Quote:
Originally Posted by Johneltin
Thanks for the reply D, but over all those weeks I've been getting the same error message and I would have expected them to try a permanent solution to the problem which (they say) is at their end.
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I can confirm:
Although we don't do uploading, we've tried to generate a variety of "SW" ePUBs. We've changed copyright pages (nuking "proper" copyright pages and replacing them with that dreadful SMASHWORDS EDITION text all over what formerly was a lovely title page); we've dumbed the ePUBs down; we've done everything we can think of, and our clients still get little snarky emails telling them--wait for it--to upload their files AS WORD FILES.
No wonder 52N and eBA are charging $50 or $60 a pop to make a SW epub; it's not the making, it's the constant changing to guess at what their incoherent and useless error messages mean. I'm changing my pricing page; I don't mean to frustrate my clients, but I'm saying "hell, we'll give you a Word file instead, that look like SW says that they want it to look--utterly boring and vanilla and like some teenager's book report--and you can tweak it to make them happy." It's ridiculous; by the time we've had the file back for the 4th, 5th or 6th time--for no apparent reason--we're out of pocket by 100% more than the paid price.
I (mostly) don't mind making ePUBs to a given retailer's standard, assuming it's
reasonably well documented; but this is an exercise in futility. I don't know why SW elected to do this (accept ePUBS) if they intended to be deliberately obfuscatory and obdurate, and to try to dumb-down the ePUBs to naught more than a Word file in the first place. Obviously, they realized that they were losing business to direct uploads at Nook, iBooks, Kobo, etc.--but how much more business do they think they're
getting by upsetting clients and prospective publishers
who've paid good money for a perfectly valid ePUB that can't intake at SW?
It's truly absurd. They either need to get their act together or just go back to taking Word files that look like 9th-grade book reports. I'm certainly not going to get ulcers over it; we tried a number of books, and, surprise! Now we're making Word files for those customers. I'm certainly not going to sit there and remake and remake ePUB files to hit some moving target that's not even documented. That way lies madness. The rest of the retailers are quite enough brain-damage, thanks very much.
FWIW.
Hitch