Formatting for Print

I'm formatting for print today.  Fun fun fun.  

In case you weren't aware, I almost never use smaller than 11pt font in my print books.  I think I did 10pt once to try and keep the price reasonable, but that's it.  If I don't want to go blind trying to read tiny print, I'm sure as hell not going to subject you to that either.

It occurs to me that if I am going to venture into young adult, I probably shouldn't swear so much on my blog.  :shrug:  There are no swear words in SONG, except for the curses they use in that world.  Blast, blaze, etc.  Nothing you wouldn't want your kiddies reading in there.  Here?  Umm...  Parental Guidance is suggested for this blog - language, sometimes violence and adult themes.  No sex.

Chances are that the kids reading this particular book are old enough to have seen and heard many nasty words by this point in their lives.  Probably said a few, too.  Still, I didn't want that for this book, so it's not there.  I might've used damn... :shrug:

Anyway, I should be done with the print formatting and uploading today.  Then I have to wait for my proof copy to arrive and verify it's all good.  Then it'll be available for sale.  Right now, it's looking like it's going to be 424 pages.  Probably like $14-$17 a copy US and near to that elsewhere.  I try to keep them as cheap as I can and still make it worth my while to make print copies available.

Anyway... back at it.

What are you up to today?  How do you feel about print copy books?  Do you think I should try out Amazon's new 'hardcover' option?

The D2D Adventure Begins. Again.

 Yesterday began the not-hard but totally tedious and slightly irritating process of listing my books with Draft2Digital.  I started out with what I figured would be easiest - a single title novel rather than a series.  

Most of the process is pretty simple.  But I knew that from the last time I went with D2D.  Unfortunately, they changed something.  Now, they make you pick one of their pre-set formats.  Which is probably awesome for people who haven't already formatted their books and don't have an idea of how to do it.  For me?  Well, let's just say things didn't go exactly as they'd gone before.  

Oh, the manuscript itself seems fine.  It's the front and back matter that gave me a headache today.  Their theme thingies were giving me weird spacing.  Like the pre-formatted list on my Other Books page suddenly had a BIG LETTER at the beginning of the list and was hard left-aligned while the other books were normal and tabbed over.  You know, like you want for the story part.  And I couldn't find a way to force it to recognize those first and last chunks as NOT BOOK.

Although, now that I think about it, maybe a section break would work.  I'll try that with the next book.

Anyway, I went with the simplest theme I could, unchecked some thingies, and ended up with everything looking pretty much like I want it to look.  And since this is Blink of an I, I don't think anyone's really going to get themselves in a tizzy over the slight differences.  :shrug:  I could be wrong.  Time will tell.

Anyway, it's a learning process I'm happy to get through.  It's just tedious.  And if tedious bothered me, I wouldn't have made it this far in the self-publishing thing. 

Since it's a learning process, I made a spreadsheet.  Shocking, I know.  But this way, I'll be able to keep track of where I'm at in the process with the 15 other books, as they drop.  I have a page with all my books and where they're at in the process, then another page with which outlets they'relisted and when go live.  And of course, a page showing what they're listed at and how much I'll make from each.  And what sold where.  And probably a tab each with links to the outlets themselves.  It's all very tabiful.  Do you hate me yet?  You know me and spreadsheets.  (Or if you're new here, you don't, but you'll learn.)

Someone mentioned that I might be able to get Amazon to let my books free sooner than the end of their contracts, but I'm happy to let them ride along and fall out naturally.  It'll give me time to work with the books as they come out without having all 16 dropped on my head at once.  And I can still utilize the free days and countdown deals until that happens.  Can't hurt, eh?

Okay, so Blink is out to a variety of outlets.  Six of them are already showing published.  Two of them are foreign, so unless you read in German (the link's not ready yet) or French, they're not for you.  Two of them are for borrowing from libraries, so I can't post the links because I don't have the apps for that.  But it's also now at B&N and Kobo, which I can actually see.  I'm waiting on Apple, two services I've never heard of, and Hoopla (another library service).  Hoopla is supposed to take a while, so don't jump right over there.

Today, barring acts of payjob and any minor apocalypses, I'll begin work on getting the A Model Curse series loaded and ready for bear.  SU doesn't drop out of Amazon until Wednesday, so I've got some time to work on the formatting for those.  I'd like them to publish together, if at all possible.  Fingers crossed.

And I'll be adding Universal Links to the Pages here once I get those finalized.  You know, because D2D provides universal links and junk.  Here's the one for Blink, btw, All sorts of interesting things D2D didn't have back in 2016.  Weeee.

Unfortunately, dealing with all this now is distracting me from editing.  Derp.  I'll pull me head out soon.  Promise. What I can't promise is when this next book will be ready for people to read.  :shrug:  If I could split myself into three people, that would help.  Busy busy busy.  Which reminds me I need to do something for the payjob before I forget.

On that note, I'll let you go.  Stay tuned.

The Fun of Creating Paperbacks

Okay, it's after ten and I'm up working on formatting UNEQUAL for paperback.  I actually went to bed at eight.  Laid there for a half an hour and gave up.  So now, I'm sitting here working on creating a paperback* because, hey, if I'm not sleeping I might as well be productive.  Right?

It took me about 45 minutes to format the manuscript for print.  I'm not sure if I ever gave you my checklist for formatting print books, so here it is (all of this is done in MS Word):

1)  Type THE END

2)  Find and replace all double spacing between sentences with single spacing

3)  Remove all Bookmarks.

4)  Make sure everything is the font you’ve chosen for the book.

5)  Format all chapter headings as Headings.  Including THE END.

6)  Apply print font for Headings to all.

7)  Format all scene breaks for continuity within book and within series

8)  Create title page

9)  Create Copyright and Acknowledgements page

10)  Add in About the Author Page at the end

11)  Add in back matter.

12)  Create Section Breaks after Acknowledgements and after THE END

13)  Add Pages Numbers to manuscript section centered bottom

14)  Verify ‘Link to Previous’ is unchecked

15)  Format Page Numbers to chosen look

16)  Set to ‘Different First Page’ in manuscript section

17)  Delete page number from first page of manuscript section, if necessary

18)  Verify no page numbers in front matter section or back matter section

19)  Set page size to 5.5” x 8.5”

20)  Set margins to Top .88”, Bottom .88”, Inside .75”, Outside .63”

21)  Make sure margins are ‘mirrored’

22)  Verify all chapters start on right hand page.

23)  Print a few pages to verify it will look how you want it to look.

24)  Upload to Amazon

Generally, most of the first 11 are taken care of during formatting for ebooks - except removing the bookmarks I need to have for e-publication.

So, I got all the steps through 23 done in, like I said, about 45 minutes.  It took another 45 minutes to complete the last step.  Part of that was because I had to tweak the cover - if I centered the title, my name went off the page.  If I centered my name, the title went over the spine.  Stupid thing.  I went back into my cover creation program and shuffled the placement around until I could have both of them where I wanted them without looking all centered and junk.  

Another part that hung me up was after I'd set everything up and was previewing the blasted thing, I noted that a pretty little line of ~~~~ after THE END had jumped over to the left side instead of being centered.  Stupid thing.  I deleted the pretty line.  It wasn't necessary, just pretty.  Re-uploaded the manuscript, re-previewed it, and huzzah, at about 10pm, managed to send a proof through to be set up for ordering.

I did almost all of this already once - when I set up Blink of an I this... err... yesterday morning.  I wasn't actually going to do UEQ until today.  But hey, insomnia.  If I can't sleep, I might as well tackle stuff from my to-do list, eh?

Like I said, my cover artist is working on two other books right now.  When those files get here, I'll be back at step 24 for each of those.  Woohoo.

In case you're new to this game, book proofs cost me about $10 each - the book plus shipping - and I can't sell them to recoup that cost.  (They're stamped across the cover with NOT FOR RESALE.)  Good thing I squirreled away some acorns, eh?  The book cost to readers usually depends on the size of the book.  I do try to keep them as low as I can.  Blink will be $12.99 and Unequal will be $11.99.  (Decreasing the font to 10pt got the price more reasonable.  Blink would've been a behemoth.)  Get your order over $25 and shipping is free (usually... can't always depend on Amazon to not screw things up.)

Anyway, I hope this makes sense in the morning when you see it.  I think I'm finally tired enough to give sleep another try.

Any questions?  Comments?

* I started this post while I was waiting for files to upload or something, and finished it after I finished the task at hand.

Oh, For the Love of Pete.

Once again, I was scrolling down my FB newsfeed, looking for interesting books to download.  And I found several to investigate further.  I one-clicked a cute holiday romance.  Then I went over to what appeared to be an interesting suspense.  Except it was only available in paperback.  That's right, folks, no ebook version.

Yep, jaw dropper right there.  But it wasn't over.  Saw a non-fiction, true-crime I wanted.  Clicked over to Amazon... No ebook version for that one either.  Derp.

WTF?

Ebook is the easiest and cheapest version to create - even if you pay someone else to do your formatting.  Now, I can certainly understand if you have a book that's full of graphics that might not translate well to an ereader.  But, as far as I could tell, neither of those books fit the description. 

Maybe the author is anti-ebook.  Maybe they don't own an ereader.  But either of those instances still seem to me to be 'cutting off your nose to spite your face'. 

Maybe it was the publisher.  I don't remember where the fiction was published, but the NF was out of University of Michigan.  Umm.  If your publisher won't do ebooks, maybe you should find another publisher or do it your own damn self, because you're cutting out a huge... HUGE... section of the marketplace.

My point?  Both of those books lost a sale and a possible review.  Probably not a huge amount of money, but hey, every little bit helps.  And my reviews are good reviews - unless I don't review because I didn't like the book. 

For the love of Pete, don't do this.  Get your books out there in electronic versions. 

Paperbacks and Formatting

Hey All. 

Since I'm hip deep in stuffs, and part of that is formatting books to become paperback copies, I thought I'd talk about that again. 

Sleeping Ugly is formatted and uploaded and the proof copy is on its way.  It's supposed to be here Thursday.  If all goes well, I'll approve the proof and it'll be available for purchase shortly after.

Yes, I used Createspace again.  Yes, there is a strong rumor that Createspace will be going away as Amazon (who bought Createspace a while back) tries to move everyone over to their print publishing.  I opted to go Createspace again because I am not interested in reinventing my wheels right now. 

I also spent the better part of yesterday formatting Early Grave for print and creating a print cover.  It's uploaded and I should be hearing later today if they accept the files.  Since I made my own cover here, I expect they'll grouse about something.  But I don't expect it to be too awfully bad and I should be able to order a proof shortly.

Next up is finally getting a paperback started for Blink of an I.  Then all my books will be available as paperbacks and all will be right with the world again. 

Once those three are approved and up for sale, I'll started the process of putting all the titles through Amazon print publishing.  The process is supposedly easier if you already have the books up on Createspace.  :shrug:  We'll see. 

I'm still leery of printing through Amazon because they're new and I'm unsure of the quality of their print books.  Then again, Createspace's quality ain't always the best either.  One of my books, they sent the wrong cover on the proof.  As in, the cover for someone else's book was on my proof.  A Christian Romance, if I remember correctly, wrapped around my proof of Fertile Ground.  I'm sure the cover was as shocked as my manuscript.  In another case, the manuscript pages were all printed slightly off.  They said the 'off' was within acceptable parameters.  Acceptable to them, maybe.  :shrug:  I guess, right now, it's 'better the devil you know' for me.

As for formatting, I know it sounds scary. But once you have a system for doing it, it's not really all that bad.  More tedious than difficult.  Which is why I dragged my heels on EG and Blink.  I hate tedium.

Here's my checklist for formatting a print copy:

1)  Type THE END

2)  Find and replace all double spacing between sentences with single spacing

3)  Remove all Bookmarks.

4)  Make sure everything is the font you’ve chosen for the book.

5)  Format all chapter headings as Headings.  Including THE END.

6)  Apply print font for Headings to all.

7)  Format all scene breaks for continuity within book and within series

8)  Create title page

9)  Create Copyright and Acknowledgements page

10)  Add in About the Author Page at the end

11)  Add in back matter.

12)  Create Section Breaks after Acknowledgements and after THE END

13)  Add Pages Numbers to manuscript section centered bottom

14) Verify ‘Link to Previous’ is unchecked

15)  Format Page Numbers to chosen look

16)  Set to ‘Different First Page’ in manuscript section

17)  Delete page number from first page of manuscript section

18)  Verify no page numbers in front matter section or back matter section

19)  Set page size to 5.5” x 8.5”

20)  Set margins to Top .88”, Bottom .88”, Inside .75”, Outside .63”

21)  Make sure margins are ‘mirrored’

22)  Verify all chapters start on right hand page.

23)  Print a few pages to verify it will look how you want it to look.

24)  Upload to Createspace

Feel free to borrow the above, but remember, your process may vary with regard to page size and margins.  There are also reasonably priced formatters out there, if you're not interested in the DIY.  The price I usually see quoted is $50.  I'd rather save the $50 and do it myself, but that's me.  And I have the time to do it, when I actually set my butt down.  Like I said, it takes about a day for me.  (Okay, not a whole day.  Maybe a couple hours over the course of a day.  Again, tedious but not hard.)

I print out the above for each book and then check the items off as I get them completed, so I don't miss a step.  (Like with UWC, which had no page numbers.  Derp.)  And I do all of this in MS Word.  The first 11 items should already have been done during the 'format for ebook' phase, but I like to have them there anyway, just in case.

Woo, that's a long post up there.  Thanks for reading all the way down, or for scrolling all the way down to here, if that's the case.  Any questions?  Comments? 

Oh, and it's not in the checklist, but if you're formatting for print, get rid of your Table of Contents and any hyperlinks.  They're not necessary and totally not clickable in a print book.  ;o)

Typos, Flaws, and Formatting Errors

Typos, flaws, formatting errors...  No matter how hard we try to scrub them all out, they still seem to pop up in any manuscript. 

As a writer, they bug the hell out of me.  I'm sure they bug the hell out of my editor, too.  The two of us try our damnedest to  get those buggers right the hell out of my books before they go to publication.

If you follow me on Facebook, you will occasionally see me point out where people have egregiously left one in a short FB post somewhere - usually the news.  The shorter the written item, the more irritated I get about it.  And the fact that someone somewhere was actually paid good money to write short paragraph or two with errors sends me 'round the bend.

Now, you may have seen a boo-boo or two in my blog posts or my FB posts.  :shrug:  I do the best I can but those things are usually written on the fly.  And no one is paying me to write them.  (Sure, in the bigger scheme of things, everything I write goes toward selling books so in a way, they are 'paid for', but let's not split that hare*.)  Hell, there are probably errors in this post.  I'm writing it on the fly at just before 6am, so it is what it is.

As a reader, I forgive a lot of typos, flaws, and formatting errors.  Provided the story is good.  I read one recently where the author kept using YOUR in place of YOU'RE.  But the story was enthralling, so I got over it.  Read another where the formatting was off and there was a space between every paragraph - like you see here.  They either forget to turn off the 'Add Space Between Paragraph' function in Word or they just didn't care.  I got over that, too. 

Hell, I've run across books that were totally screwed up on my Kindle Fire, but they were interesting enough for me to try them again on my old Kindle and they read just fine.  It's just how far I'm willing to go as a reader. 

As a writer, though... GAH! 

I read another book recently where there were multitudes of errors.  I stuck with it and the book was actually pretty good otherwise, so it wasn't a big deal to me.  But the reviews.  OMG, people were ripping the crap out of the poor author.  Telling them they needed an editor (when an editor name was actually listed on the product detail page).  I felt so bad for them.  Not that the reviews were wrong, per se, but I could never do that to another author. 

Finding a good editor...  But that's a post for another time. 

Ahem, where was I?  Yes, yes...  wrapping up...

So, how are you about typos, flaws, and formatting errors?  Fine with them as long as the story's good or do they drive you right up the freakin' wall?  Or both?


* Yes, I meant to write HARE instead of HAIR.  Everyone splits hairs, but few split hares.  It's just gross.  But it got your attention, didn't it?  =o)  Intentional typos... also a post for another time.

Formatting... Sick Bastard Cousin to Editing

Anyway, Sunday I said I'd talk about formatting in my Monday post, but then I forgot.  No post on Monday at all.  I blame pre-publication insanity.

So here's the formatting post.

Yeah, formatting isn't really anything like editing.  Except it can make one crazypants just as much as, if not more so than, editing.  I had hoped to remove some of the insanity-making by creating a checklist.

It looks like this:

Formatting checklist

Ebook:

1)  Type THE END

2)  Find and replace all double spacing between sentences with single spacing

3)  Remove all Bookmarks.

4)  Create Bookmarks: START, TOC, END

5)  Make sure everything is 12 pt font, Cambria

6)  Format all chapter headings as Headings.  Including THE END.

7)  Format all scene breaks for continuity within book and within series

8)  Create title page

9)  Create Copyright and Acknowledgements page

10)  Add in About the Author Page at the end

11)  Add in back matter.

12)  Create Table of Contents.

13)  Scan entire manuscript for continuity.

14)  Email book to Kindle and scan through again for continuity and formatting errors.

15)  Publish to Amazon

Print:

1)  Type THE END

2)  Find and replace all double spacing between sentences with single spacing

3)  Remove all Bookmarks.

4)  Make sure everything is the font you’ve chosen for the book.

5)  Format all chapter headings as Headings.  Including THE END.

6)  Apply print font for Headings to all.

7)  Format all scene breaks for continuity within book and within series

8)  Create title page

9)  Create Copyright and Acknowledgements page

10)  Add in About the Author Page at the end

11)  Add in back matter.

12)  Create Section Breaks after Acknowledgements and after THE END

13)  Add Pages Numbers to manuscript section centered bottom

14) Verify ‘Link to Previous’ is unchecked

15)  Format Page Numbers to chosen look

16)  Set to ‘Different First Page’ in manuscript section

17)  Delete page number from first page of manuscript section

18)  Verify no page numbers in front matter section or back matter section

19)  Set page size to 5.5” x 8.5”

20)  Set margins to Top .88”, Bottom .88”, Inside .75”, Outside .63”

21)  Make sure margins are ‘mirrored’

22)  Verify all chapters start on right hand page.

23)  Print a few pages to verify it will look how you want it to look.

24)  Upload to Createspace

Then I started to format Natural Causes on Wednesday.  Umm, yeah... there are things I forgot and the list wasn't helping and so I formatted the first page of NC and made notes all over it so I would know exactly what needed doing to each subsequent chapter beginning...

That seemed to work.  I had a real groove going on.  Got all of Natural Causes' chapter headings formatted.  Then I made the Table of Contents.  And see up there where I scribbled something out next to the chapter title?  I had made all the chapter titles Headings2.  Which put them all in the TOC.  Couldn't figure out a way to get them out of the TOC, so I went back and made all the chapter titles 'Normal' and formatted each of them again to meet the guidelines I had set.

Then I started to work on the formatting for Accidental Death because I want that book to match this book's formatting.  I decided to start by updating the back matter, because I had all that laid out already from doing NC.  But I couldn't get WORD to let me move a freakin' line, which was making it all farqued up. Which was making me a babbling idiot, so I deleted all the back matter and copied it from one of my other books where it wasn't messed up.  Tada.

As of typing this post, I still have some things to do, but I'm on track.  This book will be in your hands soon.

I'd still rather do it myself than pay someone else, but if anyone tells you this stuff is easy, slap them in the back of the head for me. (Okay, so maybe it isn't that hard, but it is tedious as all get-out.)

Continuity

As I spent part of this weekend formatting Fertile Ground for publication, I thought I'd spend some time this morning talking about continuity... a word I'm having a tough time typing this morning, so bear with me.

CONTINUITY

Fertile Ground is the second book in the SCIU series.  While I was formatting it, I knew I wanted it to have a similar look to the Dying Embers manuscript.  After all, I went through a lot of effort to have continuity in the covers, so I should also spend some time making certain the look of the insides flows.  (I did this for the Once Upon a Djinn series, too, I just didn't think to talk about it until now.)

Continuity... The titles and author name should have the same font, the same font size, and should be the same with regard to italics and bold.  As should the chapter headings.  And copyright verbiage (with the exception of the year - if your series titles were published in different years).  If you have acknowledgements, those can differ in wording, but not look. 

I also put a little 'Special Note' at the bottom of the same page about 'this is the second book in the series and if you want to know more about the other book, go here' with a link to the newly created SCIU page on my blog. 

If you have a certain thing you use for scene breaks in one book of a series, you should use the same thing for the scene breaks in every other book in a series.  I used ~~~~~ in Dying Embers, so I used that in Fertile Ground, too.

At the end of the book, I put the same About Author page in both books and then added a page about the SCIU series and a blurb from the other book. 

What does any of this matter?  Well, I'm not exactly certain.  I hope that when someone reads one book, they'll hop over to read the other and a certain continuity between the two will be a welcome thing for the reader.  I think it also might add a professionalism to the series.  :shrug:

You tell me.  As a reader, do you care?  As a writer, do you bother?  Or am I just wasting my time when I should be getting this into readers' hands?

Simple Book Formatting - Part Two

Okay, so yesterday I talked about book formatting.  And I said it was 'simple'.  Afterwards, it occurred to me that what I find simple might not be simple for everyone.  If you're now flipping me the bird because none of it was as simple as I alluded to, I apologize.

Now, for today.  The snazzier and slightly less simple stuff.

So, you've got your manuscript formatting done up to the point where we left off yesterday.  Now, you've got a readable manuscript that isn't quite as attractive as you'd like.

First up, the title page.  Go to the top of your manuscript - where you probably already have something like...

In Deep Wish

Chapter One

 But you want it to look like...

In Deep Wish

by B.E. Sanderson

Most of that stuff just a matter of font style and font size for me.  I tried setting that as a TITLE in the styles section, but it kept putting weird crap in, so I cut out the middle man.  Simple.  So you do that, and then you put a Page Break after your name. 

On the new next page, you put your copyright info, your acknowledgements, and any other info you want your reader to see RIGHT NOW.  Not too much stuff up here.  Readers don't want to wade through pages of stuff to get to the meat of the story.  IDW has the copyright verbiage, the bit about it being a work of fiction and any resemblance yada yada yada, info about the editor and artist, the acknowledgements, and a new short note about the series - in case people want to read Wish in One Hand first, there's a link to my blog page. 

(NOTE: If you plan on wide distribution, do NOT put links to sales sites anywhere in your book. It's rude to the other sites. I put links either to my blog or to the Goodreads pages for the book.)

Anyway, the above shouldn't be more than about a page worth of information.  Like I said, we don't want readers to have to wait too long to get to the story they paid for.  After all the info, insert a Page Break.  THEN insert a 'Section Break'.  "WTF are those?"  They help Word and other programs to understand that you have a top section with your title and another section with your book - and formatting might be different for each of those.  (This is especially helpful for Print formatting - otherwise your page numbers will be all farqued up.) 

(NOTE: I forgot to tell you yesterday - Ditch all Page Numbering.  Ereaders don't like them and they could make your book squonky.)

To insert a Section Break, go to the Page Layout tab. In the Page Setup section, you'll see a place for Breaks.  Click that. It'll bring up a drop-down list with different options for Page Breaks and... Voila! Section Breaks.  Pick the 'Next Page' option.  You might have to play with it a little if it inserts a blank page where you don't want one. There's a way to do it more easily than hit or miss that I'm too ignorant to explain this morning.  Something about the doohickey that shows paragraph marks and hard enters and page breaks.  If you know where that is, you're golden. 

Now, you should have a title page and copyright page that looks pretty professional.  Time to drop down to the bottom.  After THE END, do the Page Break and Section Break thing again.  On the first blank page, put your About the Author verbiage.  I put a paragraph or two about me (bleh) and links to my blogs, FB page, Twitter account, and my email for contact.  Then I put a line in for 'if you liked this, please review it at your favorite retailer or Goodreads.' 

When you're finished with that, Page Break again, and put your 'Other Books By' stuff or series stuff or special reader note stuff. 

THEN the last thing in your book should be the Table of Contents.  Readers don't need to access that themselves - their ereaders do it for them and it's a standard Jump To point on a Kindle if you've set up your bookmarks properly like we discussed yesterday.

Now, find all your scene breaks.  Some people use *** or ### or whatever.  Here's where you can get a little creative.  Not really creative, mind you.  Because this is often the place where your snazzy formatting meets with Amazon's not-so-snazzy formatter and they clash.  Amazon always wins.  I keep it simple to avoid all that.  Play with Symbols on your computer.  ~^~^~^~ or !!!!! or whatever.  As long as it's obvious to the reader that the scene is breaking, it's kosher. 

I've heard you can put graphics in these places, but that adds to the file size and can make the formatting freak out, and who needs that headache? 



In yesterday's comments, Silver brought up something we all should note - spacing.  If you're like me and double space between sentences, cut that shit out.  LOL.  Seriously, though, you can keep doing it IF you remember to change all the double spaces to single spaces during the formatting stage.  It's outmoded and antiquated and readers don't like it anymore.  I've just been doing it so long, I can't stop.  (And I still like how it looks.  So there.)  Go into Find/Replace/Go To. (ALT - E - F - click the Replace tab.) In the Find What box, put a double space.  In the Replace With box, put a single space. Click Replace All.  Easier than retraining yourself to single space.  Know what I mean?  Even if you're not a habitual double-spacer like me, you should probably do this step because you never know when a pesky double space will sneak in.  Insidious little buggers. 

Okay, that should be it.  Anything I've forgotten?  Any questions or comments?  Fire away.