To Smash or not to Smash

[John Carroll]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

The very idea of working in plain text sends shivers up my spine.

Yeah. I don't think I could do that.

[David.Niall.Wils]

We use Smashwords to get our titles to Sony, Apple, Kobo and a few other outlets, mostly those that require the publisher to buy an ISBN number. They've been very helpful to us (Smashwords) and have worked with us when there are problems - the only downside I see is that they use that "Meatgrinder" and - honestly- our own ePubs and other formats come out much more elegant and error free. I'm a supporter, nonetheless.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by David.Niall.Wils

We use Smashwords to get our titles to Sony, Apple, Kobo and a few other outlets, mostly those that require the publisher to buy an ISBN number. They've been very helpful to us (Smashwords) and have worked with us when there are problems - the only downside I see is that they use that "Meatgrinder" and - honestly- our own ePubs and other formats come out much more elegant and error free. I'm a supporter, nonetheless.

What I think would be a very good idea is at the beginning & end of every eBook posted to Smashwords, put in the following....

Please let the people in charge of Smashwords know that we (authors and readers) would prefer to have direct ePub uploading instead of the meatgrinder. This would allow us (authors) to create better looking ePub that work better on a wider variety of ePub capable devices/apps.

[Justin Nemo]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What I think would be a very good idea is at the beginning & end of every eBook posted to Smashwords, put in the following....

Please let the people in charge of Smashwords know that we (authors and readers) would prefer to have direct ePub uploading instead of the meatgrinder. This would allow us (authors) to create better looking ePub that work better on a wider variety of ePub capable devices/apps.

So what is it they do to epubs that mess them up. I presumed that once you had edited your epub to your liking, that would be it, no more need to mess with it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

So what is it they do to epubs that mess them up. I presumed that once you had edited your epub to your liking, that would be it, no more need to mess with it.

Word tends to put in all kinds of garbage that stays with the conversion to ePub. You can get issues where you cannot change the font, cannot change the colors, cannot change the font size, and others. Also, you can't really use any of the advanced features of ePub. Plus, if you want to tweak something to change how it looks, you have to do so via Word even if it's something very simple. I've read a lot of posts on MR about errors in meatground eBooks that would have been easy enough to fix if it was the ePub getting edited. But it's Word you have to deal with.

If the ePub was able to be directly uploaded, we'd have better eBooks. Authors would either learn to do it themselves or be able to get help from someone who does know XML/CSS. Sigil would be the tool of choice instead of having Word forced on the authors.

Overall, its a nightmare vs being able to directly upload the ePub.

[VydorScope]

Lets keep this in perspective

The vast majority of books on Smash work fin in every reader I have tried them on, and absolutely everyone I know (in person) that shops smashwords says the same. JSWolf likes to EDIT the epubs to make changes, and he has problems when he does that with smashwords files. He is a different level of user with higher level of demands then the mass market.

Would not mind uploading my own EPUB, but all the Smashwords books work fine in normal use.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Lets keep this in perspective

The vast majority of books on Smash work fin in every reader I have tried them on, and absolutely everyone I know (in person) that shops smashwords says the same. JSWolf likes to EDIT the epubs to make changes, and he has problems when he does that with smashwords files. He is a different level of user with higher level of demands then the mass market.

Would not mind uploading my own EPUB, but all the Smashwords books work fine in normal use.

The issues I've mentioned are true. I've seen the code that prevents these things from working. Sure, if you load the ePub and don't do anything to it other then read, it might look OK. But some readers support changing settings and that's where things can fall apart.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The issues I've mentioned are true. I've seen the code that prevents these things from working. Sure, if you load the ePub and don't do anything to it other then read, it might look OK. But some readers support changing settings and that's where things can fall apart.

Not saying they are not true, nor discounting your statements, just that your demands are higher the the mass market. For example, I am reading a book from smashwords right now on my Nook Color. I can via the reader make all the reader supported changes, such as font, color, night mode, etc and they all work fine.

I have no doubt that the code itself is bad since its based on Word and I know first hand how bad its HTML output is.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Word tends to put in all kinds of garbage that stays with the conversion to ePub. You can get issues where you cannot change the font, cannot change the colors, cannot change the font size, and others. Also, you can't really use any of the advanced features of ePub. Plus, if you want to tweak something to change how it looks, you have to do so via Word even if it's something very simple. I've read a lot of posts on MR about errors in meatground eBooks that would have been easy enough to fix if it was the ePub getting edited. But it's Word you have to deal with.

So if Word, OO, and LO are so bad, why don't you just write your own word processor that can produce a stripped-down .doc instead of using the ones produced by mainstream word processors? Or try some of the more simplistic alternative word processors like AbiWord?

Or start your own business website for people who want to upload their pre-compiled epubs?

Elfwreck- I don't quite follow what you mean by "tagging."

[Justin Nemo]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Word tends to put in all kinds of garbage that stays with the conversion to ePub. You can get issues where you cannot change the font, cannot change the colors, cannot change the font size, and others. Also, you can't really use any of the advanced features of ePub. Plus, if you want to tweak something to change how it looks, you have to do so via Word even if it's something very simple. I've read a lot of posts on MR about errors in meatground eBooks that would have been easy enough to fix if it was the ePub getting edited. But it's Word you have to deal with.

If the ePub was able to be directly uploaded, we'd have better eBooks. Authors would either learn to do it themselves or be able to get help from someone who does know XML/CSS. Sigil would be the tool of choice instead of having Word forced on the authors.

Overall, its a nightmare vs being able to directly upload the ePub.

I wonder why Smash only accepts word docs, even Calibre won't convert from them.

Does anyone know the thinking behind why they won't let you upload an epub directly? Surely it would be easier for them too.

[Justin Nemo]

I've just had a look at the Smashwords blog as I've always believed it is a good idea to have a little bit of knowledge on the subject you're talking about. I don't think you can easily spew out multiple formats and expect them ALL to be formatted correctly, although many have said that it does. I guess it's like one of those translation programs. You put in a a phrase in English and what comes out looks good, but is actually not what you wanted to say at all and sometimes it's crap.

All of that aside, it is obviously a difficult problem for many authors and therefore Smashwords should listen to your complaints and try to do something about it. After all without you they wouldn't have a business right?

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

All of that aside, it is obviously a difficult problem for many authors and therefore Smashwords should listen to your complaints and try to do something about it. After all without you they wouldn't have a business right?

That is just it... it is NOT a problem for most. For most authors it works fine. They put out tons of files all the time. Authors on this forum alone have likely pushed more then several 100,000(1) ebooks through Smash.... and it works fine.

If not they would not be in business, never mind the defacto independent author publisher with contracts to companies like Apple, B&N, etc. The proof is in their success so far.


----
(1) Totally made up statistic

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by teh603

So if Word, OO, and LO are so bad, why don't you just write your own word processor that can produce a stripped-down .doc instead of using the ones produced by mainstream word processors? Or try some of the more simplistic alternative word processors like AbiWord?

Or start your own business website for people who want to upload their pre-compiled epubs?

Elfwreck- I don't quite follow what you mean by "tagging."

Word is good at what it does. It was never intended as a front-end for making eBooks. It doesn't produce clean code. But that doesn't matter when your end result is to be printed on paper.

Lots of authors/readers have been asking Smashwords to allow direct ePub uploading only to fall on deaf ears.

[teh603]

[QUOTE=Justin Nemo;2015836]I wonder why Smash only accepts word docs, even Calibre won't convert from them.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Word is good at what it does. It was never intended as a front-end for making eBooks. It doesn't produce clean code. But that doesn't matter when your end result is to be printed on paper.

From my reading of the style guide, I got the feeling that the meatgrinder is a text extractor paired with a style sheet parser. That would explain why pics embedded thru OO/LO have to be "anchored as character" and formatting applied thru any means other than the style sheet is automatically discarded. Doesn't take that good of a programmer to write such a piece of software.

Does anyone know the thinking behind why they won't let you upload an epub directly? Surely it would be easier for them too.

Lots of authors/readers have been asking Smashwords to allow direct ePub uploading only to fall on deaf ears.

"Least common denominator" comes to mind. MS has foisted Word into a bajillion computers and both OO and LO have reliable export filters to the Word .doc format.

I also noticed some complaints on the smashwords website about people uploading epubs and being extremely inconsistent or uploading code that just flat didn't work. And then there's also the possibility of people uploading crafted epubs designed to exploit weaknesses in specific readers and cause crashes or worse. Imagine downloading an epub which had been made to crash Nooks, but not Kindles?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by teh603

So if Word, OO, and LO are so bad, why don't you just write your own word processor that can produce a stripped-down .doc instead of using the ones produced by mainstream word processors? Or try some of the more simplistic alternative word processors like AbiWord?

Or start your own business website for people who want to upload their pre-compiled epubs?

Elfwreck- I don't quite follow what you mean by "tagging."

Text with HTML or other tagged markup. I write with sections marked for <em>italics</em> or <b>bold</b> or
<center><b>centered bold text</b></center>
Because most of what I write is going on either Dreamwidth or AO3, and the WYSIWYG editors drive me buggy.