Testing the so called Smashwords curse

[gmw]

I think that's one of the downsides for operating through and intermediary (whether it be Smashwords or Bookbaby or whatever). The processes are definitely flawed, appear to have little or no quality assurance testing, and as a result there are inconsistencies with how things appear with different resellers ... and it seems that no one's in a great hurry to improve the situation.

And it's not just e-books. My print edition appeared in The Book Depository with no description for some weeks before the description finally caught up (with no input from myself).

There's not a lot of incentive for distributors to care about individual self-publishers as long as the majority get through "good enough". I can understand it with Smashwords, they don't get any money for trying harder, but I think paid services could try harder than they do ... but I'm guessing the volume makes that difficult - 130,000 new releases on Amazon in the last 30 days. How many came from distributors like Smashwords? And there's not a lot of incentive for resellers to care when the majority of their sales are happening from other more controlled sources.

I don't know whether Amazon is getting it right more than others because people are taking better care when dealing with such a big reseller, or whether Amazon is such a big reseller because they take care to get it right more often.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by frahse

It is ill advised as well as misguided to mention "curses."

To do so is to draw attention from that which is best left alone.

I don't understand what you mean by that. Can you elaborate?

[frahse]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't understand what you mean by that. Can you elaborate?

No reference or aspersion toward Smashwords was intended.

Just a chance to slide in a catchy story line.

"A dark and stormy night."

"A guarded look."

[sarahdalton]

Kobo is a hard sell, anyway. I decided to go direct to Kobo and use Smashwords for everything except Amazon, and I still have very few sales.

My only complaint about Smashwords is the description that ends up on the distributor page. I think (unless I got it wrong - it feels like ages ago now) that there's a short word limit so you can't use the whole blurb. It makes my book look quite unprofessional on the page.

I have the same complaint with my POD. Because I'm not there to adjust and perfect my book description, it's shown in one big lump of text without paragraph breaks. It just makes it look unprofessional.

[gmw]

I've had similar inconsistent results with my distributors too Sarah. BookBaby let's me put in multiple paragraphs, and Amazon gets it right but most others just merge them. Lightning Source let me use <p> </p> delimiters - which gets it right on Amazon but shows up as <p></p> is some other places. It's all very annoying. I'd hate to be publishing any blurb that had dialogue or Unicode character requirements.

[sarahdalton]

I know! It is annoying. I'd like my book to hold its own alongside the trade published - instead I'd may as well slap a big 'self-published' sticker on it!

[teh603]

Originally Posted by gmw

but shows up as <p></p> is some other places. It's all very annoying.

Guess they were written by us fans of <BR>?

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by teh603

Guess they were written by us fans of <BR>?

First that should be <BR /> but more then likely the strip all html/script in order to protect themselves. Case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater for sure.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

First that should be <BR /> but more then likely the strip all html/script in order to protect themselves. Case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater for sure.

Its <BR> in HTML 2.0. When did they put a slash after it?

Edit: <BR /> is XHTML, not HTML. =p

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by teh603

Its <BR> in HTML 2.0. When did they put a slash after it?

Edit: <BR /> is XHTML, not HTML. =p

Yep. But it is part of the HTML accepted standards now, forget when it was added. So <BR> <BR /> and <BR/> all work in HTML. Just the first is less portable then the second and third.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Yep. But it is part of the HTML accepted standards now, forget when it was added. So <BR> <BR /> and <BR/> all work in HTML. Just the first is less portable then the second and third.

Why would HTML be especially portable? Either your browser is standards-compliant or mostly so, or you're running IE.

[Jane Oldaker]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

I am being a bit dramatic with "curse" but if you look through old posts you will see people posting things like "the reason you are not selling better on Kobo is because of smashwords" and things like that. So "curse" is my summary of all that.

Seems to me the paradigm hasn't quite finished shifting is all.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by VydorScope
Yep. But it is part of the HTML accepted standards now, forget when it was added. So <BR> <BR /> and <BR/> all work in HTML. Just the first is less portable then the second and third.

Even better: <br />.

[J. Garrett]

I put everything I write up on Smashwords, never heard tell about any "curse" before, though.

Mainly, I use Smashwords because it quickly and easily converts my documents into various e-book format that I can then transfer them to my e-book for reading/reviewing while I'm still in the writing phase. It really does make a big difference, believe me.

Well, at least I can sleep easily at night knowing that the Smashwords curse [which I didn't know existed until just now] has been thoroughly busted!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by morriss003

I don't understand how my calibre epub copy looks perfect and the one from Smashwords has weird bolding. I used the same rtf copy of Word 7.

Could be different versions of Calibre used to do the converting.