally.Megazver posted:Well, personally I think I'd put 'a Heart of' above the hands with the light and 'Bones' below them, and just shrink and shunt the series name way below. Yeah this is what I was trying to get at. I've seen some covers with cool hand-lettered typography where the text is laid out in an interesting way itself (or the default typography is embellished with art) but now that I want to find an example I can't remember any of them. The thing that feels off about the series name for me is how much space it takes up visually (vertically) on the cover, versus the important stuff (title and cover art). I do like the little raven and crane around around the "1" but it's something that I feel like would look really cool on the spine of a print edition rather than on the front cover itself...
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Mar 18, 2023 03:41
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Put the title on the chest, make byline bigger, subtitle smaller.
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Mar 18, 2023 06:04
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Imma disagree, title was better in the original placement. If the face were well lit, it would be different, but the element emphasized here is definitely not the face. I'd make the author name bigger if it's in a different font but with the same hand lettering the small one looks OK
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Mar 18, 2023 07:43
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newts posted:Results: First one is with the text spaced a bit more vertically + logo adjusted. Second is the same as the first, but with hand-lettered author and series name (rather than Lato). Let me know what you think. Firstly, I think that looks excellent. It makes me think of Neil Gaiman, which is a great thing in my book. I'd wish I could see the tattoo on the character's chest, which are obscured by "BONES." Also, I'd take the second picture for the font. For whatever reason, the font on the first selection makes me think of it being done quickly at home.
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Mar 18, 2023 13:24
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Heh! Thanks, everyone, for all the feedback. I really appreciate it. I’m away from my computer for a couple of days, but when I get back I’ll move a bunch of stuff around to try out these suggestions, and post some samples. I always feel like I’m flailing around at this stage of cover making, and that I could spend a year on it and never be happy. Personally, was leaning toward the hand-lettered, but smaller, author and series name. I’m limited to using Google fonts and they all pretty much scream ‘homemade cover’. I don’t know if I need the bird logo, and might move it or just make it a simplified interior chapter header thing. I’m not committed to it. I still prefer to have the character’s face obscured (because I’m a weirdo) but I can also try lightening it, though that will wreck my cast light and shadow scheme.
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Mar 18, 2023 14:35
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I like the hand lettering myself but really, at this stage you need to pay a graphic designer at least a few hundred dollars to turn your idea into something that clearly pops as a design. (I was amazed how much just getting a professional on the job turned my idea into a good design.)
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Mar 18, 2023 15:01
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edit: dumb misclick
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Mar 18, 2023 15:01
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divabot posted:but really, at this stage you need to pay a graphic designer at least a few hundred dollars to turn your idea into something that clearly pops as a design. (I was amazed how much just getting a professional on the job turned my idea into a good design.) I know this is the correct advice. And I have considered it. But this is still just a fun hobby for me. And I know that I’ll never make money at it if I keep treating it like a hobby. The only chance I would have to do that is if I write a bunch more books in series and invest the time and money in marketing them. And I’m not at a point right now where that’s feasible. So, I think I’ll just keep having fun writing crappy books and getting them out there when I can. And maybe when I have a bunch I can think about getting serious. I figure I can always update my lovely covers later if I need to.
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Mar 18, 2023 15:13
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newts posted:I know this is the correct advice. And I have considered it. true true :-) just so envious of self-publishing authors who are also graphic designers (c.f. Adam Bertocci of this parish) I will say that the hand-lettered version of the cover does not say "self-published" to me. Which is an excellent stage to be at.
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Mar 18, 2023 17:00
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divabot posted:true true :-) just so envious of self-publishing authors who are also graphic designers (c.f. Adam Bertocci of this parish) Thank you! Yes, I’d love to have a talent for graphic design, but it was not to be. I’m also jealous of people who ‘love’ marketing and social media poo poo. Because that is not my thing.
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Mar 18, 2023 19:40
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I’m back with more crappy covers. Here are two more possible text placements. Any opinions on these would be much appreciated! Please ignore any weird artifacts and illegible colors—I’m just moving things around and not really adjusting them. I can move the character up (he’s not attached to the background). I can also lighten his head and face if I need to. Again, I have a weird thing about characters’ faces on covers. And the guy I’ve drawn here doesn’t look how I pictured him.  
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Mar 22, 2023 19:57
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Any Google fonts that don’t scream, “I made this at home”? There are just too many for me to try out.
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Mar 24, 2023 00:00
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Why are you stuck with Google fonts?
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Mar 24, 2023 03:25
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ravenkult posted:Why are you stuck with Google fonts? I just don’t want to pay for a license.
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Mar 24, 2023 03:57
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I like this one the most. These things are always subjective though.
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Mar 26, 2023 04:00
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So I don't know how many people here are in the 20books group on Facebook, but its Overlord, Michael Anderle, recently announced his plans to publish 10,000 books in a year, using AI. Sharing of that plan with the general public went over about as well as one would expect, and to be fair, it is a bonkers idea that has some pretty awful implications. Granted, it's not 10,000 original(?) works, but like 2,000-3,000 originals a day, plus translations, so, you know, just 5-10 new books released every day. No biggie. I'm off-put by this idea, if you couldn't tell. Anderle says he's going to sell these direct, so they won't overwhelm a bunch of subcats in the Kindle store, but what if he changes his mind? Also, how many copycat dipshits are going to do the same thing and suffocate discoverability through the Kindle store? I'm sure it'll be more than zero, because if there's one thing I've learned over 8 years in this industry, it's that every half-decent idea is copied to the point of absurdity. I did find it funny that a bunch of his co-authors are defending him in the comments. Apparently they haven't realized they're the first to get the axe under Anderle's new, bold scheme. Anyway, I hope this poo poo fizzles out and amounts to nothing, and Anderle looks like a complete dipshit in the process and loses his cult of personality, but I'm a dreamer, and I hope for a lot of things that probably won't happen... KrunkMcGrunk fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Apr 21, 2023 |
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Apr 21, 2023 16:37
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KrunkMcGrunk posted:So I don't know how many people here are in the 20books group on Facebook, but its Overlord, Michael Anderle, recently announced his plans to publish 10,000 books in a year, using AI. Sharing of that plan with the general public went over about as well as one would expect, and to be fair, it is a bonkers idea that has some pretty awful implications. Granted, it's not 10,000 original(?) works, but like 2,000-3,000 originals a day, plus translations, so, you know, just 5-10 new books released every day. No biggie. A team automated the creation of bad mobile slot machines for Android several years ago. The project was quite profitable. 
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Apr 21, 2023 16:47
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KrunkMcGrunk posted:I'm off-put by this idea, if you couldn't tell. Anderle says he's going to sell these direct, so they won't overwhelm a bunch of subcats in the Kindle store, but what if he changes his mind? Also, how many copycat dipshits are going to do the same thing and suffocate discoverability through the Kindle store? I'm sure it'll be more than zero, because if there's one thing I've learned over 8 years in this industry, it's that every half-decent idea is copied to the point of absurdity. I mean, in the discussion posts after ChatGPT opened up to the public, there were already a bunch of other people posting in the comments about this and posting prompting tutorials etc etc etc, not to mention the flood of YouTube tutorials on the subject from the folks who had previously confined themselves to low/no content books who had started moving towards hiring cheap ghostwriters off Fiverr, etc when Amazon and other distributors began cracking down on low/no content books are now muscling their way into the market since they don't have do anything other than type a bunch of prompts and copy/paste the ChatGPT output into another automated tool that rephrases the ChatGPT output and then throw that all into Kindle Create and hit publish on KDP with a ChatGPT generated Midjourney cover art prompt and ChatGPT generated blurb. Same phenomenon hitting YouTube and other content everywhere else; with sufficient volume of content, it doesn't matter how crap the thing is, due to sheer scale the singular KENPC page reads or one-off purchases from people suckered into buying it, there's money to be made. Any of it sustainable in the sense of building a readership/core audience and a back catalogue that continues to sell over time? Nah. But once they streamline the process to something that's near automated, it won't matter. Some of the authors I talk to have been running experiments and AI-generated ad copy/graphics are outperforming the ad copy/graphics they manually create. I don't think Anderle's attempt is gonna fizzle out. His MO is summarized with this quote: Michael Anderle posted:When I promoted the ability to write fast / publish fast, I was told it couldn’t be done. The books and stories were going to be crap… and yet my fans are happy. which is indicative of the very specific market segment he's going for. As long as his AI-generated books meet the market expectations, I doubt his readership will care how his books are produced. Fortunately for me, the readership he's going after isn't the same one that I am going after. Unfortunately for me, there's no separate storefronts or methods of marketing to those different readership groups, so my books will get buried in the slew of these kinds of books flooding onto the Kindle store. But hey, discoverability on the Kindle (and every other store) is already pretty broken. Just look at the epic fantasy category, which is filled up mostly with LitRPG, progression fantasy, and fantasy romance and reverse harem shifter paranormal urban fantasy at any given time. My book is already lost in that mess and unless/until I can drive enough traffic to get it to climb the Top 100 list post release, nobody's gonna find it anyway. So Anderle or imitators out-publishing me with another 10,000 or 10 million books that they categorize under epic fantasy aren't gonna change visibility for my stuff. They're just gonna be able to outspend me, especially when I hear that ROI on Facebook/AMS ads are getting worse and worse. Anyway, I figure we're all just gonna go full circle back to pre-internet days when you would have to like, go door to door and beg people individually to read your book. Except I guess we're pitching influencers and other tastemakers on BookTube, BookTok and Bookstagram. Which, face it, isn't really any different to what I'm doing now so...  I'm gonna go back to struggling through my sequel. I just need ONE completed series that's evergreen and more appealing than the competition. Right? Right??? I mean, M.L. Wang is doing just fine with one blockbuster standalone. The market is still big enough; we just gotta get better at targeting readers, building relationships with them and nurturing a community of readers....People still prefer to build relationships and participate in communities and interact with other humans over bots right?
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Apr 22, 2023 00:19
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I occasionally dredge through the bottom of the Kindle Unlimited barrel for my awful specialist subject (cryptocurrency) and frankly I can't imagine AI doing worse if you have KU, I suggest you browse sorted by publication date at least once. It's amazing the stuff people just like push to the platform. It will make you feel much better about your own works.
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Apr 22, 2023 00:57
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divabot posted:I occasionally dredge through the bottom of the Kindle Unlimited barrel for my awful specialist subject (cryptocurrency) and frankly I can't imagine AI doing worse I got a kindle recently with three months free KU so I thought 'let's see what I can read up on to improve my blog'. Great idea in theory until you find that a lot of the info is way out of date now by years in some cases and quality ranges from 'Okay' to 'The drizzling shits.' Still, they got paid for me taking a look so there is that..
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Apr 22, 2023 04:07
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I do think "AI" generated content will be a huge problem for these platforms. But on the other hand, I'm sure they already had to deal with things like people uploading Stephen King novels they ran through a synonym replacer. We'll have to see how much difference it actually makes. At least the text generators are bad at longform text in a way that's obvious to everyone (for now).
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Apr 22, 2023 07:08
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Boy, I've having the hardest time with Scrivener. All I want to do is compile to PDF where each chapter starts a new line. You'd think it was the simplest thing imaginable but for some reason when I compile it ignores page breaks so chapters run into each other and it looks horrible. I've watched a couple videos but they're catered to more intricate layouts. Any thoughts? Or, since I saw you can export/import section layouts, anyone have one handy?
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Apr 24, 2023 18:21
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thehandtruck posted:Boy, I've having the hardest time with Scrivener. All I want to do is compile to PDF where each chapter starts a new line. You'd think it was the simplest thing imaginable but for some reason when I compile it ignores page breaks so chapters run into each other and it looks horrible. I've watched a couple videos but they're catered to more intricate layouts. Any thoughts? Or, since I saw you can export/import section layouts, anyone have one handy? Do you want each new chapter to start on a new line or a new page? I've found that the project's structure can really impact how forgiving Scrivener will be when you compile. I struggled to get chapters to start on a new page when I put each chapter in its own text text component versus a folder with text for individual scenes. I did eventually get the default Numbered Section layout to work for me.
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Apr 24, 2023 18:40
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Beezus posted:Do you want each new chapter to start on a new line or a new page? New page, sorry. Yes I have it like that already I think.
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Apr 24, 2023 18:44
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thehandtruck posted:New page, sorry. Maaaybe double check? If you're using Scrivener's recommend novel project format and not doing any other fancy formatting in the project, the default layout assignments in the compile menu should just work. All folders should be assigned the Chapter Heading layout type, and your text within those folders should get the Scene layout assignment.
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Apr 24, 2023 18:55
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