Writing a book ..... computer advice please ....?

I am thinking of writing a book and plan to complete it in one year or less. Obviously, I will be stopping and starting and need advice on how to save my pages ... i.e. any special software ( other than a normal word processor )? Should I save files as daily work? What recommended storage ... i.e. external hard disc or the like? Apologies for vagueness of the question .... exisitng authors welcome please ...Writing a book ..... computer advice please ....?
A book isn't going to take up wads of hard drive space so I doubt you will need an external drive. Save often, back up your document every day, maintain a second copy.


For backup purposes I would recommend a Zip drive, it's better than floppy disks and more convenient than burning CDR or CDRW's, and cheaper than an external hard drive. Each disk can hold 250MB so that should be more than enough to hold your book document, you may only need one disk.





Also, I would recommend a Mac as this is far less likely to crash or be affected by virus or spyware, giving you peace of mind.Writing a book ..... computer advice please ....?
I will recommend word. The reason being that you might want to give your work to someone to let them have a read. Word is software that is common and familiar to most people and with the storage, you might not use two gigabyte of your hard disk space so don't worry about that.
There is excellent software out there called ';newnovelist';


You can buy it from most computer/book stores.


Good luck with your novel! x
.. or use knoppix, aint crashed on me, ever.





as fo a fileformat, try .pdf





I dint like em when they 1'st appeared, but i'm quite fond o em now. they almost gud.





Considering adobe made the .pdf format what it r, you'd tinx they'd 'ave a bettah .pdf editor...
Right click your desktop, click NEW, Click Folder , Give it a name.i.e. (MY BOOK)


Each time you work on a page save it as PAGE 1 page 2 page 3. when you finish a chapter , right click in the original folder and create a CHAPTER FOLDER


So now you have


folder on desk top (MY BOOK)


folders in MY BOOK (chapter one) (chapter two)


and all the pages for each chapter are saved in the folder


you choose . by dragging them in or save to command when


you are done working on them .


To make sure your work is safe i would do a back up of the folder once a week on a floppy or cd or even just a flash drive.


written text really doesnot take a lot of space so you could just drag a copy to a 1 or 2 gig usb flash drive and stick it away in case your PC crashes.











Best of luck hope it goes number one in the bookstores for you


http://www.pvazpc.com
alritey... im no professional author but..





you should save constantly. saving as daily work is a good idea because then you can see what sort of brain wave you were workin off of... but make sure you still identify seperations in chapters / segments of the book.


but by day is great =D





as for storage...many choices!


1.get winzip. set up a folder and save your files there. zip the files up (compress them). put em on a USB key. they make some 2GB ones... that should be fine for a good long while.





or...





2. get an external hard drive. save all your files to it.





or...





3. email the files to yourself. create a new folder in your email and just keep ALL those emails. (kinda a PITA though)





and microsoft word is probably great =)





good luck!
i quit using windows when i was writing lost my work too many times! back up always and to cd/external drive





Copywrite made by Bartas Technologies is a great app. I don't think it's available for windows, but there is probably something similar out there. This program sorts things by chapters, characters, presmises, settings, etc and allows for notes in a side bar that you can hyperlink to other parts of your work.
k - ms word or openoffice writer


all submitted files need to be in pdf format


margins depend on binding method - for wire binding at least 0.8'; - leave everywhere 1'; to be sure


format (page size) depends on publisher so if you don't have publisher here is the first problem


cover and back page depend on publisher instructions





check following web sites :





http://www.lulu.com - click help and you'll see faq and publishing


guidelines


http://www.trafford.com
Get a hotmail account, it's free and then everday when ur finished for the day email urself the Word file, keep that account just for the book. This would also be extremely useful down the line as you would have many 'work in progress' versions if you decided you liked a bit you'd cut out or if in future there was ever a copyright issue as that's a good way of proving you actually wrote it as each email would have a date on it. You can quite save abit, so its great for just sending word files, external hard drives are ok but prone to breaking and then you're stuffed. At least with hotmail it isnt saved on a device so it can't be destroyed by an accident, device malfunction, fire, flood etc....and also you can access it from wherever you are in the world!