A big complaint about Smashwords

[MaxLV]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

I should make it clear - I'm not asking them to not accept doc, rather I'm asking them to accept at least one format that's actually standardised (again, as they used to).

Paul.

If you want to 'tout your wares' at Smashword then you *HAVE TO* follow the terms and conditions of using the website.

Dont like their terms and conditions and standards they set? Go elsewhere.

That's NOT rocket science.

[Shyam Mael]

MrPLD, I hear what you're saying about Smashwords' insistence on Word doc format. Similar thoughts have been going through my head recently, as I have also taken that route, for the reason stated by HistoryWes, the access to their distribution channels.

I got on alright with Word and could roll with its foibles until I came to preparing a print-ready source file and a source file for eformatting. Kludgey is a good description, and many a frustrating hour has been wasted wrestling with what I came to consider a beast. I did find, however, that Mark Coker's Style Guide was a big help in both understanding the beast and actually getting it to do what I wanted, or more to the point, to stop doing what I didn't want it to do. My difficulties with Word didn't end with the reading of the Style Guide though, which eventually forced me back into the open arms of Open Office.

Rather than wax on about Open Office I'll just recommend that folk reading this give it a try. We all have different needs and preferences, which in themselves can shift according to circumstance. Ethics and economics aside, Open Office is another spanner in the toolbox. We indies should be packing a range of tools and strategies. From a practical Smashwords point of view, .doc files can be made in Open Office, and in my recent experience are as acceptable to Smashwords as files made in Word.

I agree with Kacir that the .doc file is a reasonable choice given 'most' peoples access and understanding of Word. Nomesque has a good point, although if Smashwords were to accept already generated eformats, wouldn't that render those titles not Smashwords editions?

My personal moan, or call it frustrated observation, is that the Smashwords converte4r produces inconsistent results across the range of formats, producing for example a sound epub file, a mobi file peppered with random font gibberish, a pdb with different random font gibberish, and a pdf with no cover. Still working through the latest results, and will have some questions which I'll post later, possibly elsewhere.

[neilmarr]

If you want a job done properly, do it yourself or get a helper who knows the nuts and bolts. Automatic conversion is no substitute for careful attention to an individual book and file. Smashwords is a convenience. Mark Coker and team do not even pretend to be produce perfection -- which is, to me, their honestly saving grace. Neil

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by Shyam Mael

My personal moan, or call it frustrated observation, is that the Smashwords converte4r produces inconsistent results across the range of formats, producing for example a sound epub file, a mobi file peppered with random font gibberish, a pdb with different random font gibberish, and a pdf with no cover. Still working through the latest results, and will have some questions which I'll post later, possibly elsewhere.

Something which IS possible, though mentioning it to Mark causes him to faint in horror, is to upload multiple documents, one for each set of problem-causing formats, and select only the 'good' formats for that doc. If you're going to do that, though, take pity on the system and either space them out over a few days, or do it after midnight their time.

[Solitaire1]

Shyam Mael wrote as part of a post:

Originally Posted by Shyam Mael

I got on alright with Word and could roll with its foibles until I came to preparing a print-ready source file and a source file for eformatting. Kludgey is a good description, and many a frustrating hour has been wasted wrestling with what I came to consider a beast. I did find, however, that Mark Coker's Style Guide was a big help in both understanding the beast and actually getting it to do what I wanted, or more to the point, to stop doing what I didn't want it to do. My difficulties with Word didn't end with the reading of the Style Guide though, which eventually forced me back into the open arms of Open Office.

Rather than wax on about Open Office I'll just recommend that folk reading this give it a try. We all have different needs and preferences, which in themselves can shift according to circumstance. Ethics and economics aside, Open Office is another spanner in the toolbox. We indies should be packing a range of tools and strategies. From a practical Smashwords point of view, .doc files can be made in Open Office, and in my recent experience are as acceptable to Smashwords as files made in Word.

This reminded me of the following article concerning StarOffice (the commercial version of OpenOffice.org) filters that I read a long time ago: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/3857/1/.

The article covers some of the difficulties when using StarOffice to save documents in the MS Word format. It also covers some of the ways that StarOffice deals with the problems (such as saving the entire file in 16-bit Unicode mode).

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by CW Johnson

Give me a break, folks! They take your single file format, turn it into many file formats and distributes them all over the web...for free! What do you want for nothing, your money back?

A better choice of input formats. Like, including one that accurately represents the book. HTML, epub, RTF ... just about anything that isn't MS-Word.

[M T McGuire]

I HATE Word... with a PASSION... like the rest of you! But I do think Smashwords is Genius. It fills a niche which nobody else has seen and since Word is ubiquitous, I can see why they made it their choice. I'll use Word if that's what it takes to get my book into all these other distribution channels and bear in mind I live in the UK so without Smashwords many of those other outlets are closed to me (or just untenable to non-US bank account holders). I have a choice. I can make my book available to lots of people by using crappy Word and sticking it through the Smashwords meatgrinder or I can put it on my website.

I've only a very small budget to publish my book and that covers a website, a copy editor, a proof reader, the ISBN's and about sixteen million proof copies from Lulu before I even submit the finished article to a printer.

Now, I would call myself a 'gifted amateur' at dtp (being quite generous) but coding goes over my head... badly. I get the gist (it's WordPerfect with reveal codes on) but my kitchen table budget doesn't cover another £300 a pop for a .mobi .epub .lrf (if it's still going) the apple thing, whatever it's called and the palm thing. Smashwords will convert it. Not brilliantly but better than I could do and more to the point, for free. One day, when I can afford a luxury budget per book, then yes, I'll find somebody who knows what they're doing and they can code it all up for me so it looks lovely... unless Messrs Coker and friends have found a way of making their meat grinder do the same thing. The fact it's called a meat grinder should tell us something, I think.

So I hear where you're coming from but without Smashwords my book wouldn't be available to most of you... and Mark Coker still replies to support e-mails personally which I consider impressive.

I'll stop now ;-)

Cheers

MTM

PS... thinking about it what we really need is a wordproccessor which will include e-book formats in the 'save as' section.

[Worldwalker]

The problem is, Word isn't ubiquitous, and not everyone can afford to pay the Microsoft Tax. Shelling out hundreds of dollars for software used solely to format books for Smashwords just isn't a viable option for some authors, just as your "kitchen table budget" doesn't cover other things for you.

Besides, nobody is suggesting that Smashwords not accept Word files; we're just suggesting that they should accept files in some other, pretty much any other, format, one that works with their system (HTML almost certainly would) but doesn't require payment of the Microsoft Tax.

[MrPLD]

I see this thread hasn't died off... yet.

What I suspect will happen is someone will bring about an eBook service that provides distribution and caters for authors who already have formatted their books into ePub/mobi/HTML. There's a void in the market for that service, it will ultimately be filled.

Clearly SW caters for an existing market that is quite large, but obviously cannot (as yet) cover everything.

Paul.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

The problem is, Word isn't ubiquitous, and not everyone can afford to pay the Microsoft Tax.

You can use OpenOffice.org Writer, recently renamed to LibreOffice Writer.
You just might have to tweak the format a little bit for the meatgrinder to process it exactly to your liking.

[M T McGuire]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

The problem is, Word isn't ubiquitous, and not everyone can afford to pay the Microsoft Tax. Shelling out hundreds of dollars for software used solely to format books for Smashwords just isn't a viable option for some authors, just as your "kitchen table budget" doesn't cover other things for you.

Besides, nobody is suggesting that Smashwords not accept Word files; we're just suggesting that they should accept files in some other, pretty much any other, format, one that works with their system (HTML almost certainly would) but doesn't require payment of the Microsoft Tax.

Ah yes... I got Word free with a computer and I have to confess I use it solely for smashwords and a few years ago, when I wrote corporate puff for a living, I used it to open the documents other people sent me. I also have to confess, before then, to a history of doing all my writing on the corporate lap top... which had Word fitted as standard. Sorry, I got the impression this was a why word thread, a viewpoint I can appreciate - rather than a why not anything else. Actually, why not rtf would suit me.

I write in WordPerfect and I think open office would be my second choice and I agree, that html would be a good substitute. The interface I like best is Feedbooks, where it does it all for you and you just cut and paste the text in. That's my kind of interface. I'm not sure why Smashwords don't do that.

Cheers

MTM

[Smashwords]

Hi all. Sorry I was slow to find this thread. Sounds like ya'll hashed this out pretty well, though I'll add a couple more comments.

Microsoft Word is by no means a perfect Word processor, and somehow MS has managed to make Word more cumbersome and more difficult to learn with every new version.

My personal favorite version of MS Word is Word 2000. Word is a good universal format because most writers already have it. If an author takes the time to learn how to tame it (and we show you how in the Smashwords Style Guide), you can get really good results from our Meatgrinder. For authors who can't afford the $140 or so to purchase a copy, Open Office is a reasonably good free alternative, though understand in advance that it has its own problems and doesn't always export clean Word .doc files.

I've been in the tech business almost since the dawn of Microsoft, and it's interesting that so much anti-Microsoft sentiment is still out there. Open Office, despite the word "open" in its name, was acquired by Sun Microsystems, a company, which despite its calls for openness, ultimately on a trojan horse mission to harm Microsoft and drive customers to its own proprietary, over-priced hardware. When Sun failed, they were acquired by Oracle. For anyone who has ever followed Oracle and its CEO Larry Ellison, Mr. Ellison is the prince of darkness when it comes to closed, expensive proprietary systems, and their marketing tactics (a former Oracle executive once bragged to me how they savaged Informix, an old database competitor, with underhanded marketing and PR) at times made the worst of Bill Gates and team look downright saintly. If given the choice of finding yourself stranded on an island with Larry Ellison or Bill Gates, most folks would be smart to choose Bill Gates IMHO.

Naomi, yes, it would cause me to faint if authors started uploading separate versions of the same book to overcome different formatting idiosyncrasies. It might also cause us to delete an author's account if we felt they were abusing or gaming the system to the disadvantage of their fellow Smashwords authors. If folks follow the Style Guide, they'll get good results. The results will continue to get better over time as we enhance Meatgrinder and provide better formatting instructions.

Neil, you know I like you and respect the great work you do as a publisher, but you're painting with too broad a brush to label Smashwords as a place for amateurs. I'm sure many Smashwords authors and publishers would consider that an insult, because we have thousands of authors/publishers who are anything but amateur. I know of many indie authors who are out-publishing, out-selling and out-smarting traditional publishers every day. These authors will serve as the role models for other indie authors who want to improve their craft and up their games.

In the next few years we'll see more previously published "professional authors" turn their backs on traditional publishing and go indie, and some of them will use Smashwords as their distribution partner. Would such a move put them in the amateur category? Definitely not. The old caste system in publishing is crumbling away. Ebook retailers want diverse content because their customers (readers) want it. Readers care less about the publisher name on the spine than publishers care. Authors will publish directly to their readers, and their readers will determine what's worth reading.

It's the author's responsibility to learn from and incorporate the best-practices of traditional publishers. If they can't do it on their own, they should hire professional help as necessary to improve their books with editing, book doctoring, proofing, etc. Authors sitting on the sidelines waiting for the blessing of a publisher are only denying themselves the opportunity to start reaching readership today.

For those interested, here's my Seven Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success (Note that tip one is "write a great book," something all professionals can appreciate): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-c..._b_751743.html

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Smashwords

Hi all. Sorry I was slow to find this thread. Sounds like ya'll hashed this out pretty well, though I'll add a couple more comments.

Hi. It is a great pleasure to see you answering questions here. I was one of the very first users with a Smashwords account. I learned about Smashwords here on Mobileread, very soon after it was started and it was a great pleasure to see you grow.
You [Smashwords] are one of reasons why we have variety and pricing of ebooks today. The situation is far from ideal, but is still better than in, for example, Norway (that we have been discussing in another thread recently.)

Originally Posted by Smashwords

Microsoft Word is by no means a perfect Word processor, and somehow MS has managed to make Word more cumbersome and more difficult to learn with every new version.
My personal favorite version of MS Word is Word 2000. Word is a good universal format because most writers already have it. If an author takes the time to learn how to tame it (and we show you how in the Smashwords Style Guide), you can get really good results from our Meatgrinder. For authors who can't afford the $140 or so to purchase a copy, Open Office is a reasonably good free alternative, though understand in advance that it has its own problems and doesn't always export clean Word .doc files.

As I said my blood pressure rose sharply when I read (on Smashwords) how you are recommending writers to purchase MSOffice, because MSWord is great product for writing. I can understand that you choose .doc format as the most commonly used, but recommending authors (that keep you in a very high regard as technical and marketing guru) to purchase MSOffice is something different. Especially when that means purchasing MSOffice 2007 [shudder] or higher and possibly upgrading hardware to the specifications required by MSOffice.

Originally Posted by Smashwords

I've been in the tech business almost since the dawn of Microsoft, and it's interesting that so much anti-Microsoft sentiment is still out there.

Long, very long time ago I was one of fiercest supporters of MSOffice. A program I have seen as superior, with many features other office applications didn't have. That was when MSWord 2.0 was the latest and greatest. Since then I gradually grew to dislike most of the systems Microsoft provides.
I remember browser wars, how DR Dos was driven to bankrupcy, how cooperation with MS ended for Stacker, the list could go on and on ...

Originally Posted by Smashwords

Open Office, despite the word "open" in its name, was acquired by Sun Microsystems, a company, which despite its calls for openness, ultimately on a trojan horse mission to harm Microsoft and drive customers to its own proprietary, over-priced hardware.

This is very similar to what you do to traditional publishers with your service ;-)

Originally Posted by Smashwords

When Sun failed, they were acquired by Oracle. For anyone who has ever followed Oracle and its CEO Larry Ellison, Mr. Ellison is the prince of darkness when it comes to closed, expensive proprietary systems, and their marketing tactics (a former Oracle executive once bragged to me how they savaged Informix, an old database competitor, with underhanded marketing and PR) at times made the worst of Bill Gates and team look downright saintly. If given the choice of finding yourself stranded on an island with Larry Ellison or Bill Gates, most folks would be smart to choose Bill Gates IMHO.

Well, the former OpenOffice.org foundation members have created new foundation - The Document Foundation http://www.documentfoundation.org/ and released new version of their office under the name Libre Office.
They have addressed Oracle to join and donate the name OO.o and some other things, but they do not hold their collective breath. They have seen what has happened to Solaris and they have seen the level of cooperation Oracle provided so far.

[MrPLD]

I'm going to go off-topic here - just make sure you read down to the end where I express my flipside view too.

I've been in the tech business almost since the dawn of Microsoft, and it's interesting that so much anti-Microsoft sentiment is still out there.

Quite a few of us have been around since the dawn and a tad before it. I don't consider it surprising at all that there's a lot of anti-MS sentiment, particularly from people in our position.

It is perhaps ironic that Microsoft's success is in part because they themselves rode on the back of the collective efforts in the hardware industry to break apart IBM's propriatory BIOS. As we know, back then IBM was the 1000lb gorilla pushing everyone around. It is on the strength of open standards and compatibility that Microsoft was able to spread so well amongst the business community (that said, I believe Bill Gates would have made a success of anything - he is just that good at business).

Microsoft by law, has one goal, satisfy the share holders. Shareholders will punish them harder than any court of law at this point. With that in mind it's entirely understandable that Microsoft has and will continue to ensure that their software will be as difficult to be compatible with as possible. There is no open written standard that you can obtain which will let you write a clean-room library that will read and write ms-doc files as good (or bad) as MS-Office does.

Microsoft is very smart, they know business very well, they will do their utmost to ensure that they stay in the game, as does any other self respecting capitalistic business. Good will, sharing, standards and cooperation are only faces worn in order to gain extra market share, either short or long term, this is business.

Imagine life without HTML, JPEG, PNG, MP3*/OGG, H.264*/WebM, PDF*.

A lot of people honestly wouldn't be "anti-MS" if Microsoft didn't have a lovely 20yr+ history of sabotage, lock-in, embrace-extend-extinguish or many other behaviours they seem to be known for.

Most of the time when Microsoft comes to supporting a standard format it's because they've either lost the race or they're planning to subtly 'enhance' it and ruin the compatibility.

If you could buy MS Office and know that you could use/share those files amongst other people without them requiring the exact same MS Office version to read it then I'm sure many people wouldn't have a problem at all (at least now PDF export does that job well enough, so long as you don't need to edit it in most cases).




On the other side of the coin - Microsoft has no obligation to open anything what so ever to anyone, it's their software, you choose to use it under their terms. There's nothing in law stating that they have to play nice. While we might enjoy the dream of them considering their ethical or moral responsibilities the truth is that they have none when it comes to sharing. Microsoft is allowed to create their own ecosystem and put walls up all around. They owe the community nothing.

There are plenty of documented, open and available standards for everyone to choose from which do work on Microsoft systems; however it is up to us to use these.



(*These are proprietary standards but they are fully documented and hence can be implemented by 3rd parties)

[Freeshadow]

Mark if MS word would be so great for book authoring there would never have been a market for specifically book authoring software like e.g. NotaBene.
support for glossaries, lists, and multiple footnote-levels, automated bibliography support, etc.

keeping that in mind - there also is a legion of reasons why a big ammount of people who used such software in the past now are using some kind of TeX distribution.