Corrupted file at Lightning Source

Last night, I checked into the customer area on the Lightning Source website to check the status of my uploaded files for The Horsepower Whisperer and The Wormton Lamb. The proof was ready for The Wormton Lamb but today I had a message from my customer rep to tell me that the text file for The Horsepower Whisperer was corrupted on pages 5 and 6. These pages are the ones that feature the maps at the beginning of my books. They consist of layered drawings and if any part of the pdf was likely to become corrupt this was it. However, all my files at home look okay so I can only assume that the CD that went to Lightning Source in the states was damaged in some way.

I would've uploaded a new file for The Horsepower Whisperer and ordered a proof for The Wormton Lamb tonight but the Lightning Source website is being maintained at the moment.

I regenerated a text file pdf for The Horsepower Whisperer just to make sure there were no problems but notice something odd in the process. Each text block must be divisible by four. It's something to do with Lightning Source's printing processes. Checking my new pdf for The Horsepower Whisperer in Adobe Reader for my text block file came to 423 pages whereas before it was 424

To cut a long story short, I noticed that the Open Office Writer file featured a jump in page numbers close to the end of the block. It seemed to be related to a changing header format. Deleting any page breaks removed the jump in page numbers but also caused the header format to flow from the text right to the end of the document where I really wanted completely blank pages without any header or footer.

In the end, I got around this problem by adding a new page to the Open Office Writer file. When I exported this, the resulting pdf had the correct page count.

I have an open mind about what causes this. The Open Office Writer software that I am now using is a later version than the ones I used to generate my original textblock files. I believe this is causing formatting changes and I'm optimistic that if I was generating a textblock from scratch again, then none of these problems would arise. It does show, though, that generating the pdf for uploading onto Lightning Source's system is the trickiest interface of all between what I'm doing and what the printer needs.

Tomorrow, when the Lightning Source site is available again after maintenance, I'll have another go at uploading my text block. This didn't work before because I was uploading a revised text block as well as the new cover file. With just the text block to upload, there shouldn't be any problems with file size.

Needless to say, both for cover files that Becky produced have been accepted without any problems.

Creating pdfs with Open Office Writer

Tonight I've updated the files at Lightning Source UK with the new book cover design for The Horsepower Whisperer. As the original illustration featured three abreast seating and the new one doesn't, I've amended the text. It occurred to me that the Conformorians would never compromise on which side of the road people should drive on. It would be an either or proposition. Of course, in Anarchadia, they drive on the opposite side of the road on principle.

So M Cadvare's personal transportation device now has left hand drive and I've amended the text to suit.

I've continued to use Word when it comes to writing my books. When I use Open Office Writer, apostrophes don't come out curly. In Open Office Writer they are just little flat things that look cheap and nasty, especially when quotation marks are curly. So I open the Word document in Open Office Writer and the apostrophes appear as I want them. Amend them in Writer, however, and they straighten out again.

The advantage of Open Office Writer, though, is the ease with which pdfs can be created. There's none of that messing about with printers, which is what happens with Word. You just export to pdf and it happens in a few seconds. I had some issues with re-pagination this last time but I think this was due to me updating to Open Office 3.0, whereas previously I was using 2.4. The newer version is cleverer and re-jigged the margins. However, it was simple enough to widen these margins although I checked for widows and orphans again just to be sure that the new page layout didn't provoke any gaps at the foot of the page.

It'll take a few days for the files to be processed and then I'll be back to the stage of ordering new proof copies.