Hi there

 As you’ve probably discovered, Booksmart won’t allow you to set custom tab settings.  Booksmart can do a lot more with text than in previous versions, but not that.

As for standard tab/indent settings, a google search for those terms should bring some results. 

Here Here!  I totally agree. I am layout out a 400 page novel and it looks ridiculous!  I would also like a half-size tab indent… or as you said, a fix for the problem when you use spaces for indentation (was going with 4 spaces til I saw how stupid it looked).  I am reluctant to print it while it looks like this.

Hopefully someone at blurb can address this problem for us soon.

I’m wrong. When I set my tabs in my word docunent to .25 and moved the document into Blurb it lost the paragraph indents.

Lew

I may be able to help. I too am producing some novels and have discovered that before transferring from word PLEASE clear all formatting. Then transfer your book to the blurb programme. I then read my book, page by page and as I read I use my space bar three indents to indicate a new paragraph or speach. At each chapter I then highlight the chapter and go justify. For me, it works wonderfully. I have also noticed you need to be patient because Blurb needs time to think! Three indents is a general acceptance in the bookk industry for novels. Warning! When you have done this, do not try to go back and alter because Blurb gets confused. So make sure when you read your chapters one by one, you are happy with what you have written.

levitybrown is right.

I’m working on a 150 page novel. Imported from Word and got no tabs, as stated in the Help section of Booksmart. Went through and manually tabbed each paragraph, resulting in the ridiculously large tabs discussed here.

Then I tried using just the space bar. It looked better, but the indentations weren’t aligned. I couldn’t live with that.

I’m on a Mac, so I don’t know what’s comparable with Windows. But what I did was to copy everything from Word, past it into Text Edit, select all, and convert to plain text. Then I tabbed each paragraph in Text Edit, and copied and pasted into BookSmart.

It worked perfectly. In fact if it’s done that way, additional tabbing in Booksmart even gives you normal tabs.

Booksmart is frustrating and quirky and illogical in so many ways. But it still does a good job if you baby it.