A couple of things occur to me as I edit my first draft.  First, the advice to avoid editing as you go seems all the more pertinent.  I’m surprised how often I come to a section that I have no recollection of writing.  I also realize why editing takes so long – it’s because you have to make so many passes through the manuscript.  You can’t possibly edit everything in a single pass, especially if you’re like me, you’ll wind up down too many rabbit holes.  So one pass for style blocks.  One pass for pagination. At least one pass for content – and that doesn’t count the changes you make based on the suggestions of your beta-readers.  It’s a very time-consuming process.

I’m also learning what order to do everything in.  Because if you’re self-publishing, and you intend to publish both a printed book and an e-book, you’ll want to keep in mind that formatting for one is potentially very different from the other.  So that means you will need to keep the two in separate files.  But that, of course, means you need to be completely done editing one before you start making the format changes to the other. Otherwise you end up having to make every edit twice.  This is a not a good plan.

There is some really good guidance in this eBook Creator Guide from Lulu.com. It points out the most important differences between formatting for eBooks and printed books.  I would recommend it.

Editing for EPUB
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