Removing mobi versions from Smashwords, plus other stuff
This is fan art by Ambra of two characters in The Soulstone Chronicles fantasy series.
I’ve decided to remove the mobi format from Smashwords, the reason being that I despise unformatted quote marks and the Smashwords meatgrinder flubs formatted quote marks, as in makes them disappear in the mobi version of an epub. The Smashowrds meatgrinder forces the author to use straight quotes, straight apostrophes, straight single quotes, no em dashes, no formatted ellipses. I’m thoroughly sick of working with a special doc just for Smashwords.
Therefore, Dear Reader, please use Calibre to convert all downloads of epub formats from Smashwords into mobi formats, because Calibre very nicely keeps the quote style, no problem at all. Besides, Smashwords uploads only epubs elsewhere. I do the Kindle pubbing myself. I’m not putting up with this unformatted quotes bull crap any longer. Not only is it extra work, the result is ugly.
The change won’t take place immediately, but expect to see mobi formats disappear from new versions as I update the novels for any reason.
Update!
Guess what I just discovered after loading up the latest version or R1 with some proofreading fixes? I can’t get rid of the Kindle version. Can’t. Anyone buying the book will be stuck with the last Kindle version I ever created, all the old mistakes, no new changes. Bleh. That’s just rotten.
Lesson learned: never used Kindle format to begin with on Smashwords. Ever!
As for Kindle, Amazon.com is hiking prices for some books because I’m Canadian. Yes, indeed, after multiple attempts to resolve the hiked prices issue, and after having more than one rep avoid my specific question, an Amazon rep finally admitted that, yes, my Canadian address entitles them to make freebies not free or to add a few cents to their regular USD prices. What this means is that Amazon rakes in extra cents if not an entire US dollar from Canadian customers using Amazon.com, just because that person has a Canadian address. How do I know Amazon is doing this? Because my own books are showing up with wrong prices on my author page on Amazon.com, prices I did not set. I am not happy with Amazon for the price gouging.
Worse yet, Amazon in general does not price matching everywhere in the world, despite that my free books on Amazon.com increased sales of all my books. It seems a win win situation that Amazon should price match throughout the world, but no. Apparently Amazon can’t see this logic. Unless a Canadian or a U.K. citizen clicks the “tell us of a lower price” button, the price won’t drop in Canada or the U.K.
Between running around because of the oncoming holiday, I’m working on a print version of The Grace Murders: Caspar’s Run on CreateSpace. This is my first time using CreateSpace. I’m waiting for a galley, which I won’t approve since I already made changes to the doc. At this point, I just want to be sure the cover looks good, the paper looks good, the cut marks are good, etc. Then I’ll fix the version on CreateSpace and approve the next galley using the on line viewer.
I’m still working on an edit for another author, so nothing new will be written of my stories until the next year, or roughly a month from now. And that about covers my latest update.
