Quote:
Originally Posted by jhempel24
Everytime I seem to get a book from Smashwords, the book seems to be formatted pretty un-professionally
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Most of the time the problems start with Word/OpenOffice, it's so easy to get errors in there without noticing (wrong font, slightly different font size, etc.), and when exporting to HTML/ePub, all that crap stays in there.
These errors become pretty obvious when you look at the HTML source of the end result, but most authors aren't that familiar with HTML (some may not even know that ePub is HTML?), so they don't ever even look at the source of what they're publishing.
Peeking into the source can often be quite entertaining, especially when authors don't use their real name but an alias to publish their books. When you look at the source, more often than not it reveals their actual real name like this:
PHP Code:
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.0">
<meta name="AUTHOR" content="Real Name">
In the end, even professional authors aren't necessarily professional typesetters/formatters/computer experts. Like writing, that's just something you have to learn (or have someone else take care of it). I can live with minor formatting glitches and a largely typo free text. I've yet to come across a book on Smashwords that was formatted so horribly that I'd stop reading it.
Check out the sample before you buy...