MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Smashwords

AnemicOak · 08-11-2010, 10:55 AM

I my experience Smashwords books usually always have some kind of formatting issue, at least FOR ME. Maybe I'm picky, but I want a TOC, I want chapter and scene breaks, I don't want spaces between every paragraph, I want a cover (Mobi books don't have covers from what I've found), I want good metadata. So I usually end up having to do some messing around with a book to get it in it's most readable form (again, for me). This leads to me not buying much there anymore as I don't always want to spend a bunch of time reformatting stuff just so I can read it. Some of it's the "meatgrinder", but I think a lot of it is authors not following the formatting guide Smashwords provides. Basically a lot of the stuff I've bought comes of very amateur in presentation.

I love the concept of Smashwords, but would like to see the reality of it improved.

08-11-2010, 10:55 AM	#19
AnemicOak Bookaholic Posts: 14,391 Karma: 54969924 Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Minnesota Device: iPad Mini 4, AuraHD, iPhone XR +	I my experience Smashwords books usually always have some kind of formatting issue, at least FOR ME. Maybe I'm picky, but I want a TOC, I want chapter and scene breaks, I don't want spaces between every paragraph, I want a cover (Mobi books don't have covers from what I've found), I want good metadata. So I usually end up having to do some messing around with a book to get it in it's most readable form (again, for me). This leads to me not buying much there anymore as I don't always want to spend a bunch of time reformatting stuff just so I can read it. Some of it's the "meatgrinder", but I think a lot of it is authors not following the formatting guide Smashwords provides. Basically a lot of the stuff I've bought comes of very amateur in presentation. I love the concept of Smashwords, but would like to see the reality of it improved.