ePUBCHECKER errors

[zenny]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But how do you publish on Smashwords without being meatground?> You don't. That's why I dislike buying from Smashwords. I hate their meatgrinder.

I've already published electronic versions (EVY, PDF, Kindle) and the paperbacks of the three volume book The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk During the World War, but tried Smashwords as another channel. So far it's been a lot of work and frustration.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

They should at least support uploading perfectly good ePubs...

I 100% agree. I also feel that if they are going to meatgrind, use the ePub as the source. It will make a much better set of other formats then starting with a Word document. No matter how you follow the guide, you'll till get a mess.

But what I think Smashwords should do is allow all the formats to be uploaded but make ePub a mandatory upload. That way if any formats are not uploaded, they get made from the ePub. Simple really and a lot nicer solution.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by pholy

Yeah, they should....



But they don't!


Authors need to flood Mark Coker requesting this feature.

Users also need to flood Mark as well. I'm tired of downloading an eBook and finding it's not right and then having to wade through the muck that a Word conversion made just to fix things.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by zenny

I've already published electronic versions (EVY, PDF, Kindle) and the paperbacks of the three volume book The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk During the World War, but tried Smashwords as another channel. So far it's been a lot of work and frustration.

So lets start a flood to Mark to get him to fix SW.

[zenny]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

I would advise not use Smashword Meatgrinder but learn to do it yourself. The program really produces ugly unreadable code. That makes it much harder to bughunt.

I am not and don't want to become a programmer. That's why I gave up publishing on Kindle at the time my book would had been one of the first 2,000 book available. It was just too much work with very little support. Everything gets always more complicated when you have foreign characters in the text, etc. So, I gave up, as I didn't have the time, still working on the translation of the remaining two volumes. Finally, in December 2010 I looked again at what Amazon had in the way of support. It was much better and I spent about two weeks getting it all right and published the work.

With Smashwords earlier this year I just wanted to see if I could publish my book via another channel to reach more readers.

[Toxaris]

Creating an ePub is not that hard, especially is you use Sigil. From what I read and see, Smashword generated a lot of garbage code and let you solve it yourself. Reader will not be that happy if it doesn't look good.

If you want reasonably good code, convert the word document with Atlantis Word Processor. You can test it out before you want to buy.

However, it is your choice.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Creating an ePub is not that hard, especially is you use Sigil. From what I read and see, Smashword generated a lot of garbage code and let you solve it yourself. Reader will not be that happy if it doesn't look good.

If you want reasonably good code, convert the word document with Atlantis Word Processor. You can test it out before you want to buy.

However, it is your choice.

There is also Open Office with the writer2xhtml plugin to make ePub.

http://writer2latex.sourceforge.net/

[zenny]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I 100% agree. I also feel that if they are going to meatgrind, use the ePub as the source. It will make a much better set of other formats then starting with a Word document. No matter how you follow the guide, you'll till get a mess.

Did I mention I hate MS Word and don't use it unless forced to?

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But what I think Smashwords should do is allow all the formats to be uploaded but make ePub a mandatory upload. That way if any formats are not uploaded, they get made from the ePub. Simple really and a lot nicer solution.

Perhaps they figure that would be too draining on their resources right now. They have plenty people with simple formatting, no foreign characters, etc. books published by people who don't have to put up even one red penny. I still haven't gotten a response to my problem report (although they fixed the problem of feedback going into their trash bin earlier this year). I'm beginning to think that the bad formatting is jeopardizing the reputation of my product more than it is helping by exposing it to an unknown market. It's probably time to just yank The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk During the World War off the Smashwords site.

[zenny]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Users also need to flood Mark as well. I'm tired of downloading an eBook and finding it's not right and then having to wade through the muck that a Word conversion made just to fix things.

Microsoft Word is an abomination and should never have seen the light of day.

[zenny]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Creating an ePub is not that hard, especially is you use Sigil. From what I read and see, Smashword generated a lot of garbage code and let you solve it yourself. Reader will not be that happy if it doesn't look good.

If you want reasonably good code, convert the word document with Atlantis Word Processor. You can test it out before you want to buy.

However, it is your choice.

Thanks for the suggestions. I already have what seems to be a perfect ePub, but Smashwords insists on meatgrinding out their own. There are other silly idiosyncracies in the system. I think I don't want to spend any more of my valuable time on waiting for something to give in. Smashwords might be God-sent to some people who want to see their book published on the Internet. I need to be selling the book, not playing with it. And I've already been selling it. It's just not happening, and apparently won't be, on Smashwords.