Best formatted Smashwords ebooks

[amoroso]

The Smashwords formatting requirements for the Meatgrinder converter are rather strict, but some authors with more discipline and creativity produce better looking ebooks. What are your favorite Smashwords ebooks, formatting-wise?

[amoroso]

Originally Posted by amoroso

The Smashwords formatting requirements for the Meatgrinder converter are rather strict, but some authors with more discipline and creativity produce better looking ebooks. What are your favorite Smashwords ebooks, formatting-wise?

The Smashwords Syle Guide provides two examples of well formatted ebooks: Gigglers and The Unsuspecting Mage. While the former looks like a Word document, the latter resembles a book. Any better examples?

[jrlewis]

It's hard to say because the appearance of the book may vary from format to format.

[amoroso]

Originally Posted by jrlewis

It's hard to say because the appearance of the book may vary from format to format.

I was meaning the most popular ebook formats, i.e. ePub and Mobi.

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by amoroso

The Smashwords formatting requirements for the Meatgrinder converter are rather strict, but some authors with more discipline and creativity produce better looking ebooks. What are your favorite Smashwords ebooks, formatting-wise?

Well certainly not my own book. Smashwords really screwed up the mobi and epub conversions, although the pdf and lrf versions came out fine. I'm now chasing around to all the outlets Smashwords has delivered the ebooks to trying to get them to remove the books from sale, and I've unpublished (what a word) at Smashwords, who haven't responded to any of my messages. Not even the standard automatic reply that "we've received your message which will be answered in x days".

I'm pissed.

<grouch mode off>

[jrlewis]

Part of my publishing checklist is to upload to Smashwords, then immediately unpublish the book so I can download all the formats and check the files myself, and then publish it again and release the book to distributors.

I'm big into paranoid double-checking.

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by jrlewis

Part of my publishing checklist is to upload to Smashwords, then immediately unpublish the book so I can download all the formats and check the files myself, and then publish it again and release the book to distributors.

I'm big into paranoid double-checking.

Good tip, JR. Thanks.

[James_Wilde]

Sorry, Amoroso, I more or less hi-jacked your thread for my moan, so it behoves me to try and get it back on track.

Unfortunately, I haven't downloaded many books from Smashwords. The ones I believe I have downloaded from there are: "The Kinshield Legacy" and "The Venom of Vipers" both by K C May, and "The Year We Finally Solved Everything" by Rudolf Kerkhoven.

All three of these appear to be well-formatted. Rudolf Kerkhoven does not appear to be a big fan of chapters, but I can't fault Smashwords for that. It appears that Smashwords copies the cover image twice when creating epubs, since the cover appeared twice on "The Venom of Vipers", "The Year We Finally Solved Everythinb" and "Prince on a Red Dragon". Strangely it does not appear to have been copied on "The Kinshield Legacy".

It seems that I might have been unlucky that the meat-grinder farted when it produced my book. Three faults I have discovered: no page break before a new chapter (all three of the other authors' books have this); no chapter title, e.g. Chapter 1 (K C May's books both have this, Kerkhoven's has sections with titles) and the running together of the last word before an italic section and the first word in italics, thus: "The word for hello isnihao and thanks isxiexie." I didn't notice this problem in any of the other authors' books, but I would have, I'm sure.

[Smashwords]

Hi James, sorry you're having difficulty. The Style Guide has tips on how to enforce page breaks in the EPUB and MOBI in Microsoft Word. Email me if you're having problems.

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by Smashwords

Hi James, sorry you're having difficulty. The Style Guide has tips on how to enforce page breaks in the EPUB and MOBI in Microsoft Word. Email me if you're having problems.

Thanks, Mark. A good place to start looking would be the messages coming in via the support link at Smashwords.

[egtalbot]

This is not to excuse anything in particular, but I've had great luck with uploading my stuff to Smashwords and having the formatting look good, including chapter headings, etc. I work in openoffice and save as a word document. Before I format it for Smashwords, i remove ALL formatting, then go through and add a single style for my chapter headers (certainly I'd imagine one could add a couple other styles if one wanted to do so), and then I format it exactly how i want it for Smashwords, which is basically just page breaks for every chapter, centering my asterisks for section breaks, and adding the chapter header styles. I also add the bookmarks to be used by the table of contents links, which I create basically at the end of the process. It takes about 90 minutes soup to nuts for a 100,000 word book.

regarding the duplicate cover, I do not include the cover in my word document when I upload to Smashwords. This means that a single version of the cover will appear in epub and pdf formats (the one we upload separately from the word doc), and no cover will appear in the mobi files. Not sure the reason for this but it seems to be how the meatgrinder works. I upload my books directly to kindle store separately anyway, so this is a tradeoff I have no problem with. But I'm sure that explains what you saw with duplicate covers on some books and not on others. IMO a great update to the meatgrinder would be to have authors NOT include the cover in their word doc and to include the uploaded cover in all formats. Perhaps that update has happened already, not certain.

[altworld]

I read about people having problems with formats on Smashwords and I just scratch my head in wonderment. I don't think I'm doing anything other than following the style guide and building my document in OpenOffice and saving to word doc. I've never encountered any problems, either I am lucky or better at formatting my document than I think.

I don't do anything really that different, I just dump out the styles and don't get too precious about the formatting of the document because I accept it will be seen on various size screens.
Arigato,
Nick Davis

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by egtalbot

I work in openoffice and save as a word document.

Same here.

Originally Posted by egtalbot

Before I format it for Smashwords, i remove ALL formatting, then go through and add a single style for my chapter headers

Same here. I even went the nuclear route: saved as a txt file (having added $$ before every chapter title and ## before all italics so I could find them again afterwards). This process ripped out all formatting, including italics and different font sizes.

Then I created two styles: Smashwords header (not really a header, but for chapter titles, 'Foreword', 'About the Author', etc, centred, 14pt font 2 cm down the page, with a page break before) and Smashwords default (single line spacing, 12pt font, 0,5 cm first line indent, absolutely nothing else). I formatted the whole document with Smashwords default, then went through looking for $$ and changed those lines to Smashwords header. Finally I searched for ## and reinstated italics (mostly for foreign words, a few for emphasis). I've just checked the doc file and it has exactly those two styles.

Since then I've run the odt version through calibre (which doesn't take doc files), and it has produced a perfect epub and a perfect mobi, with page breaks, chapter titles, etc. I have an lrf and a pdf produced by the meat grinder, and Sony's Mac app shows the lrf, and the inbuilt Mac pdf reader show these with page breaks and chapter titles. I don't understand it.

Originally Posted by egtalbot

... and then I format it exactly how i want it for Smashwords, which is basically just page breaks for every chapter, centering my asterisks for section breaks, and adding the chapter header styles. I also add the bookmarks to be used by the table of contents links, which I create basically at the end of the process. It takes about 90 minutes soup to nuts for a 100,000 word book.

Almost exactly the same procedure as I describe above (except I don't bother with bookmarks - it's a novel).

[/QUOTE]Regarding the duplicate cover, I do not include the cover in my word document when I upload to Smashwords. This means that a single version of the cover will appear in epub and pdf formats (the one we upload separately from the word doc), and no cover will appear in the mobi files. Not sure the reason for this but it seems to be how the meatgrinder works. I upload my books directly to kindle store separately anyway, so this is a tradeoff I have no problem with. But I'm sure that explains what you saw with duplicate covers on some books and not on others. IMO a great update to the meatgrinder would be to have authors NOT include the cover in their word doc and to include the uploaded cover in all formats. Perhaps that update has happened already, not certain.[/QUOTE]

Good explanation and good suggestion. Thanks.

Anyway, I've unpublished my ebook, and when the word has filtered round to all the outlets and it's disappeared from sale, I'll go in with the one I produced in calibre. It's a pity, as it would have been nice to have one distributor to have to deal with, but it's not the end of the world. Would have been nice if I could exchange the calibre ones for the meat-grinder ones. It's only the epub and mobi files that are trashed, but then 99.99% of readers will use one or the other of them.

[egtalbot]

James -

I can understand your frustration, believe me. The only additional suggestion I have is to only include font size, font alignment and font weight (bold, italic, etc) in the style of your header. Not the page break or anything else related to vertical location on the page. Put in the page breaks manually.

I suggest this because it's the only thing it sounds like you're doing differently than I am. No idea if it will work, nor do I think you *should* have to do this, but it might explain the difference. Bonne chance!

-EGT

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by egtalbot

James -

I can understand your frustration, believe me. The only additional suggestion I have is to only include font size, font alignment and font weight (bold, italic, etc) in the style of your header. Not the page break or anything else related to vertical location on the page. Put in the page breaks manually.

I suggest this because it's the only thing it sounds like you're doing differently than I am. No idea if it will work, nor do I think you *should* have to do this, but it might explain the difference. Bonne chance!

-EGT

Thanks, EG. I'll take my doc file and change the chapter headers, take out the page break, and insert them manually, and run it through the meat grinder again and see what happens.