04-27-2012, 10:07 PM | #31 | |
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When an author comes here asking for help when a Smashwords conversion fails, it's not easy to say what's wrong and/or what to do. Sure, it may be easy to fix the ePub, but the fix needs to be in the Word document. That isn't easy. I've heard from a lot of authors who would like nothing better then to be able to put up ePub that's been cleaned and works well. I've seen some of the issues that can happen in the code. The code might look good if you don't want to change anything, but if you do, you might not be able to. I've also seen some ePub that were all italics and some that were all underlined. Obviously these passed the checks and balances after being ground up. So the system isn't perfect by a long shot. In fact, the system is so very much broken. |
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04-27-2012, 10:24 PM | #32 | |
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By all reports I have seen, their business is booming... so I hardly call that backfiring. I doubt that the choice of doc vs mobi vs what ever upload will matter in the long run. If they were to pick one, mobi might be wiser then epub since more people have Kindles then not. So long as it works, which it does, for the majority share of the market, Iam sure they will carry on fine. |
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04-27-2012, 10:37 PM | #33 |
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While you're at it, why don't you write a book for English majors on how to write functional CSS HTML and create their own ePubs? It'd to a lot more good than sitting around snipping at Smashwords all day long.
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04-28-2012, 12:16 AM | #34 | |
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I've got the Smashwords Style Guide in front of me at Step 12: 'If you insert page breaks into your Word document (Insert: Break: [choose one]), the PDF and RTF versions will honor them, but these commands will be lost in most other formats, which strip page breaks and section breaks.' Have things changed? Have you actually inserted a page break in Word and had it cause a page break in the resultant ePub? |
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04-28-2012, 02:23 AM | #35 | |
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04-28-2012, 03:52 AM | #36 |
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If I remember correctly, one Smashword official once said in a thread around here, that they are working on accepting epub directly. It is just not a high priority for them.
Of course not all authors can produce perfect epub files, but there are a lot of authors coming here with questions about broken Word files that do not pass the meatgrinder. So creating well styled Word files is not a skill known by all authors either. No one ever said it has to be an either-or situation. Just because Smashword starts to accept epubs does not mean they have to stop accepting Word files. In my opinion they would do good to open up to accept epub. That way all those authors that can't reach the other outlets, because of not living in the US, got a chance to provide their readers with beautiful ebooks. Whether they create them their selves or let others create them is another question. |
04-28-2012, 07:24 AM | #37 | |
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What I currently do that does work is in my Word template I have "Header 1" set to have the page break before it, and that works flawlessly. (Header 1 is what I use for chapters) |
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04-28-2012, 07:31 AM | #38 | |
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They have to decide that if treating the edge cases is worth that cost, and it seems that so far they have decided its not. As customer, I am all for flexibility, but I can see the wisdom in not doing it. |
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04-28-2012, 07:35 AM | #39 | |
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04-28-2012, 08:30 AM | #40 | |
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I'll see if I can make that work with LibreOffice or Atlantis - neither my daughter (for whom I'm doing the formatting) nor I have Microsoft Word. |
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04-28-2012, 09:17 AM | #41 | |
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04-28-2012, 03:30 PM | #42 | |
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BUT I suspect that Smashwords is looking to migrate more and more into a publisher kind of role, and in which case getting into Amazon is critical to long time survivability I would think. |
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04-28-2012, 07:28 PM | #43 | |
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Which reminds me, I'll have to remember that one. |
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04-28-2012, 07:33 PM | #44 | |
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That's good for Smashwords that business is booming. But they haven't got my money due to their sub-par meatgrinder. |
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04-28-2012, 07:36 PM | #45 | |
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Given the problems that some have getting a good conversion out of Word, it would be easier to learn to make the ePub. And as for books on HTML/XML/CSS, they already exist. |
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