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I haven't read the Smashwords Style Guide cover to cover yet. It will be a lot of work to get the MS Word file formatted for Smashwords, I can tell you that! I'm probably going to have to strip all the formatting and re-do everything (italics, paragraphs, etc.). I don't have a Table of Contents in the Word file, as I did that all by hand in the HTML (and .ncx) for the Kindle version. So I'll have to look into that. I may also need to convert the book's graphics from .jpg to .png, which isn't a big deal, but I do wonder if the quality is going to be as good as I see on the Kindle.
I already have a (mostly) clean HTML file that I created because I used that to create the .prc that I submitted to Amazon for the Kindle version of the book. The code will need to be tweaked for the ePub because I had to do some "special" things for the Kindle version (to work around quirks in Amazon's "Look Inside" and to give readers more text to sample).
I've never made an ePub, so there will be a learning curve for me. But I've taught myself HTML and CSS, I can make .mobi and .prc files, and I know about .opf and .ncx files, so I know I can learn ePub.
I would much rather submit an ePub file. As I've said before, formatting matters very much to me. I'd like to have dropcaps, for example. I don't like the thought of submitting an MS Word file for automatic conversion into the various e-book formats, but Smashwords may be the only free choice to get the book into Apple, Sony, and Kobo. I will probably submit a DRM-free ePub directly to Barnes and Noble's PubIt, but they only sell to people in the U.S., so to reach ePub readers outside the U.S., Smashwords may be the only choice.
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