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SMASHWORDS FORMATTING LIMITATIONS BY MARRAII DESIGN’S BOOKAHOLIC ~~~ Fiverr Client Manual
The purpose of this manual is to show you what you’re up against. You don’t need to implement any of the things I mention —that’s what you hire me to do!
Copyright © 2012 by Bookaholic
License Notes: This free ebook may NOT be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared. The reader is not charged to access it, and its sole purpose is to familiarize the reader with formatting limitations of Smashwords publishing platform.
This ebook should not be mistaken for The Smashwords Style Guide, although its content is based on it. This ebook is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Smashwords.com. The author hereby releases Smashwords.com of any liability. If you have any additional questions feel free to send a message to the author on Fiverr!
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WHY THE MANUAL?
After having formatted numerous books for Smashwords publishing platform, my experience tells me that clients who know what to expect from Smashwords formatting are thrilled by my service, and come back for more. Many of them have discover my service after a long and exhausting struggle with the AutoVetter, so they feel as if a giant burden has been lifted.
The only time a client has ever been dissatisfied with the outcome, is when the client didn’t know what Smashwords formatting was all about, wondering where all the huge fonts, text boxes, and colors went. The expression forbidden on Smash was unknown to him.
That is the reason why I wrote this small getting-to-know-your-options pdf. So, without further due, here’s what you should know before you continue with my service:
Smashwords Style Guide – is a set of formatting rules that must be obliged in order to sell your book through major retailers such as the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel, Baker & Taylor and others—via Smashwords. Your book will also be available as a multi-format ebook at Smashwords.com
AutoVetter – software that inspects your document upon submission for formatting errors according to the Smashwords Style Guide.
Premium Catalog – a collection of books that get distributed to major retailers because they meet Smashwords Style Guide requirements.
Meatgrinder – software that creates reflowable ebooks that look great on any eReading device. “Reflowable” means that the text of your ebook will easily flow across all screen sizes, whether your book is read on a small screen like smartphone, or a larger screen like a tablet. Reflowable books enable your customer to click a button, and instantly enlarge the font size for more comfortable reading.
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I guarantee your book will pass the AutoVetter on the first run and thus will get into the Premium Catalog, but…if your book is a public domain work, incomplete or partial book, appears elsewhere on the Internet under other authors’ name, your erotica characters are under age, or you write about get-rich-quick “systems”— there’s nothing I can do to make your book enter the Premium Catalog!
What’s inside this pdf?
The difference between ebooks and print books
Formatting limitations list
Other important notices
Smashwords formatting service
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IMPORTANT! THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EBOOKS AND PRINT BOOKS
Ebooks are absolutely different from print books, so do not expect them to look like an exact replica of a print book.
With print, you control the layout. It’s a fixed format. The words, fonts and font sizes appear on the printed page exactly where you want them to appear. Your reader cannot change how it looks, except damage the book. If a chapter begins on a certain page—it will always be there no matter what the reader does.
With ebooks, there is no “page” per se! It’s an elastic format. Your ebook will look different on every e-reading device. Page numbers are irrelevant. What one person sees on their screen will not necessarily be on other person’s screen. The text of your ebook will shape, shift and reflow while looking good on multiple screen sizes.
Most e-reading devices and e-reading applications allow your reader to customize the fonts, font sizes and line spacing. Your customers will modify how your book looks on-screen to suit their personal reading preference and environment (even if that means they like to read 18 point Helvetica with blue fonts, lime background color, and triple spaced lines).
So… unlike print edition, it’s important that your epub/mobi is coded, and MS Word file is formatted to liberate the words in digital form.
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FORMATTING LIMITATIONS
Other publishing platforms may allow many types of formatting, but Smashwords isn’t one of them! So, whether you’ve seen ebooks look like this or like that, remember—you surely haven’t seen them on Smashwords.
It’s easier to list what Smashwords doesn’t allow than what it does, so here’s a list that includes the most (but not all) things that…
…Smashwords DOESN’T ALLOW:
Fonts other than: Times New Roman, Garamond and Arial (with the last two being depreciated) Font size greater than 20pt Use of color or highlights Use of first line indents and paragraph space (either first line paragraph indents or block style paragraph method [space between paragraphs]) Tabs Space bar spaces (excessive spaces created by hitting your space bar) Kerning Compressed or expanded fonts Poor covers Tables Columns Text boxes Mixing multiple text or paragraph styles for your body Automatic footnotes and indexes (or automatic anything for that matter) Text wrapped around floating images—only in-line images allowed (above/below text)! Automatic bullets/numbering
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Drop caps (a drop cap is the large initial capped letter you may see in the first paragraph of a chapter in a print book) File size larger than 15Mb Paragraph space before Paragraph space more than 10pt after Line spacing other than single or 1.5 Multiple consecutive paragraph returns Section breaks Images other than JPG and PNG High resolution or print quality images Justified text Frequent and/or dramatic font size variations Repeating titles/entries in the Table of Contents Custom symbols (such as é î ® Ω Σ) Headers and Footers Page numbers Other indents besides the “first line” Automatic ToC and Index Multiple conflicting paragraph styles And many others…
…Smashwords STRONGLY SUGGESTS:
Not to put the cover inside your manuscript (Meatgrinder automatically inserts your cover image into your .epub and .mobi files, so if you do insert the cover image it’ll cause the cover to appear twice in these file formats.) Not to use page sizes other than letter or A4 Not to write “Printed in the United States,” because this is your Smashwords ebook, not your print edition. In most cases, your book will fail Smashwords’ manual review, and get rejection from Premium.
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Not to encourage readers to visit a specific retailer to leave a review. “Please remember to leave a review for my ebook at Amazon” —again rejection from Premium (click to see why) It’s not necessary to place your ISBN inside your ebook, but you have to assign it to your book via Smash Dashboard If the book is also available in a print edition, do not name retailers, just write, “This book is available in print at most online retailers.”
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OTHER IMPORTANT NOTICES
COVER — the image must be at least 1400 X 2100 pixels wide, and the height should be greater than the width.
Book covers cannot contain:
Nudity Price Hyperlinks Advertisements of items not already included in the book The cover cannot be grainy or pixelated (pixelation occurs when you start with a small image and expand the dimensions)
It must include:
The book title and author name (the title & author name must match the title & author name inside your book and in the metadata) Your image must be in RGB color
TAGS — never add more than ten tags (keywords)—this will cause rejection from the Premium
TITLE AND COPYRIGHT PAGE — the very first page in the book that is required in order to publish on Smashwords. The copyright portion should be in English, even if the rest of your book is written in another language.
HTML PREVIEWER — is for sampling purposes only! Hyperlinked Table of Contents (ToC) doesn’t work in there, nor do any other links, it’s buggy, displays properly formatted text wrongly, and your book’s appearance in there should not concern you too much (you don’t sell html versions).
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LINKS TO AMAZON — please do not link or refer to any other digital download source other than Smashwords or your personal blog or website. Retail partners don't want to see links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., or mention of the Kindle or Nook. You wouldn’t advertise your worst competitor in your book, would you? Well, Apple really doesn’t like to sell books that advertise Amazon, either ;)
The purpose of this manual is to show you what you’re up against. You don’t need to implement any of the things I mentioned—that’s what you hired me to do!
By giving up the control of fixed format print layout, you gain a lot with reflowability by making your book accessible to millions of potential readers
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Keep an open mind! Let your digital books flow!
~ Bookaholic ~
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MARRAII DESIGN’S BOOKAHOLIC SMASHWORDS FORMATTING SERVICE
The Best Smashwords Formatting Is Here!
Anyone who's ever dealt with Smashwords knows how much hassle that can be. After all, Smash is a well- known headache inducer when it comes to manuscript formatting. Therefore, if you're planning to get your books up there, you should definitely check out my Fiverr Gig for Smashwords.
Independent authors/publishers' goal is to get their books to as many readers as possible. Consequently, that's where Smashwords comes into play—love them or hate them, but they distribute books to all major online retailers, many small ones, and plethora of libraries. Nobody has a wider ebook retailer network than Smash. As a result, they represent an irreplaceable platform for ebook self-publishing.
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My Smashwords formatting service includes formatting of your MS Word document to pass Smashwords AutoVetter on the first try! Passing means your book meets all their standards, and will be submitted to Smashwords Premium Catalog for distribution to their huge ebook-retailer network. Guaranteed! Smashwords has a strict set of rules that I follow to the T, so my formatting always passes! No exceptions!
Your file for Smashwords will be tested against the AutoVetter, and 100% error free with:
Clickable Table of Contents (hyperlinked) Footnotes converted to endnotes (hyperlinked back-and-forth for interactivity!) Paragraph styles & line spacing properly set not to break Smash rules Chapters starting on top of the next page Tables converted to images or text (depending what looks better since Smash doesn't allow tables) Images downsized to Smash requirements and 96dpi resolution
And all other things not allowed on Smashwords removed/replaced/fixed!
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Purchasing options:
small MS Word .doc up to 25.000 words ~ $5 medium MS Word .doc 25.000 to 50.000 words ~ $10 large MS Word .doc 50.000 to 75.000 words ~ $15 extra large MS Word .doc 75.000 to 100.000 words ~ $20 MS Word .doc over 100.000 words ~ add $5 per every 25.000 words
Contact me to get a custom quote for your manuscript, or book my Smashwords formatting gig on Fiverr.
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