Vellum Velocity—productivity hacks for writers

 

Vellum is the single best investment any author can make. It is a no-brainer. It makes the process of formatting so much fun.

~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci, author of The Last Verdict.

Alongside Scrivener, your next best friend will be Vellum. Their tagline is ‘Easily Create Beautiful ebooks,’ and that’s exactly what the Vellum formatting software does.

As author and blogger Joanna Penn notes, “It is the best writing tool and I couldn’t imagine writing without it now. I’ve also been using Scrivener to format my ebooks for the last five years and that has been fine. Until recently. In the last few weeks, a reader reported that a couple of my books had a formatting issue with the Kindle Look Inside on Amazon.com.

“I checked and found that the spacing and alignment was screwed up. But in my Scrivener file and my KDP Preview, and even in the ebook itself, the formatting was fine. It was just a problem in the Look Inside Previewer. Perhaps there was an update inside Amazon that interacted with the particular way my formatting worked. Who knows? But whatever it was, I needed to fix it. Because it was costing me sales.”

Until Joanna shared her experience I had blindly assumed all was in hand. Then, with horror, I realized the same thing was happening to me. At first, I was daunted by having to learn a whole new process. But I quickly found that the experience was worth it.

 

Listed below are just a few of the many benefits of Vellum:

• Create beautiful print and ebooks—easily. Simply important a Word Docx file and off you go

• Format like a pro—select from a wide range of book styles, include classic touches like custom drop caps, and ornamental flourishes

• Preview your design and see how it will look on various eBook readers

• Template pages, including Copyright, About the Author, Acknowledgments, and More Books by the Author, etc.

• Resolves issues with formatting Scrivener files

• Quickly assemble box sets of a series. Check out the Vellum boxset help page here >> https://help.vellum.pub/box-sets/

• Add store links to Facebook and Twitter

• Quickly generate eBooks for Kindle, iBooks, Kobo and more

• Absolute control‚ achieve instant results on your own schedule

• Improve your readers’ experience—improving sales

 

Prior to using Vellum I relied on an external person to format my books. Valuable productive time was wasted in many areas, including:

• Explaining what I wanted my books to look like and  how I wanted them formatted

• Excessive wait times due to workload and time-differences

• Communicating errors and waiting for fixes

• Inefficiencies and duplicated efforts having to important changes to my print version back into my ebook file and vice-versa

• Added expense of paying for formatting I could do myself. For example, to format a print book the cost was USD $115 and an eBook USD $115. That’s a whole lot of money, and a whole lot of books you have to see to recoup the expense. A special rate of USD $185 was still pricey when contrasted with the initial USD $249.99 to purchase Vellum Press which enables me to create unlimited eBooks and paperbacks.

 

Downsides?

While Vellum does have a few limitations pale in comparison to the speed and ease with which you can format your books and bring them to market.

At the time of writing some of the downsides include:

• Vellum is only available for Mac users.

• An initial investment in time to learn how to use Vellum to format as you wish. However, the support team is fantastic. Plus, blogs and Youtube videos support achieving mastery quickly. Don’t be deterred—you need to spend time to make time—and prosper productively.

• Limited ability to add color to headings

 

My New Writing and Formatting Process

Now, instead of using Scrivener to do two jobs, I write in Scrivener, export to a Word file to send to my editor. When the edits are back I load these into Scrivener, then export a Word Docx file and open this in Vellum.

I use the formatting templates, check everything looks gorgeous, including adding any ornamental flourishes to make the book look more professional.

After checking the formatting on the various devices with Vellum, I export to the various formats, including EPUB, Kindle, Mobi and PDF for print and upload to Amazon and other stores. Simple!

 

Mining for Gold

Don’t be deterred by the initial investment in time and mental energy learning Vellum will require. Set aside some time to give these life-changing software a go and watch your productivity soar.

Purchase a one off-license, or if you plan on writing and publishing a number of books consider purchasing Vellum Press

For more information navigate to here>>https://vellum.pub/

 

 

 

 

This is an edited extract from The Prosperous Author: How to Make a Living With Your Writing (Book Two: Productivity Hacks: Do Less & Make More) by Cassandra Gaisford. ORDER THE EBOOK TODAY, SAVE and SEND YOUR ORDER CONFIRMATION AND RECEIVE YOUR FREE BONUS GIFTS—Click the Amazon link here getBook.at/AuthorProductivityHacks

Do less and earn more today!

Although this book was written for writers, the principles and strategies can be embraced by business entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, actors, dancers, painters, photographers, filmmakers, and thousands of others around the world who want to enhance their productivity, do less and make more.

 

 

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