Inside my new Indie Author Toolkit group, and elsewhere on Facebook, we get to deal with a lot of common issues, both inside Vellum and with headaches after export.
Here is a roundup of several common questions and potential fixes. Any “chapter” mentions for further reading are referring to my book, Format Your Book with Vellum, which can be found in print and ebook.
FAQs and things to check
When you’re having trouble, start with some super-basic things when troubleshooting in Vellum. (They still trip me up sometimes.) So, check these three things:
- Is Vellum up to date? From the Menu Bar, click Vellum > Check for Updates
- Is the operating system up to date?* See System Preferences > Software Update and see if there is an update listed for the macOS you are already using: Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, or Ventura.
- Try a shut down and restart. Choose Vellum > Quit Vellum, then restart your computer, or hold down the power button for a hard shutdown of everything.
*This is not the same as upgrading to a newer macOS, but Apple sometimes hides the older update.
In the upload process to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, KDP’s Previewer will sometimes flag an “insufficient gutter” error, showing a small triangle on the page(s) being flagged.
This can be fixed when you’re troubleshooting for Vellum but it’s not a Vellum error—this is a KDP issue with an advanced typesetting technique. The error occurs in books created in other programs as well.
Why it happens
This error occurs when a book has jumped above 300, 500, or 700 pages, as these are the thresholds in KDP for making the spine-edge margins (or “gutter”) larger. Here are the minimums:
- 301 to 500 pages: 0.625 in (12.7 mm)
- 501 to 700 pages: 0.75 in (15.9 mm)
- 701 to 828 pages: 0.875 in (22.3 mm)
If you know your margin settings are correct, then it’s almost always an issue with an opening quotation mark with a drop cap or the edge of an italic letter tipping toward the spine. (Look for that warning triangle.)
How to fix it
The fix is super easy: set the inner margin one click above KDP’s minimum.
Go into File > Print Settings, and for Inside Margin, click the small “up” arrow to the right until it’s the next setting higher than KDP requires. This will take care of the small characters that have made their way into the gutter margin and turn off the KDP error.
If your special formatting isn’t showing, check what type of element you’re looking at. Is it a Chapter?
A front- or back-matter element—like Introduction or Acknowledgments—and an Uncategorized element doesn’t use drop caps, specialized block quote formatting, etc.
This formatting is limited only to Chapter elements.
If you have missing formatting when you’ve opened the “Kindle” file Vellum generates … how did you open it, and where are you previewing it?
Files that get sent directly to a Kindle reader or app rather than being purchased from Amazon are called “sideloaded” or “third-party” files. Amazon applies their own “Advanced Typesetting” formatting to a file at the point of purchase, so what you see in the Vellum preview is what the file will look like after the book is purchased.
Accurate previews of Kindle ebook files
Unfortunately, you can’t open a Kindle file just anywhere. It will show weird things like too many italics, no drop caps … all kinds of frustrating things.
Preview these files using the Kindle Previewer software on your computer, or upload the ebook to KDP (like you’re ready to publish it), and choose Launch Previewer. (In KDP, you can choose Save Draft at any point, so upload as many times as you need.)
Then, honestly, trust the book will look correct to buyers.
Previews for non-Amazon ebook files
Other ebook types are simpler to view. Open the Apple EPUB directly on your Mac, or open the Generic EPUB on any device. The Generic option will have its most advanced settings if you go to Vellum > Preferences > Generation and set to Epub3 instead of Epub2.
Vellum only accesses files you work on. It does not have folders to save them. So if you didn’t tell your computer where to save your Vellum file, your system chose for you. (See this post for more details.)
First, search your system.
In your Finder, search “kind:vellum” (no spaces) to see if it will display any of the Vellum files on your system. Alternatively, if Finder doesn’t seem to cooperate, download the Find Any File app to your Mac. It is free to test, with no time limit, but asks for $6 after you’ve used it awhile. Best $6 I’ve ever spent on a Mac app.
Did you maybe store your file on Dropbox, iCloud, or Google Drive?
If you saved to a cloud drive like Dropbox, check on their website to see if you can find it. If you deleted by accident, Dropbox, iCloud, and Google Drive have 30-day versioning, meaning you can restore deleted items. I have more info in a blog post: SkinnerBooks.com/cloud-storage-for-vellum.
If you can’t find it anywhere…
If the file seems completely lost, could you possibly have been working in the same single Vellum file, over and over? Did you import new material and just change the title and author information? This happens more than you’d think.
You do need a new file every time, but in the meantime you can recover older files if they’ve been backed up with the use of Vellum’s file versioning.
I have a full video lesson on this in my Vellum course, but here’s the non-video version: go to File > Revert To > Browse All Versions, and choose Restore to bring back an older book. (Use File > Duplicate before you start, if you want to keep the current version separate.)
There are times when a Vellum working file just isn’t available or can’t be recovered. If you have your published file outputs, the easiest way to get the file into Vellum is to work backward from the EPUB.
How to reverse engineer your EPUB file:
- Upload the EPUB to a desktop program like Calibre or an online “epub to docx” converter like Convertio.io
- Once the file is in .docx format, check over the file and then import into Vellum
(You can also convert your print PDF to .docx, but I don’t recommend it, if there are any other options you can try. PDF conversions are far more messy, frequently with unexpected page breaks and other strange things.)
If your text ends up weird
Whatever format you use, you may have some odd spots where the text does funny things or has large jumps, etc.
If you’re able to edit the text in Word, the Show/Hide button (the button with the pilcrow character: ¶) will show you invisible characters that might be problematic. Alternatively, if Word isn’t an option, inside Vellum you can click View > Invisible Characters to do some detective work and address any issues.
If you have an error message from KDP offering to “fix” your file, saying it needs to be resized … just no. Do not let KDP “fix” a file for you.
The overrides KDP applies make the text tiny and the margins enormous, so the book ends up both unprofessional and unreadable.
Your detective work: Why is the size different?
Are you using custom chapter background images? Or did you use a full-bleed image somewhere, like a map or another large image that goes all the way to the edge of the pages?
Adding any full-bleed image triggers Vellum to add “bleed” to the edges of your entire project. Bleed is required by printing companies so the image can extend off and then be trimmed back down to the correct size.
So the larger size KDP is identifying won’t be exactly the trim size you set, but it IS correct for the printing requirements.
Here’s the fix: choose “(with) bleed” at upload.
At your store upload, simply choose the expected trim size (not adding the extra 3mm) and click “[with] bleed” instead of “no bleed.”
If you’ve used a full-page spread for something like a map, or the custom chapter backgrounds that go all the way to the page edges (full bleed), Draft2Digital will not accept the file.
Potential fixes
You have a couple of options inside Vellum to get them to accept your PDF.
- For a two-page spread image, under Image Extent, choose one of the options that does not go to the edge of the page—either Text Margins or Safe Zone.
- For chapter backgrounds, opt to use a single-page background instead of the double-page spread. Crop your existing image to the size of a single page and choose Safe Zone, which will place it 1/4” from the page edges and will not add a bleed margin to the PDF. This may change your page count, but most publishing platforms allow about 10 pages of wiggle room for your print cover allowance.
(Fingers crossed that D2D will update their capabilities in the future.)
If your print and ebook designs are exactly the same, you can optimize a single Vellum project to work around this cut-off issue and still look like you want it for print.
This is my recommendation:
- After your “The End” text, in the same chapter, add an Alignment Block with your purchase links, website, etc. Click the gear menu to the right of this paragraph and set it to Ebook Only so it won’t show on your print page. (More info on this in my book chapter called “The Text Feature Menu.”)
- In addition to that Alignment Block that’s still inside the last chapter, set up an Also By page with all links spelled out for print. Using the gear menu to the right of the chapter title, set that to Print Only so it won’t double up the content in the ebook. (Details on this in my “Mastering the Elements” chapter.)
“Look Inside” problems are another issue from Amazon’s end, not ours. Caps and ornaments that are huge or tiny, fonts that look wrong … you name it and someone has probably had an issue. (And it’s not only with Vellum files. But it’s still frustrating.)
Here’s the trick: Time is the magic.
When you update a file, give your Look Inside a couple of weeks to show properly. The sample isn’t an exact representation of your book—it’s being roughly recreated by Amazon’s software.
You can go through KDP’s Contact Us and ask them to manually update, but by reports I’ve read, you then have to remember to ask for that with every future book update, so let this settle for a bit and come back in a couple of weeks. 🙂
If a Vellum file isn’t giving you permission to open it, that’s a tough one to advise on because there are so many factors.
Here are common things to look at, but first, do check those first three things that are the #1 question on this list. If that doesn’t help, then go here:
If the file is saved on a cloud, are you logged in and syncing?
Logging out and back in to your cloud may reset things.
Can you open the file from a different location?
Drag the file from where it is to another location: from cloud to desktop, or vice versa. See if that lets you open it.
Can you open it with a different command/sequence?
If you were trying to open in Vellum, can you open it from the file location? (Or swap and open Vellum first, then choose File > Open?
If you’re totally stuck, come find me on Facebook inside The Indie Author Toolkit, share some screenshots, and we’ll troubleshoot with you!
If a Vellum file will open, but it’s saying you’re not able to edit it, this is another issue that can require some experimentation. Try these:
Copy the whole file
Make a copy through File > Duplicate and save under a new name, and maybe a new save location, then try to edit the new version.
Drag old chapters into a new project
Create a blank file under File > New Book and click/drag one of the chapters from the old book to the blank file. If one works, they all should! Drag them over, edit the book metadata, check your print size and margins, and rename this file so you know which one works.
Copy/paste the text
If you can view the text but dragging a chapter from old to new doesn’t work, try highlighting from the Text Editor and copy/pasting into the blank project chapter by chapter.
If none of these works, you can come to my Indie Author Toolkit group and see if it’s a recent issue others are also experiencing.
You can also raise a support ticket. The easiest way to do this is to have Vellum open, and from the Menu Bar, click Help > Contact Vellum Support. This will open a ticket automatically and will pre-fill your Vellum version and your operating system, which they’ll need.
If you don’t go from inside Vellum, then you can visit Vellum Help at help.vellum.pub/contact. Include your Vellum version and OS, which you can get this way:
- From the Menu Bar, click Vellum > About Vellum and copy down the “Version” numbers
- Under the Apple menu, top left, click About This Mac and write down the numbers on the “MacOS” line.
In general, the Vellum team puts out bug fixes quickly, and I love it! But when a new Mac operating system comes out, there are almost always problems which are rooted in Apple’s issues, so Vellum can’t fix things until Apple does.
When Apple has to fix something as huge as an entire operating system … that means some Vellum bugs simply can’t be addressed immediately.
Suggestions:
- Don’t update your macOS if you’re in the middle of a book project.
- Wait several weeks after release to update to the newest macOS. (I know, I know, it’s hard to ignore the pop-ups from Apple.)
- Be prepared to roll your whole system back to a previous Time Machine backup, if you encounter issues.
(You do have regular backups, right? You might want to invest in an external hard drive for Time Machine, or use your standard cloud options like Dropbox and Google Drive manually. Cloud-based backups to sites like BackBlaze or Carbonite might be a good investment to consider, though I’ve tried these and gone back to a small external drive and Time Machine.)
What other questions do you have?
Don’t forget that I’ve got an entire book AND a video course with start-to-finish Vellum info, and you can also find a lot of information on the Vellum Help website.
If there are other suggestions for items to add to this post for help troubleshooting in Vellum, you’re welcome to contact me.
- I have a YouTube channel! I talk a lot about Vellum tips. Come find me.
- I’m on Facebook at Skinner Book Services (@SkinnerBooks)—or I’m in author groups and The Indie Author Toolkit allll the time.
- I’m also under @SkinnerBooks on Instagram and TikTok, or send an email to he***@**********ks.com.
Thanks for reading! I’m so happy we’re connected. 🙂
