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Old 04-21-2012, 09:25 AM   #1
Steven Lake
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Test Driving Smashwords Uploads

Hey all, is there a way to "test drive" an upload at Smashwords before actually uploading it? I know they have the style guide, but I'm trying to figure out if there's something, maybe even similar to the epub check, that would look over the document, suggest changes, and even possibly allow you to make them on the fly. I'm mostly looking for something that'll make the issues (if there are any) jump out right away. I ask because I was loading a file today and they came up with this long list of things my book might have wrong with it. There wasn't anything actually wrong, but I figure that it's better safe than sorry. I know I've had others look over my files (and came back with flying colors) and I've been through the style guide, but again, anything automated that'll catch the majority of potential problems is a plus.

Also, it doesn't necessarily need to be located at Smashwords if a 3rd party has a working system.
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Old 04-21-2012, 08:50 PM   #2
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Great question!!

But I do not know of any. If you find one let please me know!
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Old 04-25-2012, 10:51 PM   #3
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I had exactly the same question as I'm busy formatting an ebook that is to be published on Smashwords and it's the first book I've done so I wanted to see that my formatting was working. I emailed Smashwords and received a reply saying that I should just upload the book to them and then immediately unpublish it. This would let me download the converted files without anyone being able to see the book.

Well I've done this but found some formatting errors that I'm not sure how to fix (bullet lists behaving strangely, numbered lists indenting strangely, etc). I'm obviously going to have to experiment to find out how to fix these problems, which will result in multiple publishing / unpublishing actions. I'm surprised that Smashwords don't already let you upload and check the results without actually publishing the ebook, as I'm sure most people would want to check formatting.

Oh, and it's a cookbook that I'm working on, hence the bullet and number lists.
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Old 04-26-2012, 07:15 AM   #4
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Yeah, that's my whole point behind needing the testing tool as having to publish then unpublish is just stupid. That shouldn't be needed. If something like Sigil or Calibre could give the exact same output as Smashword's own system, then that'd be a whole other ball of wax. But last I checked you can't import a doc file into Sigil and Calibre doesn't convert the file the same as Smashwords.

Of course, something you might try to discover the issues is to take the sections that are having issues, cut out everything from above the troubled area down to below it, then paste that into a raw text editor. I'm thinking something like Notepad on Windows, or Kwrite on Linux. Save, exit, reopen. That'll strip the text down to raw Ascii without any residual code left over. Then cut and paste that back into the document and reapply the formatting tweaks.

It's a bit of a round about way to solve your issue, but it's worked for me whenever I've had lots of seemingly unfixable erroneous formatting issues. You also might need to translate it into Open Document in Open Office first to fix the issue (MS Word is notorious for formatting issues and corruption of the file) before converting back into an MS Word Doc.
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Old 04-26-2012, 04:06 PM   #5
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Thanks for your suggestions, Steve. The original manuscript was in Word but I used the "nuclear" method and copied it to Notepad and pasted it back into a new Word doc and then proceeded to format it.

I did notice on the Smashwords blog that they acknowledged there were still problems with bullet and number lists, so maybe I'll just remove them and replace with fake lists.
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Old 04-27-2012, 04:24 AM   #6
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This is only a guess since I haven't tried it myself - but I've opened up several Smashwords ePubs and it is clear that most of the Meatgrinder is based on calibre.

So far as I know calibre won't accept a Word doc as an input file, but it will accept rtf. Would it work to convert the doc file to rtf, convert it with calibre to ePub or mobi format, and see how it turns out?

There's no guarantee of course that the Meatgrinder hasn't got some other stuff inside it which will mess up calibre's conversion.
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Old 04-27-2012, 05:01 AM   #7
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Thanks for the suggestion, Alex, I'll give it a try.
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Old 04-27-2012, 06:31 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexBell View Post
This is only a guess since I haven't tried it myself - but I've opened up several Smashwords ePubs and it is clear that most of the Meatgrinder is based on calibre.

So far as I know calibre won't accept a Word doc as an input file, but it will accept rtf. Would it work to convert the doc file to rtf, convert it with calibre to ePub or mobi format, and see how it turns out?

There's no guarantee of course that the Meatgrinder hasn't got some other stuff inside it which will mess up calibre's conversion.

I believe that they use Open Office in their conversion stream. I think that they probably use that to make what ever their input in to Calibre is.
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Old 04-27-2012, 08:33 AM   #9
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Alex, that's a pretty good idea. I'll have to take that for a spin. If it works, it gives me my solution.
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Old 04-29-2012, 09:10 PM   #10
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So the conversion stream is Word .doc > Open Office .rtf > Calibre > different formats?
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Old 04-29-2012, 09:32 PM   #11
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I did my first Smashwords upload today. No problems. No vetting notices. I followed their formatting instructions. Certainly the NCX file isn't anything that looks like it was manufactured by Calibre. It's created by keying off the word "Chapter." I suspect Meatgrinder is its own beast.

Dunno for sure!
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Old 04-29-2012, 10:11 PM   #12
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So the conversion stream is Word .doc > Open Office .rtf > Calibre > different formats?

That is my best guess, and "meatgrinder" is some set of scripts and config files that controls that.

But kind of hard to tell when all you have is the end and starting product.
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Old 04-29-2012, 10:32 PM   #13
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I did my first Smashwords upload today. No problems. No vetting notices. I followed their formatting instructions. Certainly the NCX file isn't anything that looks like it was manufactured by Calibre. It's created by keying off the word "Chapter." I suspect Meatgrinder is its own beast.

Dunno for sure!
Calibre does work off of Chapter and h2.
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