The most important piece of fiction writing is the story. Are the characters compelling? Is the plot exciting and coherent? Is the story believable? Paired with that is writing quality, which includes grammar, syntax, spelling, and punctuation. Without an immense amount of work on these points, authors lack a book worth publishing.

Formatting and typesetting a novel can become an afterthought. It’s probably the most technology-driven part of the self-publishing process, which can be scary to authors who just want to get a polished book into readers’ hands. I don’t mean to imply my formatting process is the best or the easiest. It works for me and satisfies my inclinations as both an independent novelist and software developer.

I spent a month of my free time transcribing an influential 1800s religious novel. And having just completed it, I can say it was so worth every minute.

Theodosia Ernest by Amos Cooper Dayton made an immense impact on American Protestants, especially Baptists. Dayton, a physician turned minister, was convinced of believer’s baptism in his 40s and thus joined a Baptist church. Soon afterward he wrote Theodosia Ernest, rumored to have been made to convince his still-Presbyterian wife (it worked, by the way).

William Tyndale is perhaps the most famous Bible translator in the English-speaking world, but the francosphere (encompassing France, Belgium, Switzerland, and much of Africa) has its own pioneer translator. Pierre Robert Olivétan brought the Hebrew Masoretic Old Testament and Erasmus’ Greek New Testament to French—the first from the original languages. La Bible d’Olivétan shaped French-speaking Protestant identity and laid the groundwork for the Reformation’s spread in France and beyond.

Before Olivétan, the Holy Scriptures were restricted to the clergy and academia. In the Occitan-speaking south of France, the Waldensian barbes (itinerant pastors) had been preaching from their Occitan translation for over three hundred years, but in the langue d’oïl north, hearing the Bible in the people’s tongue was nearly impossible. Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (alias Jacob Faber) was the first to produce a French Bible, but it was not accepted by the early Reformers due to its source text being Jerome’s Latin Vulgate.