Meet Chuck Heintzelman!
Chuck is the founder of BundleRabbit, a do-it-yourself story bundling platform that helps authors create ebook story bundles, and collaborate on collections in both ebook and print. He’s created well over a thousand ebooks with Vellum as part of his work with BundleRabbit.
Chuck is also a very talented writer, and occasionally manages to sneak in some fiction writing as well as spending time with his family, working a full-time job as a computer programmer, and enhancing BundleRabbit.
The Author’s Guide to Vellum: Creating Beautiful Books with Vellum 2.0
Take the pain out of creating books!
Vellum helps you:
– Generate high quality ebooks
– Create professional looking print books
– Assemble boxsets in record time
– Create beautiful books
“The Author’s Guide to Vellum” steps you through the software, explaining each feature, and has tips & tricks that can save you hours of time.
Don’t have a Mac computer? No worries. “The Author’s Guide to Vellum” shows you how to run this amazing software without owning a Mac.
Whether you’re new to Vellum or an Advanced user, you’ll learn something with this book:
– Why do some pages not show in the Table of Contents?
– How can I get a page to appear before the Title Page?
– How can I force my books to have blank paragraphs?
– Which pages can start on the left side of print books?
“The Author’s Guide to Vellum” answers all these questions, and more!
The Interview
What is Vellum, and why is it so awesome?
Vellum is a software package that allows you to import a Word doc and format your doc into ebooks and print books. The great thing about Vellum is it makes creating ebooks super-easy … and the resulting ebooks look simply stunning.
Vellum is Mac-only, but your book explains how to run it without using a Mac. Is this hard?
Not hard at all. There’s a service called MacInCloud that allows you to “rent” a virtual mac. You share files between your local computer and your MacInCloud using DropBox or OneDrive and use the software in the cloud to create your ebooks.
How many books have you created with Vellum?
I don’t have a clue any more. I stopped counting a few months ago when I passed a thousand ebooks created. My guess is probably somewhere between 1500-1600.
Vellum allows you to create print books as well as ebooks and print books. Do you have to set things up differently for each format?
You don’t have to, but Vellum gives you the option to have certain parts of your book only appear in the ebook version or print version. Let’s say you want the copyright page at the back in the ebook, but at the front of the printed book. You simply create two copyright pages, one that only appears in the print version and one that appears in the ebook version.
There’s a “Tips and Tricks” section in your book. What’s one of the most useful tips you’ve learned?
Probably the non-breaking space trick. Using this hidden character will allow you to add vertical spacing to your text. For instance, let’s say on the print book you want a section to appear at the top of the next page. You can hit the enter key five times to insert five blank lines, but Vellum will treat those lines as one blank line in the formated book. Simply add a non-break space character, hit enter, another non-break space and enter, and now you have three blank lines instead of one.
You’ve created a lot of box sets with Vellum. How does Vellum help make this process easier?
It’s easy as drag-and-drop. You can take individual Word docs or Vellum files and drag them into the box set you’re creating and a new volume is automatically added. With everything prepared I can easily create a five book box set in Vellum in less than five minutes.
What’s your favorite Vellum feature?
The preview. By using the Vellum Preview you can see what your ebook look like on any device. Set it for Kindle Paperwhite, and you’ll see how it appears on that device. Change to an iPhone or iPad and you’ll get a preview of those devices as well. Or, you can see exactly what the printed page would look like in a print book.
About the Author
“His short stories are stunning” — Dean Wesley Smith, USA Today Bestselling Author
Indie Chuck Heintzelman writes quirky short stories, usually with some sort of fantastical element. He’s as surprised by this as anyone. Even after dozens of stories published, he still stays up too late at night, feverishly working on the next tale. Many of his stories can be found in various issues of Fiction River or Boundary Shock Quarterly.
Lately, Chuck’s time has been consumed managing and enhancing BundleRabbit, a DIY ebook bundling and collaborative publishing service.
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