04-27-2012, 04:14 AM | #16 |
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Let me step aside from the discussion about hand crafted ePub versus the Meatgrinder. I've put several hand crafted ePub books on the MobileRead library, but my daughter wanted me to format one of her short stories for Smashwords. It's quite a simple short story - free at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/154042 - but we both would like to have the story text start on a new page and have the acknowledgements start on a new page.
I've read and re-read the manual, but can't see how this can be done. Can anyone tell me how to do it? Or where to go to find out? Last edited by AlexBell; 04-27-2012 at 04:16 AM. Reason: Made my wish to not get involved in the argument clearer |
04-27-2012, 06:20 AM | #17 |
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Alex,
At Smash, you just use the "insert page break" feature of MS Word, and when the EPub is generated, the page break is there. |
04-27-2012, 06:27 AM | #18 | |
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No, not exactly. For most books the process is... 1) Type up your book in MS word sticking to the older .DOC file type not the new DOCX one. Use italics, bold, page breaks, tabs, etc. (except bullets apparently), all are fine. 2) Take your .DOC Word Doc up load it to Smash 3) Wait like 10 mins for it to be automatically converted to every major ebook format for you. That is it. Most authors I have talked with do just that and their books look fine on my Nook, or in my Kindle apps. As with anything, Smash build a process that fits the majority of the cases, and edge cases suffer. If you follow their style guide not only will you get good results with them, but that same style guide works to get you good results with the automatic conversion at Amazon, and elsewhere. |
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04-27-2012, 06:55 AM | #19 |
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For straight fiction Smashwords is fine, but not so good for non-fiction which may include lists, tables, etc.
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04-27-2012, 08:51 AM | #20 | |||
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04-27-2012, 10:07 AM | #21 | |
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I could not imagine typing a 100k word piece in that way. The spell checking alone would be a nightmare for me. I have set up my template in MS Word to Smashwords style guide, and I just type right in that and make sure I save as .doc. That includes the formatting for chapters headings so that Meatgrinder turns out working TOC's and all that. My files make it through first try, no errors. I assume LibreOffice can do the same. Not ever tried a bulleted list though.. might someday just to see the issue first hand. |
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04-27-2012, 11:44 AM | #22 | |
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04-27-2012, 11:55 AM | #23 | |
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I am not sure why you are insisting on hand-crafted epubs. I find that Writer2xhtml (google Writer2Latex) creates reasonable epubs from my OpenOffice files. There are other options too. The only hand-crafting may be a few meta-data things later - the sort of thing than sigil could help with. None of this seems too far out of reach of most people capable of using a word-processor. |
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04-27-2012, 11:57 AM | #24 | |
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04-27-2012, 02:29 PM | #25 | |
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Again, the grinder is built to handle the majority case, not the edges. So I am sure you can come up with example after example that will not work, heck my first doc did not work at all. They are successful by only addressing the core case, and pushing the core case through their process and out to the stores. It works for most authors most of the time, and that really is the best you can hopeful in an automated situation. I do not work for them, nor speak for them, but my assumption is that they weighed adding the complexity and support costs of more formats against what value it would bring their business and decided against it. |
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04-27-2012, 02:58 PM | #26 |
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One other issue with the meatgrinder is Unicode. You see, if Smashwords allowed direct ePub upload, you'd be able to embed fonts and not have to worry what the default fonts support or don't. The problem is that different readers default fonts can be different in Unicode support. So embedding is the solution for ePub. But Smashwords can't have embedded fonts because they meatgrind Word documents.
Last edited by JSWolf; 04-27-2012 at 03:35 PM. |
04-27-2012, 04:15 PM | #27 | |
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04-27-2012, 09:22 PM | #28 |
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There seems to be some cross-purposes discussion going on here - it's not real disagreement, just ... just varying priorities?
Smashwords may have a great automation system that works most of the time - or perhaps one that people have learned to work within. None of that denies the fact that the use of one-size-fits-all automation is always going to have some "edge" cases. One of the problems with such systems is that, as an outsider, you don't know if you're an edge case until your book turns out wrong (hence that separate thread looking to testdrive Smashwords). One way to avoid many of these edge cases - which will probably exist regardless of how clever they make their automation - is to support something like epub directly, even if that means that there are some limitations imposed on what they do with it (what they convert to etc.). It seems like an obvious, and fairly easy, thing to do, so I'm guessing there's some reputation covering stuff involved in why they don't: by forcing everything through the same grinder they limit how the system can be abused, and so limit how they can be blamed for poor products (blame from either end). But they might find that such a reluctance to look ahead will backfire on them in the long term. |
04-27-2012, 09:39 PM | #29 | |
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Part of it maybe to do all the conversions the need to do for all the stores they send to, .doc might be the lowest common format to use. Unless some rep from Smash comes here and tells us why they choose to standardize around DOC, I can only guess. No one disagrees that a "one size fits all" really never does fit all. The point really is that they needed to standardize on something to keep support and complexity down, and they chose DOC. Why? I would guess because everyone knows word docs, and they are a much wider standard then EPUB or MOBI. But thats just a guess. |
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04-27-2012, 10:02 PM | #30 |
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It backfires on them now. Because of the meatgrinder, I do not purchase eBooks from Smashwords. I won't until they allow direct ePub upload and they label new books as uploaded or meatground.
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