Tor Looking for Novellas, and a call to the hive mind

[Charles Ott]

Some news: Tor Books is going to open a two-week window for science fiction and fantasy novellas (20K-40K words) starting on May 1. There will be another window during the summer, so don't panic if you're still writing. More details: Tor.com Publishing Opening to Novella Submissions on May 1
My own drama: I have edited my novel from 56K down to 39,999 words. Now I can submit to Tor, but O! My poor bleeding baby!
My question: in the course of doing that editing, I found a whole bunch of rinky-dink little errors that I want to correct. The problem is that my collection of "originals" includes my unformatted ODT file, a formatted ODT that can be exported to PDF for publishing on CreateSpace, a Kindle file, and text files of the first chapter, first three chapters and first fifty pages used for agent pitches. Does anybody know of a publishing tool that will let me keep only one original, and easily transform/publish/export to these other outputs? Thanks!

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I do my original in Scrivener--it exports to many formats, with a lot of flexibility in how it exports. But there are lots of programs that allow you to save in multiple formats. I think the key is designating one as your original, and always making changes there and re-exporting to the other formats as needed. It's a procedural issue, not a software issue.

 

[Rich.]

I can't help with the technical questions, Charles, but thanks for posting the link to Tor. It all looks very interesting!

 

[lrholland]

Is it a problem or a good thing that Tor publishes its ebooks without DRM (Digital Rights Management) software?

It depends on your priorities. For me, DRM is anathema. It penalizes legitimate readers--they cannot share your book, they cannot read on multiple devices, in some cases it can make it harder for them to buy your book--while it does little to prevent the technically adept from pirating your book anyway. Not that there's any evidence that piracy affects ebook sales in any significant manner.

If I was publishing a ludicrously expensive text book in an eformat, I might have a different opinion. Otherwise, no DRM is a good thing.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I always choose no DRM when I self-publish. Like @lrholland notes, it is irritating as a reader (and why would I irritate my readers if I can avoid it?). Your book will be pirated. Accept it. Move on. Those readers would never pay for your book anyway.

 

[Amber]

Jutoh might do what you want it to do.

 

[Charles Ott]

Jutoh might do what you want it to do.

Amber -- I'd never heard of Jutoh but it sure looks good, and I'll give it a shakedown. Thanks! -- Chuck

 

[Rachel Caldecott]

I do wish Tor would accept longer work! Thanks for the info anyway. Good luck with the technical issues.