The truth about publishing on Smashwords (and eating your hat).
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I promised a little while back to write the final installment of my 'E-book Asylum' articles, for newcomers to the whole e-publishing scene. The first two dealt with how to publish on Amazon, then on Barnes and Noble. This one deals with the thorniest of the bunch - Smashwords :)
Smashwords bill themselves as a one stop method of publishing youre-book across a range of the largest and most influential online stores. Theydo this for a very small slice of your pie and, at first glance, this lookslike a great idea. However (you guessed it) once you start breathing deeply ofthis new found freedom you'll be wishing at times that someone would open a windowand let in some fresh air.
I really don't want to be too hard on Smashwords though. Theservice is largely unique and is still in a sort of 'beta stage' while theyiron out issues. (Allowing author's to publish to Amazon being one of them.) But, if you give your work over solely to Smashwords thenyou are channelling yourself though their limited perspective. So here's why,and more importantly how, I recommend using them:Use them. Publish your work with them, but before you do,run around the corner and stick your stuff up on Amazon and B&N anyway,independently of Smashword's methods. Maintain control of your destiny.Publish/ list your e-book in as many places as you can. You might be thinking that the Smashwords submission toB&N and Amazon will override your own submissions. Don't worry, it won't.The primary benefit of Smashwords is the e-book ISBN number they give you forFREE, which is used by Apple and Sony, and would otherwise cost you aload of money and hassle to get hold of. (See later in this article on how to obtain your free ISBNfrom Smashwords).A second major benefit is that it's really easy to creatediscount coupons for your books using Smashwords, which are great for offeringpotential reviewers free copies.
Smashwords formatting - Getting your e-book correctly formatted is the primarybugbear when using Smashwords. There is really no easy option and the difficultyof this, as well as Smashword's patchy feedback on whether you've succeeded in fulfilling their criteria has been known to drive debut authors running to the doors of thelocal lunatic asylum in an attempt to escape the unforgiving nature of thistask. So brace your girdles and sharpen the old Gandermank 'cos it's gonna be abumpy ride folks.
First thing we need to do is download the Smashwords StyleGuide. You can find it here: http://www.smashwords.com/b/52
However, I am going to distil the info contained within totry and make the process clearer, and easier. (Call me crazy!) Though you shouldstill read through the Smashwords Style Guide, as there are other, peripheralissues that may apply to your e-book that I cannot include here for spacereasons (like tables and whatnot). It'll also give you an insight into the waythey work.Smashword's attitude to the formatting in your e-book isthat you probably cocked things up. They won't accept your book onto their Premiumlist (which is the list that ships out to the major online retailers) unlessyou get this right. Don't bother going through your text re-organising things,removing indents and chasing your own tail. What you need, from day one, is theNUCLEAR OPTION (boom!).
1) Nuclear option. Copy and paste to notepad then back again to Word.Make sure your manuscript is saved. Then save it againsomewhere else. Highlight your entire manuscript and COPY it. (Press CTRL andC). Then open Notepad. PASTE your manuscript into notepad.(Press CTRL and V). This removes ALL formatting from your manuscript. Save thenotepad file to a convenient location. Now, highlight and copy the text in thenotepad file (Ctrl and C again). Open a blank document in MSWord and paste thetext you've just copied from the notepad file into it (Ctrl and V again). Now,you will have a MSWord document of your e-book that has zero formatting withinthat could foul up Smashword's Auto Vetter. Save it, twice. This document isthe one you will be uploading to Smashwords after you've finished with it.
2) Apply all your indents again.
(Noooo! I hear you cry. I spent months getting this right. Mynovel is 90,000 words long! Surely you jest!?) I know. You have my deepest sympathies. This is the worst bit about the wholeprocess. It sucks monumentally but it's the most thorough and efficient way. There is a veryuseful tool on the toolbar at the top of MSWord that will help enormously. It'scalled a 'Pilcrow' and it's the weird backwards P that sits near the 'inserttable' or the 'zoom' features in the toolbar that looks like this:
¶Click it and your formatting willbe revealed. Use it to iron everything out.Do not use TAB or SPACEBAR for applying indents during this process - this isimportant. First, you should set an indent value for the entire document by going tothe bar at the top of MSWord and clicking 'Format' then 'Paragraph'.
3) Go through your manuscript and remove indents on thefirst line of any paragraph.
4) Apply italics, large fonts and center text as needed.
5) Apply paragraph returns in a consistent manner - I dothree before chapter headings and two after (before main text starts).
6) Apply page breaks at end of chapters, by going to'insert' on the toolbar and then 'break' (or 'page break').
7) There's no need to paste an image of the cover into thetop of your manuscript in my experience.
8) Add links to yourself at the very end.
9) On the title page of your novel you need to keep itsimple. I recommend you just have the following - Book title (not too big,16pts is fine), your name, copyright notice, mention it's the 'SmashwordsEdition', website address, a dedication. If you go writing things like 'published byetc.' Smashword's auto vetter will fail your novel. Stick to what I've justlisted.
10) Create Smashwords account here: http://www.smashwords.com/
11) Upload your novel. Don't forget the cover too, you upload that separately so don't paste it into your novel manuscript.
12) Eat your hat. Yup - and put some ketchup and fries in it, because if you got this far you deserve a round of applause. (And probably not the savage acid reflux you'll get from eating a hat. So, the hat? That's optional, unless it's made out of flowers and cheese...)
Obtaining an ISBN from Smashwords - Some online retailers require that your novel has an ISBNnumber. Getting hold of one of these is expensive and annoying. Smashwords areawesome in this respect because they supply one for you, for FREE. Before we gothere, it's worth mentioning that ISBNs for e-books are a grey area right now.Some folk say you need one ISBN for each e-retailer offering your book. Others sayone ISBN will cover ALL electronic versions of the same book. I'm going withthe latter view because it makes life easier and it works just fine, the wholeISBN thing is a bit of a scam anyway in my opinion. Having said that, Amazon and B&N don't require themanyways, so they get five stars for author friendly open mindedness.So, to get an ISBN for your book - Go to the 'Dashboard' of your new Smashwords account (you'llsee the link after you log in). Click on ISBN Manager on the left side. Scrollto the bottom of the page for a one click solution. Simple!After you've uploaded, Smashwords quite unhelpfully willhave you waiting with 'pending review' status and not tell you why your workisn't being reviewed for AGES (like, weeks). Check your e-mail too for messages generated bythe Auto Vetter. This whole process left me wishing Smashwords would'throw me a freakin' bone'. I had to wait 2 weeks to see if they would accept my novelto the premium list. If you use the nuclear option above it's a lot of horse work,but you'll get accepted. Just take your time.Thanks for reading, I hope, if nothing else, thisarticle has given an idea of what you're up against with Smashwords.
Q. Is itreally worth publishing with them?
A. Yes, it is. An author needs as manyvenues as possible, but don't expect any positive results from your efforts (i.e:sales) for quite a while as it takes them an age to list your stuff. Because of this, in my book, it's not top priority.
Smashwords bill themselves as a one stop method of publishing youre-book across a range of the largest and most influential online stores. Theydo this for a very small slice of your pie and, at first glance, this lookslike a great idea. However (you guessed it) once you start breathing deeply ofthis new found freedom you'll be wishing at times that someone would open a windowand let in some fresh air.
I really don't want to be too hard on Smashwords though. Theservice is largely unique and is still in a sort of 'beta stage' while theyiron out issues. (Allowing author's to publish to Amazon being one of them.) But, if you give your work over solely to Smashwords thenyou are channelling yourself though their limited perspective. So here's why,and more importantly how, I recommend using them:Use them. Publish your work with them, but before you do,run around the corner and stick your stuff up on Amazon and B&N anyway,independently of Smashword's methods. Maintain control of your destiny.Publish/ list your e-book in as many places as you can. You might be thinking that the Smashwords submission toB&N and Amazon will override your own submissions. Don't worry, it won't.The primary benefit of Smashwords is the e-book ISBN number they give you forFREE, which is used by Apple and Sony, and would otherwise cost you aload of money and hassle to get hold of. (See later in this article on how to obtain your free ISBNfrom Smashwords).A second major benefit is that it's really easy to creatediscount coupons for your books using Smashwords, which are great for offeringpotential reviewers free copies.
Smashwords formatting - Getting your e-book correctly formatted is the primarybugbear when using Smashwords. There is really no easy option and the difficultyof this, as well as Smashword's patchy feedback on whether you've succeeded in fulfilling their criteria has been known to drive debut authors running to the doors of thelocal lunatic asylum in an attempt to escape the unforgiving nature of thistask. So brace your girdles and sharpen the old Gandermank 'cos it's gonna be abumpy ride folks.
First thing we need to do is download the Smashwords StyleGuide. You can find it here: http://www.smashwords.com/b/52
However, I am going to distil the info contained within totry and make the process clearer, and easier. (Call me crazy!) Though you shouldstill read through the Smashwords Style Guide, as there are other, peripheralissues that may apply to your e-book that I cannot include here for spacereasons (like tables and whatnot). It'll also give you an insight into the waythey work.Smashword's attitude to the formatting in your e-book isthat you probably cocked things up. They won't accept your book onto their Premiumlist (which is the list that ships out to the major online retailers) unlessyou get this right. Don't bother going through your text re-organising things,removing indents and chasing your own tail. What you need, from day one, is theNUCLEAR OPTION (boom!).
1) Nuclear option. Copy and paste to notepad then back again to Word.Make sure your manuscript is saved. Then save it againsomewhere else. Highlight your entire manuscript and COPY it. (Press CTRL andC). Then open Notepad. PASTE your manuscript into notepad.(Press CTRL and V). This removes ALL formatting from your manuscript. Save thenotepad file to a convenient location. Now, highlight and copy the text in thenotepad file (Ctrl and C again). Open a blank document in MSWord and paste thetext you've just copied from the notepad file into it (Ctrl and V again). Now,you will have a MSWord document of your e-book that has zero formatting withinthat could foul up Smashword's Auto Vetter. Save it, twice. This document isthe one you will be uploading to Smashwords after you've finished with it.
2) Apply all your indents again.
(Noooo! I hear you cry. I spent months getting this right. Mynovel is 90,000 words long! Surely you jest!?) I know. You have my deepest sympathies. This is the worst bit about the wholeprocess. It sucks monumentally but it's the most thorough and efficient way. There is a veryuseful tool on the toolbar at the top of MSWord that will help enormously. It'scalled a 'Pilcrow' and it's the weird backwards P that sits near the 'inserttable' or the 'zoom' features in the toolbar that looks like this:
¶Click it and your formatting willbe revealed. Use it to iron everything out.Do not use TAB or SPACEBAR for applying indents during this process - this isimportant. First, you should set an indent value for the entire document by going tothe bar at the top of MSWord and clicking 'Format' then 'Paragraph'.
3) Go through your manuscript and remove indents on thefirst line of any paragraph.
4) Apply italics, large fonts and center text as needed.
5) Apply paragraph returns in a consistent manner - I dothree before chapter headings and two after (before main text starts).
6) Apply page breaks at end of chapters, by going to'insert' on the toolbar and then 'break' (or 'page break').
7) There's no need to paste an image of the cover into thetop of your manuscript in my experience.
8) Add links to yourself at the very end.
9) On the title page of your novel you need to keep itsimple. I recommend you just have the following - Book title (not too big,16pts is fine), your name, copyright notice, mention it's the 'SmashwordsEdition', website address, a dedication. If you go writing things like 'published byetc.' Smashword's auto vetter will fail your novel. Stick to what I've justlisted.
10) Create Smashwords account here: http://www.smashwords.com/
11) Upload your novel. Don't forget the cover too, you upload that separately so don't paste it into your novel manuscript.
12) Eat your hat. Yup - and put some ketchup and fries in it, because if you got this far you deserve a round of applause. (And probably not the savage acid reflux you'll get from eating a hat. So, the hat? That's optional, unless it's made out of flowers and cheese...)
Obtaining an ISBN from Smashwords - Some online retailers require that your novel has an ISBNnumber. Getting hold of one of these is expensive and annoying. Smashwords areawesome in this respect because they supply one for you, for FREE. Before we gothere, it's worth mentioning that ISBNs for e-books are a grey area right now.Some folk say you need one ISBN for each e-retailer offering your book. Others sayone ISBN will cover ALL electronic versions of the same book. I'm going withthe latter view because it makes life easier and it works just fine, the wholeISBN thing is a bit of a scam anyway in my opinion. Having said that, Amazon and B&N don't require themanyways, so they get five stars for author friendly open mindedness.So, to get an ISBN for your book - Go to the 'Dashboard' of your new Smashwords account (you'llsee the link after you log in). Click on ISBN Manager on the left side. Scrollto the bottom of the page for a one click solution. Simple!After you've uploaded, Smashwords quite unhelpfully willhave you waiting with 'pending review' status and not tell you why your workisn't being reviewed for AGES (like, weeks). Check your e-mail too for messages generated bythe Auto Vetter. This whole process left me wishing Smashwords would'throw me a freakin' bone'. I had to wait 2 weeks to see if they would accept my novelto the premium list. If you use the nuclear option above it's a lot of horse work,but you'll get accepted. Just take your time.Thanks for reading, I hope, if nothing else, thisarticle has given an idea of what you're up against with Smashwords.
Q. Is itreally worth publishing with them?
A. Yes, it is. An author needs as manyvenues as possible, but don't expect any positive results from your efforts (i.e:sales) for quite a while as it takes them an age to list your stuff. Because of this, in my book, it's not top priority.
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