Best formatted Smashwords ebooks

[Marseille]

I guess this isn't exactly the discussion the OP had in mind, but I've found it to be very informative. Thanks to Wilde and those who've helpfully been providing tips. I haven't published yet and I'm noting the tips in hopes of avoid issues myself.

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

I guess this isn't exactly the discussion the OP had in mind, but I've found it to be very informative.

You're right, David, and that's my fault. Sorry to the OP. This thread should probably be moved now, but I'm not sure where, since it handles four different ebook formats, and two methods of producing them!

To round off the continuing saga of my attempts to get the meat-grinder to do what I want, here's what has happened after I removed the page break from my Smashwords header style, and inserted them manually instead.

I now have epub and mobi with page breaks and chapter titles. The chapter titles are centred, but are in the same 12pt font as the rest of the text. Based on this, I'd be willing to bet that if I removed the larger font size from my Smashwords header style and changed the font size manually as well, I'd get 14pt titles, but I can't be bothered just for the sake of academic testing.

All versions now have tables of contents, which start at chapter 4. I think the reason for this may be that, at the end of the book, I have included three chapters of my next book, and these are called Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. Presumably there can only be one Chapter 1 in a table of contents, and it's the last one that counts!

The lrf version continues to have 14pt chapter titles, but it, too, has the strange toc, now I've discovered how to get the toc to show on the Sony reader (probably had it before, too, but I never checked).

The Palm version as displayed in the Palm reader for the Mac is a mess. No page breaks, no 14pt nor centring for the chapter titles, and it can't even cope with the Swedish letters, åäöÅÄÖ, which isn't asking a lot, but this is probably not Smashwords fault. It can't cope with italics nor with quotation marks, but instead inserts “ in front and †behind. This may be because I prefer proper 66's and 99's and not typewriter quotation marks. Again, these are probably not Smashwords fault, and I think I'll just remove the Palm from the list of versions produced. Anyone reading a 500 page novel on a Palm or any other cellphone type of apparatus is probably more interested in pressing buttons than reading my story.

I'll decide soon which version to distribute, my calibre produced version or the new meat-grinder version after manual editing, and I'll check to see what calibre did with the toc, if it did anything at all. I'll also check to see whether I can add the three first chapters to the new meat-grinder version's toc. But in any event, since I can't determine via Smashwords which version is distributed, I guess I'll have to distribute myself.

If Mark is still lurking in this thread, it might be worthwhile mentioning in the style guide that page breaks should not be included in a style, but inserted manually, and you might like to test whether removing the different font size from the chapter header style and changing that manually will also affect the outcome. Oh, and not to call sample chapters at the end of the book Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. Maybe it would work if they were called Sample Chapter 1, etc.

[amoroso]

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

I guess this isn't exactly the discussion the OP had in mind, but I've found it to be very informative.

I also think it's informative because there seems to be limited information on Smashwords formatting beyond the official style guide.

[egtalbot]

James - if you're using bookmarks and anchors/links for the table of contents then what matters is what you name the bookmarks. So name your main Chapter One bookmark "chapterone" and the one in the sample "samplechapterone". Or something along those lines, I'm not 100% clear what each of the ereaders does automatically with bookmark names. I know that would work for mobi/kindle format. At this point, I wouldn't recommend doing a toc any other way (I can't remember if you mentioned how you're creating your toc).

It's definitely odd that the headers aren't any bigger - I seem to be doing the exact same thing and mine are. But I can tell you I would be at least as frustrated as you are if I had run into the same problems.

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by egtalbot

James - if you're using bookmarks and anchors/links for the table of contents then what matters is what you name the bookmarks. So name your main Chapter One bookmark "chapterone" and the one in the sample "samplechapterone". Or something along those lines, I'm not 100% clear what each of the ereaders does automatically with bookmark names. I know that would work for mobi/kindle format. At this point, I wouldn't recommend doing a toc any other way (I can't remember if you mentioned how you're creating your toc).

It's definitely odd that the headers aren't any bigger - I seem to be doing the exact same thing and mine are. But I can tell you I would be at least as frustrated as you are if I had run into the same problems.

Thanks, EG, that's useful information for those doing a toc. Personally I've never seen the point of a toc in a novel. Ask someone how far they've got and no-one says "I'm up to chapter seven". They say "I'm up to the part where Jack cheats Jill over a bucket of water". The meat-grinder presumably does one automatically in case of need, because it can't know whether the meat it's grinding comes from a novel or a work of non-fiction. If I remember correctly, my calibre-generated books were done with the toc option unchecked.

Regarding the headers, it's possible that they would look different on an actual ereader. For mobi, for example, I have to use Kindle for Mac since I don't have a real Kindle to test them on. There isn't actually a lot of difference between 12pt and 14pt, and I usually go for 16pt for the chapter titles, but I seem to remember that the style guide recommended not going above 14pt, and when I used the nuclear method, I wasn't going to argue!

[egtalbot]

but I've had no problem w/ 16 point for my "Part One", "Part Two", etc headings.

Meatgrinder I don't think automatically creates a TOC unless that's something new. It just will convert bookmarks and hyperlinks into the appropriate elements in mobi, epub, etc so it works like a TOC.

Mobi at least I know has noc files and some other much more detailed indexing and meta stuff that I don't bother with. But if all you want is a basic TOC to be linked to the buttons on your e-reader, bookmarks and hyperlinks are the way to go.

And yeah, for fiction, I just link to each "Part" of my book, along with the "About the Author" and "Author Notes" sections. For short story collection of course I link to each SS.

[seonj]

Paranoid double-checking? Ha, ha, it sounds so close to my own style. I find the 'immediately unpublish' advice to be wise. I just did that. Now I need to find how to do page breaks on Smashwords. I am not happy with my page breaks.

Originally Posted by jrlewis

Part of my publishing checklist is to upload to Smashwords, then immediately unpublish the book so I can download all the formats and check the files myself, and then publish it again and release the book to distributors.

I'm big into paranoid double-checking.