To Smashwords: An Open Letter

Smashwords,

First of all, let me say: You're pretty cool. Easy distribution to a bunch of different markets, well-organized site, good accounting and payment, I get $0.59 out of $0.99? Good stuff. That's why I care about this one thing so much: Formatting for your Meatgrinder is obnoxious and my books still look kinda ugly after it all.

Let's break my problem down:

One, DOC format. I shouldn't have to own Microsoft Word in order to format an eBook. It not only complicates the process (see Two) but it also makes it more difficult for me to work on multiple computers with different operating systems (see Three). It's limiting, and unnecessarily so.

Two, Meatgrinder limitations, most egregiously 'Linked Table of Contents' & Space After Paragraphs. Creating a linked table of contents in Word is a time-consuming and annoying process fraught with peril, especially considering that properly formatted EPUB and MOBI files will create one automatically (see Three). Then there's the matter of restrictive formatting: I read a lot of eBooks while preparing to format my own, and the ones that looked best (to my taste) had indented paragraphs and a little (.2em) space after each paragraph for easier reading. When I put that space into the DOC for Meatgrinder, it rejects it for Premium Distribution. This makes my product look bad, unnecessarily, and I'm tired of dealing with Premium Distribution errors.

Three, HTML. It takes 15 minutes to format an eBook from plain-text into HTML, and that eBook will convert, via Calibre, to pretty much any format and look good doing it (and have a Linked Table of Contents appended in EPUB and MOBI, the two main formats). Doing it via the Smashwords Style Guide takes much longer, especially considering creating a Linked Table of Contents.

Four, Pictures. All those combined means that there is no way that I would ever put pictures in a file going to Smashwords, unless it was only for PDF distribution. Which is, again, unnecessarily limiting.

Solution (for you):
First of all, I love that you've focused on expanding distribution channels! Keep it up, that's one half of your selling point. But I need you to upgrade focus on upgrading your Meatgrinder to accept HTML (or at least EPUB) and convert it from that file. Let people continue submitting via DOC if you want, but let those what can handle it submit via a method that's both more convenient to prepare and looks more professional.

Solution (for me):
All this really only applies to longer fiction where more complicated formatting is necessary. I'll certainly still use Smashwords for short story distribution. I write a lot of short stories and I sell lots of short stories through your distribution networks, so you earn your 10% there (and I get more than the Amazon 35% Great!) But! Until Meatgrinder is upgraded, I'll upload my books (and short story collections) directly to my three focus sites: Amazon, B&N, and Kobo, so that I can be sure of my formatting and the quality of my product.

Thanks for your time,
David Barron

Update: November 3, 2011, Mark Coker announces "Smashwords Direct", "a Meatgrinder bypass option", to be available "by the end of 2012". I await developments.

feel free to comment

ebook Formatting Workflow

Since I've trial'd and error'd it out for myself, and it's not that difficult, here's the Official David Barron eBook Formatting Workflow! Note that it doesn't include how to do images, because I haven't tried that yet. It's also pretty bare-bones, but you can probably figure it out... (This doesn't count as my Friday article) If you totally want to hire me to format an eBook, first, seek professional help because you're insane, then give me $50 and I'll do it, I guess. Free money, am I right? (This takes...15 minutes.)

eBook Formatting

Programs

FocusWriter for text
Microsoft Word 2007 for DOC and pre-formatting
jEdit for HTML
calibre for conversion to EPUB and MOBI
GIMP for cover art
Kindle Previewer

FocusWriter text

type, use -- for — (em dash)

Microsoft Word 2007 preformatting

double quotes : " with "

single quotes : ' with '

em dash : -- with —

ellipses : ... with …

Ctrl-i to <i>^&</i>

jEdit entities

paragraphs: ^(.+)$ with <p>$1</p>

search for <p></i> and fix

” with ”

“ with “

‘ with ‘

’ with ’

… with …

— with —

è with è

é with é

Bold with <strong>Bold</strong>

Strikethrough with <del>Strikethrough</del>

jEdit styles

Apply this header, wrap with body tags

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
   <head>
     <style type="text/css">
       html, body, div, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, ul, ol, dl, li, dt, dd, p, pre, table, th, td, tr { margin: 0; padding: 0em; }
       p
       {
         text-indent: 1.5em;
         margin-bottom: 0.2em;
       }
       p.noindent
       {
         text-indent: 0em;
         margin-bottom: 0.2em;
       }
       p.preview
       {
         margin-top: 5em;
         margin-bottom: 2em;
       }
       p.title
       {
         page-break-before: always;
         font-size: 3em;
         font-weight: bold;
         margin-top: 5em;
       }
       p.subtitle
       {
         text-indent: 3em;
         font-size: 2em;
         font-weight: bold;
       }
       p.author
       {
         text-indent: 3em;
         font-size: 2em;
       }
       p.matter
       {
         text-indent: 3em;
         font-size: 1.5em;
       }
       p.chapter
       {
         page-break-before: always;
         text-indent: 1.5em;
         font-weight: bold;
         font-size: 2em;
         margin-top:5em;
         margin-bottom:2em;
       }
       p.story
       {
         text-indent: 1.5em;
         font-size: 1em;
         margin-top: 5em;
         margin-bottom: 0.2em;
       }
       p.centered
       {
         text-indent: 0em;
         text-align: center;
       }
       span.centered
       {
         text-indent: 0em;
         text-align: center;
       }
     </style>
   </head>
   <body>
   </body>

Book Chapters/Collection Stories =
<p class="chapter">Chapter Title</p>

Individual Short Story 'chapter' (for clean ToC) =
<p class="chapter" style="display:none">Short Story Title</p>
<p class="story">First paragraph of text</p>

Apply other styles

*** with <p class="centered"><span class="centered">***</span></p>

Search for & in browser window, then manually replace & with & in jEdit

Calibre conversion

Add HTML to Calibre, edit metadata, add cover

Convert to EPUB

Table of Contents
Level 1 TOC (XPath Expression) = //h:p[re:test(@class, "chapter", "i")]

EPUB Output
check 'Preserve cover aspect ratio'

Convert to MOBI

Check DOC in Word 2007, upload to Smashwords
Check MOBI in Kindle Previewer, Upload to Amazon KDP
Check EPUB in calibre, Upload to Others

Samples

Collection

Short Story