Need Smashwords Help

[Steven Lake]

Ok, I finally got my Smashwords stuff sorted out (long story, so I'll spare you the details) but now I need to upload my books to them. The problem is, they say you need a Word document of your story, and it has to be formatted in a specific way, but I'm using Libre Office, and I'm not sure if what I make there will convert over cleanly. So I'm wondering if there is a tool out there that will allow me to fiddle with the document to get it looking right and preview it without having to go through smashwords to do it. Is there anything, or am I just stuck having to sorta fudge it through the Smashwords interface?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Unfortunately, Smashwords doesn't give you a lot of options... not even uploading your own prepared pre-formatted content. It takes Word, it does the converting... that's all the options you get.

Also, the Smashwords interface won't let you edit the copy... it'll only tell you (more or less) what you did wrong after you upload it. If you haven't used their Style Guide, I'd recommend doing so, and getting your copy as close to their recommendations as possible.

If Libre Office content can be saved as a Word doc, you may need to pass that copy to someone who has Word (or go to a service that will let you use their equipment, like a library, FedEx-Kinkos, etc) and check your new Word doc for proper formatting. If they don't have web access there, print out the Style Guide and take it with you.

[Todd Young]

I've heard of people doing it in OpenOffice and still having problems. You need a word doc.

[avantman42]

I've used LibreOffice for five documents. I followed the Style Guide as closely as I could, saved a copy in Word 97/2000/XP format, and uploaded. There were a few issues, but nothing serious.

[teh603]

I'm a little troubled by their nagging dependence on Word- and particularly how they spell it out in full every single time. These guys aren't an MS subsidiary, are they? Edit: Ok, they got less annoying about spelling it out later in the formatting guide.

I'm *particularly* troubled by their comment that using spaces or tabs to make indentation is "bad formatting." These guys have clearly never had to upload to sites whose text manglers strip out any attempt at indent-based formatting.

[Harper Kingsley]

I use LibreOffice. Paragraph set everything to "0", then I use "0.3" for First line. Seems to work okay, since my newer stuff has come out well. I need to go back and redo my older stuff, but I'm getting a new cover and figure I'll do it all at once.

Anyways, save your file. Then hit "Save As..." Word 97/2000/XP doc format. Should be good. Just download the epub and look it over (I had one come out with a bunch of red text, so I just went back through the doc, selected all, and had the text turned black. Was good after that.)

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by teh603

I'm a little troubled by their nagging dependence on Word- and particularly how they spell it out in full every single time. These guys aren't an MS subsidiary, are they? Edit: Ok, they got less annoying about spelling it out later in the formatting guide.

I suspect it's more to do with the fact that Word is the most popular word processor, and it's a lot easier for them if they just deal with a single format and a single program.

Originally Posted by teh603

I'm *particularly* troubled by their comment that using spaces or tabs to make indentation is "bad formatting." These guys have clearly never had to upload to sites whose text manglers strip out any attempt at indent-based formatting.

I don't see why you should be troubled by it. I happen to agree that it's bad practice to use spaces or tabs for indentation.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by avantman42

I suspect it's more to do with the fact that Word is the most popular word processor, and it's a lot easier for them if they just deal with a single format and a single program.

More like the word processor that most of America has been strongarmed into using. But that's another topic for another time.

I don't see why you should be troubled by it. I happen to agree that it's bad practice to use spaces or tabs for indentation.

Its bad practice, until you try uploading to other sites. Both deviantart and goodreads.com try to strip indents out as often as possible; dA at least allows indents based on space characters, while goodreads strips out anything and everything that looks like indentation- spaces, indent characters, crafted HTML tags, tabs, everything. I expected better from goodreads, but then again I'm not the guy who wrote their parsers.

You also don't seem to have tried asking the community of either site for help in getting indents to work; the general concensus from both is that "grammar needs to catch up to the internet, and indents are so last-century." The whole topic of formatting a document to look professional is troll bait.

Not everyone knows about smashwords when they're first starting out, and what may "officially" be a bad habit on one site might be the only way someone can get something remotely passable on a majority of the others.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by teh603

More like the word processor that most of America has been strongarmed into using. But that's another topic for another time.

"Popular" may have been a bad choice of word, but it's certainly widely used, and not just in America.

Originally Posted by teh603

Its bad practice, until you try uploading to other sites. Both deviantart and goodreads.com try to strip indents out as often as possible; dA at least allows indents based on space characters, while goodreads strips out anything and everything that looks like indentation- spaces, indent characters, crafted HTML tags, tabs, everything. I expected better from goodreads, but then again I'm not the guy who wrote their parsers.

I'd argue that using styles is good practice, and not using them is bad practice. Other sites may force you to use bad practices, but that doesn't stop them being bad practices. Back in the day, web designers used to use all sorts of nasty tricks to make websites that would work in Internet Explorer because it didn't support the standards properly. IE was by far the most-used browser, and that made the use of these nasty tricks more-or-less obligatory, but it didn't make them good practice.

Originally Posted by teh603

You also don't seem to have tried asking the community of either site for help in getting indents to work; the general concensus from both is that "grammar needs to catch up to the internet, and indents are so last-century." The whole topic of formatting a document to look professional is troll bait.

I haven't asked either community for help, you're right.

Originally Posted by teh603

Not everyone knows about smashwords when they're first starting out, and what may "officially" be a bad habit on one site might be the only way someone can get something remotely passable on a majority of the others.

I'm not saying it's a bad habit for files intended for Smashwords. I personally think that using styles is good practice in general, and that using tabs or spaces to indent is bad practice in general.

To be honest, I still don't understand why you said:

Originally Posted by teh603

I'm *particularly* troubled by their comment that using spaces or tabs to make indentation is "bad formatting."

Do you think using spaces or tabs is good formatting? Why?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by teh603

I'm a little troubled by their nagging dependence on Word- and particularly how they spell it out in full every single time. These guys aren't an MS subsidiary, are they? Edit: Ok, they got less annoying about spelling it out later in the formatting guide.

I'm *particularly* troubled by their comment that using spaces or tabs to make indentation is "bad formatting." These guys have clearly never had to upload to sites whose text manglers strip out any attempt at indent-based formatting.

It's just that it's bad for them, and their take-one-and-convert-to-all system. And when you consider that some reading devices, eg, cell phones and PDAs, have very small screens that can lose a lot of a line taken up by indents and tab spaces, their POV does make a point.

True, I think we all wished Smashwords had chosen HTML to upload copy. It would make all of our lives easier.

Originally Posted by teh603

You also don't seem to have tried asking the community of either site for help in getting indents to work; the general concensus from both is that "grammar needs to catch up to the internet, and indents are so last-century." The whole topic of formatting a document to look professional is troll bait.

That's because trolls are too lazy to write and format properly.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by avantman42

Do you think using spaces or tabs is good formatting? Why?

You use what works, and works in as many places as possible. If I was to GPL a chapter or so and publish it on dA, it'd help if I could have the two formatted more or less the same.

There's also the small fact that I write using a Linux equivalent of Notepad, so there's no other way to tell where my own paragraphs begin and end but to manually indent. Its easy enough to strip out in the finished manuscript before setting up the style sheet and all that. It also makes "nuclear formatting removal" a lot easier since the formatting was never there to begin with. Just start a blank document and re-import each .txt file in turn.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by teh603

You use what works, and works in as many places as possible. If I was to GPL a chapter or so and publish it on dA, it'd help if I could have the two formatted more or less the same.

I still don't think that "what works in as many places as possible" equates to "good practice", though I'll accept that it's practical. I think we may have to agree to disagree on that point.

Originally Posted by teh603

There's also the small fact that I write using a Linux equivalent of Notepad, so there's no other way to tell where my own paragraphs begin and end but to manually indent. Its easy enough to strip out in the finished manuscript before setting up the style sheet and all that. It also makes "nuclear formatting removal" a lot easier since the formatting was never there to begin with. Just start a blank document and re-import each .txt file in turn.

I write using Geany on Linux, using HTML markup. Personally, I always have line numbers displayed, and I think they serve to show where paragraphs are quite well. Alternatively, you could use blank lines between paragraphs.

Depending on which text editor you're using, it should be reasonably simple to remove the tabs in your text file before you import into Libre Office or whatever.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by teh603

I'm *particularly* troubled by their comment that using spaces or tabs to make indentation is "bad formatting."

The trouble with people who do that is they assume everything will look exactly like what it does in Word, whereas in reality different programs will display them completely differently. When I used to do design for print people would send me Word files full of tabs and extra spaces, they were a nightmare to fix. Even worse were all the extra hard returns they use to force a page break.

[abr]

Many libraries and public facilities have Word. Save your file as an RTF, and you can open in Word and resave it as a word doc. Suggest you check the formatting carefully before submitting your manuscript. I don't know the program you use but not all RTF's are equal. Just a suggestion.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by avantman42

I still don't think that "what works in as many places as possible" equates to "good practice", though I'll accept that it's practical. I think we may have to agree to disagree on that point.

Agreed. I've had to use practical "bad practice" way too often, surprisingly enough in college where "good practice" is regularly subverted by deranged professors. Like the one who demanded a page of endnotes *and* strict MLA formatting, at a time when the MLA strictly prohibited them and footnotes.

And people wonder why I prefer APA...

I write using Geany on Linux, using HTML markup. Personally, I always have line numbers displayed, and I think they serve to show where paragraphs are quite well. Alternatively, you could use blank lines between paragraphs.

Depending on which text editor you're using, it should be reasonably simple to remove the tabs in your text file before you import into Libre Office or whatever.

Usually Kate. I generally keep line numbers turned off, but that could help now that you mention it. Need to see if Kate supports them.

Edit: She does, although you have to set it in the Configure option instead of the View menu or hitting f11 for her to make it persistent. Thanks for the idea! I'll have to see how this works.