The Smashwords Style Guide
By Mark Coker
rev 12.26.11
Copyright Mark Coker 2008-2011
Smashwords Edition License Notes:
This free ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, and the reader is not charged to access it.
Also by Mark Coker, Published at Smashwords:
Smashwords Book Marketing Guide
The 10-Minute PR Checklist - Earn the Publicity You Deserve
What Smashwords publishes, what we don’t publish
Five common formatting mistakes to avoid
How Smashwords publishes books
How Smashwords distributes books
How ebook formatting is different from print formatting
How we convert your book into multiple ebook formats
The three secrets to ebook formatting
How to avoid (and fix) AutoVetter errors
Introduction to Meatgrinder conversion system
Understanding the different ebook formats
Pre-Prep
Step 1: Make a back up
Step 2: Activate Word’s Show/Hide
Step 3: Turn off Word’s “AutoCorrect” and “AutoFormat” features
Step 4: Eliminate text boxes
Step 5: The Nuclear Method
Formatting
Step 6: Unify Manuscript around Normal paragraph style
Step 7: Managing and modifying paragraph styles, fonts
Step 7a. How to choose the best paragraph separation method (first line indent or block?)
Step 7b: How to implement your chosen paragraph separation method
Step 7b-a: How to define a proper first line indent
Step 7b-b: How to define trailing “after” space for block paragraphs
Step 7b-c: Special tips for poetry, cookbooks and learning materials
Step 7b-d: How to define proper line spacing
Step 8: Check your normalized text
Step 9: Why you should never use tabs or the space bar for indents
Step 10: Managing paragraph returns
Step 11: Managing hyperlinks
Step 12: Designating chapter breaks, page breaks, section breaks
Step 13: Working with images
Step 14: Text justification
Step 14a: Centering text
Step 15: Managing font sizes
Step 16: Style formatting, symbols and glyphs
Step 17: Headers and footers
Step 18: Margins, page sizes and indents
Step 19: Add the Heading style to your Chapter headers (optional)
Building Navigation
Step 20: Building navigation into the manuscript
Step 20a: Creating the NCX
Step 20b: Creating the linked Table of Contents
Step 20c: Advanced link building (Footnotes, Endnotes)
Step 20d: Troubleshooting and testing
Front Matter
Step 21: Front matter
Step 21a: Blurbs (optional)
Step 21b: Title and copyright page (required!)
Step 21c: Add a Smashwords license statement below copyright page
The End of Your Book
Step 22: The end of your book
Step 23: Preparing your cover image
Step 24: Review requirements for Premium Catalog distribution
Uploading Your Book to Smashwords
Step 25: How to upload your book
Step 26: How AutoVetter works
Step 27: After you publish – check your work
Step 27a: Check for EPUBCHECK compliance (important!)
How to Market Your Book
Step 28: Read the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide
GETTING STARTED
Welcome. Smashwords is the world’s leading ebook publishing and distribution platform for indie ebook authors and publishers. The Smashwords Style Guide has helped over 30,000 authors and publishers around the world collectively release over 90,000 ebooks. By following this Style Guide, you’ll learn how to quickly produce, publish and distribute a high-quality ebook at no cost.
The Style Guide is written for non-technical readers. No prior experience with Microsoft Word is assumed or required. It presents simple, step-by-step instructions to help you format your book to retailer requirements.
Don’t be intimidated by the length of this guide. It has a lot of pictures.
Books formatted to the Smashwords Style Guide earn inclusion in the Smashwords Premium Catalog, which is what we distribute to major ebook retailers such as Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel and others. Your book will also be available as a multi-format ebook at our own fast-growing retail operation, Smashwords.com, where customers can discover and purchase the book for enjoyment on any e-reading device.
All you need to publish at Smashwords is a finished manuscript, a computer, an Internet connection, Microsoft Word or similar word processor, and the time and patience to follow this Guide. Patience is key. If you try to take short cuts and skip over the sections that follow, you’ll only frustrate yourself and delay distribution.
To learn some simple, time-saving keyboard tricks before you get started, see the Appendix at the end of this guide.
Do-It-Yourself, or Hire Help? – If you don’t have the time, patience or skills to properly format your masterpiece to Style Guide requirements, or you find yourself cursing and swearing(never good!), consider hiring a fellow Smashwords author to help you. I maintain a list called “Mark’s List” with the names and contact information of several Smashwords authors who have volunteered to provide low-cost Smashwords Style Guide formatting services for around $25/hr and up. The list also includes low-cost cover designers. If you want a referral (we don’t earn a referral fee), send an email to list@smashwords.com and you’ll receive it via instant autoresponder. Please note: if you utilize one of these formatting providers, you’re hiring them, not Smashwords. By hiring them you will not receive any preferential customer support or fast-tracked approval. However, because they’re Smashwords formatting experts, they’ll give you a clean file that will usually earn you Premium Catalog approval on the first attempt.
Good Formatting Examples - Below are two examples of well-formatted Smashwords books. You can download the free RTF which you can open and view in your word processor.
1. The Mating by Nicky Charles - https://www.smashwords.com/books/download/10394/3/null/0/0/the-mating.rtf
2. The Unsuspecting Mage: The Morcyth Saga Book One by Brian S. Pratt - https://www.smashwords.com/books/download/1444/3/null/0/0/the-unsuspecting-mage-the-morcyth-saga-book-one.rtf
This Smashwords Style Guide is a living document. As you learn formatting tips not presented in this guide, please forward them to Mark Coker at first initial second initial at smashwords dot com.
What Smashwords Publishes, What We Don’t Publish
Smashwords publishes only original and legal works, direct from the author or the exclusive digital publisher. We do not publish public domain books. We also don’t publish incomplete or partial books, or books that appear elsewhere on the Internet under other authors’ names, as is common with Private Label Rights scams. If you write erotica, all your characters must be adults. And finally, we strongly discourage any book that advocates get-rich-quick “systems” for making money on the Internet. Smashwords is a professional publishing and distribution service for serious writers only.
Five Common Formatting Mistakes to Avoid:
1. Improper Indents - Don’t use tabs or space bar spaces to create first line paragraph indents (instead, code your paragraph style to define a special first line paragraph indent: see step 7b-a below)
2. Repeating Paragraph Returns - Never use more than four consecutive paragraph returns (A.K.A. “hard returns,” created by hitting the ENTER key) to arrange text on the page (this creates blank ebook pages on small-screened e-reading devices)
3. Improper Paragraph Separation - Paragraphs require either first line paragraph indents or the block paragraph method. Otherwise your paragraphs run together and it becomes unreadable because your reader’s eye can’t distinguish where one paragraph ends and the next begins. Use one method or the other (indents are best for fiction and much non-fiction, blocks are usually only for non-fiction), but don’t use both. If you’re aiming for the block style, do not add paragraph returns between paragraphs on empty lines (to create the blank line). Instead, modify your paragraph style to add a 6 pt trailing “after” space following each the paragraph (see the Step 7 below, managing and modifying paragraph styles).
4. Font and Style Mistakes - Don’t use fancy non-standard fonts, colored fonts (colors often disappear on some e-reading devices), kerning, compressed or expanded fonts, large font sizes over 16pt, and don’t go overboard with multiple paragraph styles (makes your ebook look ugly, and amplifies odds of unexpected problems). Modify your paragraph styles so they don’t define fonts larger than 18pt.
5. Copyright Page Mistakes - Don’t forget to include the required “front matter” (required for acceptance into the Premium Catalog), described in tip 21b below.
How Smashwords Publishes Books:
After you carefully implement the formatting instructions in this Guide, your book is ready to upload to Smashwords. Simply click “Publish” from any Smashwords web page and follow the instructions to upload your book.
Smashwords takes your original Microsoft Word .doc source file and converts it into multiple ebook formats such as .EPUB, PDF. .RTF, .PDB, .MOBI, LRF and TXT, as well as into online HTML and Javascript formats. By publishing in multiple formats, your book will be readable on any e-reading device, including the Amazon Kindle, Apple iPad, personal computers, the iPhone (via the popular Stanza e-reader app), Sony Reader, Kobo Reader, Android smart phones, etc.
From the Publish screen, you can designate a percentage of your book that you want to make available as a free sample. Most authors choose between 15-30%. If you don’t make a free sample available, your book will not be distributed to some important outlets.
How Smashwords Distributes Books:
Smashwords distributes your book via two primary mechanisms:
1. Standard Catalog: This catalog contains all the books for sale at Smashwords.com. These books are also automatically listed in the native catalogs of Stanza on the iPhone, which is used by over 4 million people to discover and purchase ebooks; and Aldiko, an e-reading app for Google Android devices; and Word-Player, another e-reading app for Android devices. To qualify for distribution on Smashwords.com and in the Standard feed, an author or publisher is simply required to abide by the Smashwords Terms of Service and follow the instructions in this Guide.
2. Premium Catalog: This catalog is distributed to major online retailers and other distribution outlets. There’s no cost for inclusion, but your book must satisfy higher mechanical standards required by the retailers such as having a quality book cover image, good formatting, a proper copyright page, and other requirements clearly outlined in this Style Guide and on our Distribution page at http://www.smashwords.com/distribution. If you're a serious author or publisher, you want your books included in Smashwords Premium Catalog because it offers your book unprecedented exposure at no cost.
How Ebook Formatting is Different from Print Formatting
Ebooks are different from print books, so do not attempt to make your ebook look like an exact facsimile of print book, otherwise you’ll only frustrate yourself by creating a poorly formatted, unreadable ebook.
With print, you control the layout. The words appear on the printed page exactly where you want them to appear.
With ebooks, there is no “page.” By giving up the control of the printed page, you and your readers gain much more in return.
Page numbers are irrelevant. Your book will look different on every e-reading device. Your text will shape shift and reflow. 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.
By transforming your books into digital form, you open up exciting possibilities for how readers can enjoy them.
At Smashwords, our
motto is “your book, your way,” and this means a reader should be
able to consume your book however works best for them, even if that
means they like to read 18 point Helvetica with blue fonts, lime
background color, and triple spaced lines. Many e-reading devices and
e-reading apps support some or all of these strange
different tastes.
In order for us to prepare your words to be stirred up and reconstituted in this digital soup, it’s important your Smashwords source file is formatted to liberate the words in digital form.
The book’s formatting will be and must be different from its paper-based formatting and layout (for some works like poetry, the formatting is integral to the reading experience, and we can work with that too).
Most readers want your words, not your fancy page layout or exotic type styles. This is especially important for your ebook customers, because you want your work to display well on as many digital reading devices as possible so the reader can have their book their way. Some of your buyers may want to read on the Amazon Kindle, others may prefer to read on the iPhone or Sony Reader, or even read on multiple devices. Others may want to just read it on screen using one of the several e-reading applications, such as Adobe Digital Editions or FBReader.
How We Convert Your Book into Multiple Ebook Formats
This Style Guide helps authors and publishers tweak their original source files to obtain the best possible reading experience across multiple ebook formats and e-reading devices.
Print publishing companies spend millions of dollars each year to convert their print books into digital formats. It’s a tough job, and often these conversions involve hiring hundreds of overseas cubicle laborers who painstakingly re-key and reformat texts into different formats.
At Smashwords, we operate differently. Our Meatgrinder technology automates the process. Because our process is automated, the book you publish on Smashwords may not be formatted as perfectly (or imperfectly - sometimes Meatgrinder actually improves the formatting) as you formatted it in your manuscript.
There are pros and cons to such automated conversions.
The advantage of this automation, especially if you carefully format your book to the Style Guide, is that Meatgrinder will allow you to instantly publish a good-quality, multi-format ebook, ready to be enjoyed on any e-reading device. This automation also allows us to offer this conversion and publishing service at no cost to you.
Meatgrinder does well with straight-form narrative, so we excel at fiction, narrative non-fiction, poetry and other books that are mostly words. Luckily, straight narrative comprises probably 75% of all books purchased by readers, and for most of the other 25%, with some proper tweaks and yes, compromises, flexibility and patience, many of these books can work as well.
Smashwords supports pictures and images, but here we lack the precision of print on paper. With some Smashwords formats, page breaks will appear where you don’t expect them. Images may not appear in the exact position you intended, or the print-quality image that looks great on glossy paper may not look so great on a black and white e-reading device, or a small cell phone. In other words, unpredictable things will happen. With patience, experimentation and an open mind, you can make it work. Remember, good quality is the goal, not perfection.
Some format outputs have limitations. For example, a picture book or manga that’s all images is impossible to convert into plain text (it wouldn’t be a picture book anymore!). Other books may look great in .RTF or PDF, but not so great on one of our online readers.
Meatgrinder has other limitations. It doesn’t support tables or columns. It doesn’t take full advantage of some of the capabilities of formats such as EPUB and .MOBI. We’re aware of the limitations, and you should be too.
In the meantime, the benefits of such minor compromises outweigh the downside. By giving up a little, you gain a lot by making your book accessible to millions of potential readers across our ever-growing distribution network.
Some folks who read the paragraphs above come to the conclusion that Smashwords wants a plain text book without formatting. Not true! As you read on, you’ll discover that Smashwords still gives you great control over formatting and styles.
We care about quality, and you should too. If you ever hear an author or reader complain that their Smashwords book looked like [insert your favorite expletive], it means the author didn’t follow the Style Guide. Take the time to follow the guide. You’ve invested years – possibly even a lifetime – to write your masterpiece, so take 30 minutes or an hour to study the Guide and learn how easy it is to create a good-looking multi-format ebook you and your readers will be proud of.
The Three Secrets to Ebook Formatting:
Keep it Simple, Keep it Simple, Keep it Simple!
The secret to ebook formatting success is “Keep it Simple!” Unnecessarily complex formatting or layout will hinder the readability of your ebook. If you attempt to make your ebook an exact facsimile of your print book, you will cause yourself – and your readers – unnecessary frustration. It may also cause your ebook conversions to fail.
Re-envision your book as free flowing text with only the essential formatting. Restrict your formatting to Normal paragraph style for the bulk of your book, one paragraph return at the end of each paragraph, proper first line paragraph indents (see tips below on how to create), italics, bolds, a Heading style only for your chapter headings, and very few if any additional paragraph styles beyond that.
Simple doesn’t mean you can’t use formatting, or you can’t use styles. It just means that if your current formatting includes 15 or 30 different custom paragraph styles, you’re asking for trouble.
How to Avoid AutoVetter Errors:
AutoVetter is Smashwords’ automated technology that inspects your book the moment you publish it and provides you instant feedback on potential formatting problems. You’ll find your errors documented in the Dashboard after you publish, underneath the “Premium Status” column. If the link reads, “requires modification,” click the link.
AutoVetter is your friend.
If you receive AutoVetter errors, fix them immediately. Otherwise, the errors will delay or prevent your book’s acceptance into the Smashwords Premium Catalog. The moment AutoVetter tells you about the errors, you can fix them and then upload a new version via your Dashboard’s “upload new version” link.
The following errors may prevent your book from gaining inclusion in the Premium Catalog:
- more than 4 consecutive paragraph returns in a row (creates blank ebook pages)
- tabs (eliminate all tabs, which you created by hitting the “Tab” key)
- extra paragraph returns between paragraphs in an attempt to create a blank line
- exotic fonts (instead, stick with Times New Roman, Garamond and Arial)
- large font sizes (11 or 12pt is best, 14pt is a recommended maximum)
- indents made with space bar spaces or tabs (the most common bad habit of all authors)
- text in columns (we don’t support columns)
- text in tables (ebooks don’t handle tables. Import tables as images)
- text in text boxes (Ugh, the horror!)
- multiple text or paragraph styles for your body (for example, don’t mix Normal style with Body Text style)
- automatic footnotes (not supported, may cause the conversion to fail)
- text wrapped around floating images (instead, right mouse click on image, click Format Picture: Advanced: In Line with Text, then use Word’s center button to center)
- and finally, to avoid the copyright error, carefully follow tip 21b below
We affectionately call our file conversion system Meatgrinder. In the last two years, we have continually enhanced it to produce high quality ebooks. The most recent upgrade was August 2010, where we made a series of great improvements to our EPUB and MOBI files.
Your source file, a Microsoft Word .doc document, goes in one end of the Meatgrinder and comes out the other end as multiple DRM-free digital book files for use on a multitude of e-reading devices such as the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble nook, Sony Reader, iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple iPad, a computer screen or virtually any other e-reading device.
If you ignore the formatting requirements of the Smashwords Style Guide, Meatgrinder will turn your book into hamburger. Please follow the instructions!
The file you upload into the Meatgrinder should be a Microsoft .doc file (the default). If you’re a screenwriter, scriptwriter and playwright and you work in a program called Final Draft, save your document as an RTF file (however, you will need to manually correct the margins), and then open it in Word, save it as a Word .doc, and clean up from there.
PDF Source Files (Not allowed): You cannot upload a source file as a PDF. If you only have your book in PDF form, here’s a free online service that will convert your PDF into a Word doc: http://www.pdftoword.com/ You upload your PDF to them and then they email it to you as a Word file. But be warned, the output it gives you will *not* be ready to publish on Smashwords. You will still need to perform clean-up. To save time, you’re better off contacting whoever converted your original manuscript into PDF and ask them to forward you the original source file, saved as either a Word .doc or .RTF file.
If You Only Have a Print Book: Many authors only have print copies of their books. How do you bring your book to life as an ebook? It’s easier than you might think. Consider this cool service called Blue Leaf Book Scanning, which uses optical character recognition technology to convert your book back into digital form. For around $25.00, they will scan your print book and send it to you as a Microsoft Word file. I’ve seen the raw files they produce, and they’re remarkably accurate. However, the service is not infallible. The Word file they send you will still require careful proofing, editing and reformatting. http://www.blueleaf-book-scanning.com/book_scanning_service_order.html
InDesign Source Files: InDesign is a common layout application used by professional publishers. Smashwords does not accept InDesign files. However, from InDesign, you can export your book to .RTF format. Once it’s in RTF format, you can reopen the file in Microsoft Word, save it as a Word .doc, and then remove all the garbage introduced by InDesign (you’ll have tabs in random places, and other ugly formatting). The fastest way to clean up an RTF from InDesign (or any file, for that matter) is to use what I call the Nuclear Method. With the Nuclear Method, you open your file in Word, copy and paste it into Windows Notepad (or some other simple text editor that strips out all formatting), close Microsoft Word, then reopen Word to a fresh new Word document, then copy and paste the book from Notepad back into Word, and then carefully re-apply the minimal necessary formatting by following the Style Guide.
HTML Source Files: We previously allowed HTML file uploads, but now we no longer allow them because most HTML files provided to us contained serious corruption as defined by the WC3 HTML Validator at http://validator.w3.org/check and as a result didn’t upload properly. If you only have your source file as an HTML file, follow these instructions: 1. Open the HTML document in a browser. 2. Copy and paste the entire document into a new Word doc by clicking "Edit: paste special" within the Word menu, then selecting "unformatted text" as the output. 3. From here, you'll find that you've got a consistent number of spaces, such as four spaces, making up your indents. This won't work, so do a CTRL+H (press the CTRL key and the H key at the same time) search and replace and search for ^p space space space space (a paragraph return followed by four taps on the space bar) and replace with only ^p. This will eliminate the leading spaces at the beginning of each paragraph. 4. Next, CTRL+A the document, right mouse click, click paragraph, and then under “special” do a first line paragraph indent of .25”. 5. Next, clean up the remaining minor issues, like manually removing the indents from your title and copyright pages, and, using Word’s center button, center those sections.
Understanding the Different Ebook Formats
One of the important benefits of Smashwords is that we take your single file and convert it into multiple ebook formats. Why is this so important to the success of your book? Because customers read on many different devices, and the more formats you offer, the more books you’ll sell. In early January 2010, we did a survey of the most popular ebook formats for Smashwords customers. The results were interesting. Although PDF is the most popular ebook format, two thirds of customers preferred formats other than PDF. You can read the survey yourself at http://blog.smashwords.com/2010/02/most-popular-ebook-formats-revealed.html.
You should publish your book into as many digital formats as possible (even if certain formats translate less well than others) because this expands your potential audience of readers. Review the outputs of each format for acceptability after you publish.
Here’s a summary of the formats offered:
EPUB - This is your most important format! EPUB is an
open industry ebook format. This is the format we distribute to
Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel eBooks, and others. If
your book is available in epub, it can be read on the most popular
ebook readers and ebook reading software applications (Like Stanza on
the iPhone or Aldiko on Android devices), and will gain the widest
distribution via Smashwords’ distribution outlets (EPUB is a
requirement for inclusion in Smashwords’ Premium Catalog, and it’s
what we distribute to every retailer except Amazon).
Mobipocket (Kindle) – Mobipocket, A.K.A. MOBI, allows your books to be read on the Amazon Kindle, so this is an important format for you. Mobipocket is supported on many handheld devices and e-reading applications. Mobipocket is a requirement for distribution to Amazon.
Palm Doc (PDB) - PalmDoc is a format primarily used on Palm Pilot devices, but software readers are available for PalmOS, Symbian OS, Windows Mobile Pocket PC/Smartphone, desktop Windows, and Macintosh. Be sure to turn off “smart quotes” in your source file, otherwise they may appear garbled in your PDB file. Our PDB is little more than ugly plain text.
PDF - Portable Document Format, or PDF, is a file format readable by most devices, including handheld e-readers, PDAs, and personal computers. It’s a good format if your work contains complex layout, charts or images. Odds are, if your work looks good in Microsoft Word it will look good in PDF. PDF is also a good option for readers who may want to print out your book on their home computers. On the negative side, PDF is a rigid, inflexible format because it’s not reflowable, so it’s horrible for reading novels. Your customers can’t easily change the font size or style to match their preferences, the text isn’t reflowable, and the reader is forced to read page by page.
LRF - This is the old format for the Sony Reader. Sony has shifted to the EPUB format, so LRF is less important than it once was, though it’s still useful to users of the older generation Sony Readers.
RTF - Rich Text Format, or RTF, is a cross-platform document format supported by many word processors and devices. It’s usually pretty good at preserving the original formatting from Word documents. It is not efficient with lots of images.
Plain Text - Plain text is the most widely supported file format. It works on nearly all readers and devices. It lacks formatting, but will work anywhere. For best results with plain text, your source document should not contain images or fancy formatting.
HTML SmashReader – This is our online reader that allows customers to sample or read your book from their web browser. Your sample pages will be indexed by Google, which will increase the ability for potential customers to find your book, even if they didn’t know your book is what they were looking for. Think of it as serendipity on steroids. If your book looks good in our HTML reader, it will probably also look good in EPUB and MOBI. Linked tables of contents (ToCs) don’t work in the HTML reader.
Javascript SmashReader - This online reader isn’t indexable by search engines like the HTML reader, but it does allow your readers to customize their reading experience. They can increase or decrease the fonts, change the line spacing, change the font, change the font color or the background color. Our Javascript Reader has always been a bit buggy, so if you see strange characters along the top of the page, ignore them. Linked ToCs don’t work here.
More options coming - In the future, we’ll add support for other formats based on author requests. If there’s a particular format you want, drop us a note.
***~~~***
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Can you show me an example of a well-formatted book?
Yes! Check out The Mating by Nicky Charles or , which is a good formatting example.
Q: How long will it take for me to format my book for Smashwords?
This depends on your knowledge of Microsoft Word. The average author, if they take the time to carefully study and implement the Style Guide, can successfully complete their formatting in under two hours. Most Smashwords experts can complete a book in under one hour. Novels are easiest. If you decide to skip the Style Guide because you already have decades of experience in publishing, then you’ll frustrate yourself and waste time. Don’t be discouraged by the length of this Guide. It has a lot of pictures to help guide even computer novices down the path to formatting success, and it’ll save you money in the process. We created Smashwords so you shouldn’t have to pay anyone a penny to publish with us. If you don’t have the time, skills, or patience to follow the instructions, and you’d rather hire someone to help you, email list@smashwords.com to request “Mark’s List” of low cost formatters (fellow Smashwords authors), who for around $30 to $75 can make your life simpler and help you get in the Premium Catalog faster.
Q: Can you share time-saving tips?
Yes! You’ve already taken the first step, which is to read this Style Guide. It will save you a lot of time, prevent frustration and help you get your book distributed more quickly. Other tips: 1. jump down to my Keyboard Shortcuts if you want a quick refresher on some keyboard tricks that will save you time and reduce errors. 2. Take a look at the sample files above. 3. Use Microsoft Word because you’ll get the best, most predictable results. 4. If your book has been touched by multiple word processors during the writing, revision and editing, consider using the Nuclear Method below to clear out the formatting gunk and start fresh because these other programs have a habit of introducing hidden anomalies into your file.
Q: What types of books work best on Smashwords?
Straight form narrative (all fiction and some non-fiction), biographies, memoirs, poetry, essays, narrative-heavy non-fiction, scripts, screenplays and plays. Yes, the book can contain images. Follow the instructions below.
Q: How many books will I sell?
Any book, ebook or print, is difficult to sell. Some Smashwords authors haven’t sold a single book. Others have sold thousands. The latter group is not the norm, so you should keep your sales expectations modest. Read the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide to understand what we do to help you sell your book, and what you must do for yourself. You are responsible for writing a book that resonates with readers, and for marketing that book. Our responsibility is to help you get your book published and distributed. Approximately 80 percent of your sales will come from Smashwords’ rapidly expanding network of ebook retailers, thus the urgency for you to follow the Style Guide so we can quickly distribute your book. All your sales originating at Smashwords.com, our small retail operation, will be reported instantly to you. Sales reporting from our retail partners is time-delayed. Learn more about how Smashwords royalties are calculated and paid by reading our Royalty FAQ.
Q: What types of books are most difficult to format for Smashwords?
The most challenging books at Smashwords include coffee table photo books, and books where the words are part of the image. If complex layout is essential to the enjoyment of your book, you’ll need to reformat it to achieve readability as an ebook. Restrict formatting to paragraph returns at the end of every paragraph, indents, headings, and a little bold or italicized text here or there. With some special care, you can modify most types of books to work fairly well on Smashwords. If you cannot separate the complex formatting and layout from the content of your book, then consider restricting your ebook output formats on Smashwords to only PDF and RTF, because these formats will most closely match the form of your original Word file. The downside of restricting your book to PDF and RTF, however, is that you’ll reduce the potential readership for book because EPUB is the most commonly distributed format at Smashwords.
Q: Can I upload a work in progress?
No. Smashwords is only for books that are complete and ready for public consumption.
Q: Can I upload only a sample chapter or two?
No. We only publish complete books. If your story doesn’t represent a complete reading experience, you can’t publish it at Smashwords, because our customers expect a complete story. However, when you upload your complete book, you can designate a certain percentage of the book, starting from the beginning, that you make available as a free sample.
Q: Can I upload public domain books?
No. We do not publish public domain books.
Q: Can I upload “Private Label Rights” articles to Smashwords?
No, never. If you do this, we will delete your account without warning and you will forfeit all earnings. We have a zero tolerance policy on PLR. If you’re not the 100% author of the book, or the sole exclusive distributor or publisher, we don’t want it. Learn more in my guest blog post for Writer Beware at http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2010/03/guest-blog-post-scam-of-private-label.html
Q: Can I take my Smashwords ebook conversions and sell them elsewhere?
No. The ebook conversions at Smashwords are not to be re-distributed or re-sold elsewhere, per the Terms of Service. Why? Our free conversion services, for which we have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to build and continually improve, are provided to authors and publishers as a benefit of our ebook distribution services. It's bad karma to take the files we create and upload or sell them elsewhere. Of course, you can do anything you want with the Microsoft Word source file you create. Just as our books are DRM-free and you're trusting readers to honor your copyright, we trust our authors and publishers to respect our terms of service.
Q: Do I put my book cover in the manuscript file?
Our EPUB and MOBI formats will automatically insert the cover image into your ebook file, though our PDF and RTFs will not. If you want the image in all formats, import it into the top of your Word file. If you do import the cover image, it’ll appear twice in your EPUB and MOBI versions.
Q: Do you edit my book prior to publishing?
No. It is your responsibility to upload a completed, professionally written, edited and proofread book. Although Smashwords makes it easy to publish, your potential readers expect you to produce a quality, well-written professional work.
Q: How important is it that my book has been proofread and copy edited?
Extremely important! Don’t publish your book at Smashwords until it has been thoroughly proofread for grammar, spelling and typos. One of the biggest criticisms leveled against self-published authors is that their work is not professional quality. Don’t perpetuate this stereotype. Take pride in your work and invest the necessary effort to have others proofread and copyedit your book prior to publishing it on Smashwords or anywhere else. Your readers will thank you and your book will be more successful.
Q: Will Smashwords format my book to make it look perfect?
No. If we did that, our service would not be free. Our technology is completely automated. All file conversions are automated by our Meatgrinder file conversion system.
Q: Does Smashwords provide professional formatting and text design services?
No. Smashwords does not provide paid services of any kind. This guide provides guidance on how to prepare your book for quality ebook conversion through Meatgrinder. If you decide you require assistance, email me for my private list of fellow Smashwords authors who provide low cost formatting and cover design.
Q: I’ve already formatted my book perfectly into separate versions for PDF, Mobi and others. Can’t I just upload my books and bypass the Meatgrinder?
No, sorry, we don’t accept this, and for good reason. It’s important that books come to us in a common format so we can ensure the files are virus-free, free of DRM, and free of strange permutations that could cause unexpected problems for our customers. One of our retailers, Sony, requires us to create a specially modified EPUB file for them, so this is another benefit of having Smashwords perform your conversion. We also need the file as a Word document so we can reliably convert it into all the different formats, as well as future formats. But don’t fret; after you read this guide you’ll realize it’s easy to format your book for Smashwords! If you only have your manuscript in PDF form, read the section below, entitled, “Your Source File,” for tips on how to get your PDF back into Word format.
Q: Will Smashwords one day allow authors and publishers to replace Smashwords-generated files with files generated by the author or publisher?
Eventually, yes. In the past, we’ve referred to this as the Meatgrinder Bypass. It’s a planned feature, but the implementation of this feature has been delayed in favor of focusing on higher priority projects such as building out our distribution channels. The current thinking is that this feature will be rolled up in a new future service called Smashwords Direct.
Q: Can I use “drop caps” at the beginning of a paragraph or chapter?
A drop cap is the large initial capped letter you may see in the first paragraph of a chapter in a print book. A drop cap usually extends down three or four lines. You cannot use drop caps in Smashwords, so eliminate all usage of them. Some authors will make the first letter of the first paragraph of a chapter a larger font size, and bold. This is a great, attractive alternative.
Q: Will my finished Smashwords digital book look like my original print manuscript?
Often, it will look different. Don’t try to make your ebook look like an exact carbon copy of your print book. Such an objective is ill-conceived. Ebooks are different from print books. If you carefully follow the Style Guide, you’ll get good results.
Q: I don’t use Microsoft Word. Can I still publish on Smashwords?
Yes, though Microsoft Word is your best option. If you want to ensure the best results for your ebook, and you don’t use Microsoft Word, consider investing in a copy. You can usually find it for around $150 or less. Word will give you the greatest control over your formatting by allowing you to follow the Smashwords Style Guide. If your time is valuable to you, and you plan to publish multiple ebooks with Smashwords, Word is a good investment.
If your word processing software allows you to save a file as a Microsoft Word .doc file, then it might work for you. There are numerous free Word processors that emulate Microsoft Word or will convert files into Microsoft Word format, but keep in mind they’ll make formatting more difficult, they might introduce corruption into your Word document, and we can’t coach you on how to use them. One free option popular with many Smashwords authors is Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org/), which is available for the PC, Mac and other platforms. You can also use Apple Pages to output a Word .doc file. We do not recommend WordPerfect because it caused our authors headaches, which causes us headaches (see next question).
Q. I use WordPerfect. Can I save my manuscript as a Word .doc or .RTF and upload it?
Smashwords authors who try to convert their WordPerfect files into Microsoft Word .doc format are often frustrated beyond belief. Based on our experience, WordPerfect does not reliably export to Word .doc and RTF. It inserts tabs instead of proper first line paragraph indents, and it introduces corrupted data and strange control characters. If you use WordPerfect, we recommend saving your file as plain text, and then reopening it in Microsoft Word. Next, follow the recommendations in this Style Guide.
Q. Is there a maximum size file I can upload?
Yes. The source file you upload must be smaller than 5 megabytes. If your file is larger, it usually means it contains large images, or multiple images. Ask yourself if the images are really necessary. If you’re using images for chapter headings or similar artistic flourishes, for example, remove them and replace them with text. For essential images, reduce the file sizes (see the next tip for how to do this).
Q. How do I reduce the file size of my images?
First, if your file is an RTF, save it as a Word .doc. Word .doc files handle images much more efficiently. If you’re using Microsoft Word 2003 or later, Word has a GREAT feature that will compress your images without visibly harming quality. Just right mouse click on any image in the document, select format picture, then under the picture tab in the lower left hand corner you'll see a link for "compress". This will compress many images 80% or more. You can also use a photo editing tool such as Photoshop, or a free utility such as Paint.net at http://www.getpaint.net/ or Picasa by Google at http://picasa.google.com/. Please note: It doesn’t impact the file size to simply click the corner of an image and drag it inward.
Q. What’s the best way to format poetry?
For best results, present your poetry left justified, or, if it’s meant to be centered, centered. Don’t use indents to arrange the text on the page, because the indents could cause your poems to appear too far to the right of the screen (or worse, word-wrapped) on small-screened devices. This is why we suggest left justified. For additional poetry tips, see our special poetry tips section in this Style Guide.
Q. [Advanced] How do I eliminate Word’s Indexing Field Codes?
Smashwords does not support indexing, so if your source document uses Word’s field code for indexed words or phrases, you’ll want to eliminate the field codes before you upload to Smashwords. The field codes become visible when you activate Word’s “show/hide” command (as we mention below, you NEED to activate “show/hide” to expose your hidden formatting). Although you could strip them out manually, it would take hours and will introduce errors. Here’s a quick tip that takes only seconds: See our Keyboard Shortcuts section learn how to use Word’s “Find and Replace” feature (type CTRL+H) and then in the find field enter ^d xe ^? and leave the ‘replace with’ field empty. Then click ‘replace all’. Below is an image of what the indexing field codes look like.
FORMATTING
Pre-Prep
Before you upload your book to Smashwords, follow the steps below to ensure proper formatting of your book. The first steps focus on making Word behave.
A note about all the different versions of Word: You can use any version of Microsoft Word, even the old versions like Word 2000 (my personal favorite), Word 2003 (I like this one too), Word 2007 (Ugh, steep learning curve, but it’s growing on me), and the newer ones. Luckily, although the user interface changes (tell me, Microsoft, why do you make Word more difficult to use with every version?), the inner guts of Word are remarkably similar across all versions. If, for religious reasons you’re hesitant to use Microsoft Word, please reconsider. If you plan to publish frequently with Smashwords, it’s a smart investment because you’ll gain better control over your ebook’s formatting and you’ll save yourself time. If you’re stubborn and want to use Open Office (a good free word processor popular with many Smashwords authors) or Apple Pages (also popular), you can still use the Style Guide if you’re careful to implement the intent of the instructions, though you should understand up front that your book may not come out as you intended.
This goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway. Don’t make the formatting modifications below on your original document. Instead, open your final manuscript within Microsoft Word, and create a copy of it by going to File: Save As: and then enter a new file name, such as MySmashwordsMasterpiece, and save as a .doc file (the default in Word 2003 and earlier. In later versions, go to Save As: Word 97-2003). By making a backup, if you make any mistakes as you follow my advice you won’t screw up your original. Also make sure you’ve turned off Word’s “Track Changes” feature, also known as “markup mode.” This is what your book looks like in Markup Mode:
Step 2 - Activate Word’s Show/Hide
Do this now, BEFORE you start formatting, otherwise you might as well blindfold your eyes. This is one of my favorite editing features in Word. The show/hide feature is designated by the “¶” mark in the toolbar (I’ve always thought of it as the “reverse P thingy,” but for you typography purists out there, you know it as a “pilcrow.”), as shown below.
The show/hide button helps you view the guts of your formatting
When clicked, it exposes your paragraph returns, extra spaces, tabs, field codes or strange formatting. It’s a great tool to help polish your document for the cleanest possible conversions. If it’s not in your toolbar, you can usually find it in Tools: Options: View and then under Formatting Marks click All.
Step 3 - Turn off Word's AutoCorrect: AutoFormat As You Type and AutoFormat features
I’ve always found Word’s AutoCorrect and AutoFormat-As-You-Type to be Word’s most annoying features. If you have them engaged, Word will try to guess what type of formatting you want based on how you write the paragraph, how you manually format the paragraph, or by how you formatted something before it. If you upload a Word file to Smashwords with paragraphs formatted inconsistently, like some paragraphs formatted as “Body Text” and others formatted as “Normal Text,” the book will look horrible as an ebook. To turn off the features, in Word 2000 & 2003, go to “Tools”: “AutoCorrect,” then click on the “AutoFormat As You Type” tab and then uncheck most of the boxes, and then click on the “AutoFormat” tab and uncheck the four boxes under “Apply.”
The reason we want to turn off these AutoFormatting options is because later in the Style Guide, you’re going to try to simplify and normalize your text to prepare it for conversion. If you don’t turn off AutoFormatting, Word will cheerfully and automatically mess things up again as you make the corrections below.
To
access the same screen in Word 2007, click on the round Microsoft
Office button (upper left) then click Word Options, then click
Proofing, then click the button at right for AutoCorrect
Options. See the screen shot below, which is similar for most
versions of Word.
Text boxes can corrupt your formatting, and they’re often difficult to find. Unfortunately, Word doesn’t make it easy to find them. To learn if you have text boxes, from your Word menu choose View: Print Layout, then click on your pages and if the shaded dashy lines appear around your text, that’s a text box. Text boxes will corrupt your ebook conversions by inserting a paragraph return at the end of every line, or awkwardly shifting your text. Be sure to check your headers and footers, because you’ll often find text boxes hiding there, surrounding paragraph returns, or surrounding the auto-page-numbering. Remove them. We have seen instances where a simple auto-page-numbering textbox in the header will cause some file conversions to become corrupted.
Here’s a screenshot:
The most reliable method of eliminating text box is called the Nuclear Method, mentioned above, and described in greater detail in the next section below.
If you already suspect your formatting is screwed up, or if your manuscript originated from a PDF file, or if it has touched multiple word processors over the years, it’s not a bad idea to use the Nuclear Method now, because it gives you a fresh clean document. As you’ll see later when I discuss the topic of EPUBCHECK (an industry-standard validation your EPUB must pass in order for us to ship your book to Apple), the Nuclear Method is the last-resort solution to fix files that can’t pass EPUBCHECK. If you go Nuclear now, you won’t have to do it later.
Step 5 - THE NUCLEAR METHOD (HOW TO PURGE HIDDEN CORRUPTION)
Your Microsoft Word document can become corrupted if it has been touched by multiple word processors, or if it originated in a program such as InDesign or WordPerfect, or if it originated in PDF and then was converted to Word.
The Nuclear Method purges all your formatting and allows you to start with a fresh Word document, free of hidden formatting or corrupted styling. The Nuclear Method is optional but recommended. Most formatting professionals on Mark’s List employ this method because it maximizes your odds of a good clean multi-format conversion.
The Nuclear Method is also recommended if previous versions of your manuscript failed to convert, or if you’re struggling with EPUBCHECK errors, text boxes or tables you can’t find, or if you suspect your book is corrupted.
First, make a backup of your manuscript (VERY IMPORTANT!) and set it aside in case the Nuclear Method fails you. Next, copy and paste your entire manuscript into Windows Notepad (usually found in Programs: Accessories) or any other text editor. This will strip out all your formatting. Close Microsoft Word. Then reopen Microsoft Word so it’s showing a fresh empty document. Next, in Notepad, type CTRL+A (press the CTRL key, hold it down, then press the A key at the same time) for “select all” then CTRL+C for “copy,” then paste into the empty Word document using either CTRL+V (for paste) or Edit: Paste (in Word 2000 and 2003) or Home: Paste (Word 2007). From here, reformat the book per the Style Guide. Remember to make sure you complete the previous steps, such as turning off “AutoFormat as you type” and “AutoCorrect as you type” covered above in Step 3.
***~~~***
Step 6 - Unify Manuscript around Normal Paragraph Style
In your raw Microsoft Word document, (especially if you didn’t use the Nuclear Method above) you probably have a mishmash of conflicting and inconsistent paragraph styles. You might have Normal paragraph style, or other paragraph styles such as Body Text, Plain Text, or multiple Heading styles. You probably don’t even know you’ve got these styles (often because of Word’s annoying habit mentioned above in Step 3 of changing your formatting to what Word thinks you want, rather than what you really want).
CHANGE EVERYTHING TO NORMAL PARAGRAPH STYLE: If you change your entire book the Normal paragraph style, right now, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and headache (you can add other styles back in later) and you’ll get a cleaner conversion.
***~~~***
Here’s quick sneak peek flash forward of where I’m taking you: You’ll change everything to Normal paragraph style, then you’ll modify Normal to define what you want it to define based on whether you want first line indents or the block method, then you’ll judiciously add in additional paragraph styles if necessary (such as maybe the Heading style for chapter headings), then you’ll add your bold and italics, then you’ll do clean up and then you’re done.
***~~~***
If you ignore the Normalization step, then you’ll receive complaints from customers that your font size and font style changes erratically from one paragraph to the next. Such inconsistent style usage can also prevent you from gaining access to the Premium Catalog, or, if your inconsistent styling slips past our reviewers, retailers will reject your book for the same reason.
To unify your text around the Normal paragraph style, in Microsoft Word press CTRL+A (press the CTRL key at the same time you press the “A” key, or choose Edit: Select All from the menu) to highlight all your text, and then select "Normal" from your option bar up above. This will allow you to standardize on a single font, single font size, the same line spacing, and the same text justification (we recommend left justified, a.k.a. “ragged right” by its detractors). Note that depending on your formatting, when you change the text to Normal you may lose some formatting (what was centered previously may become left justified or your italics may disappear, for example, as well as other changes, so be sure to carefully re-apply necessary elements later).
In
Word 2007, if you're trying to make the pull down box pictured
above appear in your Word 2007 menu, click the round Office button
upper left, then click Word Options, then click Customize,
then scroll down the left column and click "style,"
then click "Add" in the middle column and that will
put in on your menu bar. Or, you can access via Step 7 below.
Although we recommend changing everything to Normal paragraph style at this step, you can still add additional styles later (in fact, we recommend you add additional styles later), and you can also modify the Normal paragraph style to reflect the font size, style and other paragraph characteristics you want (learn how in the next section!).
Step 7 - Managing and Modifying Paragraph Styles, Fonts
Word comes with many pre-defined paragraph styles. You’ll see in this Style Guide we recommend you unify as much of your book as possible around the Normal style, at least to start, to minimize conflicts and complexity. Once you learn how to manage your Normal style (or any other style for that matter), you’ll gain much greater control over the quality of your ebook’s formatting. You’ll also save a lot of time and headache. For example, you can define special first line indents within your style, or you can define spacing around your paragraphs (more on this later in the section that follows).
You can even create your own custom paragraph styles. For example, it’s often a good idea to create a custom style you can apply to text or images you want centered. In Step 14a later, I’ll show you how to do this.
What You See is (not always) What You Get. Just because your manuscript on screen in Microsoft Word looks like it has a font of 12pt Times New Roman, the book may appear in some of the Smashwords ebook formats as 10 pt Courier or some other font (this happened to me with my own book, Boob Tube). How does this happen? The answer is in Word’s underlying paragraph styles. If Word thinks the default font size for the “Normal” paragraph style is 11pt Courier, even if you manually changed your document to be 12pt Times New Roman on screen, the book it passes on to Meatgrinder will be 11pt Courier if the underlying style defines Courier.
This has important ramifications. To control how your text behaves as an ebook, you want to learn to control your underlying definitions of your paragraph styles.
To ensure you pass to Smashwords what you intend to pass, follow these instructions: Within older version of Word (pre-Word 2007), click Format: Style, then on the left click “Normal” if it isn’t already highlighted. In the center pane of the window, under “character preview,” Word will show you sample text and tell you the default font style for “Normal” text. If it’s what you want, then you’re good. However, if it’s different (as it was in my case when I uploaded my novel), then click Format: Font: and then select the font and font size you want. We recommend Times New Roman. Don’t use exotic fonts because they will not translate well, and they could even cause your conversions to fail.
If
you’re using Word 2007, click the Home tab, then click the
little arrow under “Change Style” (see image below)
… then you’ll see…
… click Modify above, then the following will appear…
… click Format in the lower left, then click Paragraph to modify the paragraph style.
Step 7a - Choose a Paragraph Separation Method: First Line Indent or Block Method
It's important you provide your readers visual cues to separate one paragraph from the next, otherwise paragraphs blend together and create a horrible reading experience. For the body of your book (everything after the title and copyright page), either use first line indents at the beginning of a paragraph, or use the block paragraph method. Don’t use both.
This Style Guide uses the block paragraph method, which is common for some non-fiction. The first line paragraph indent method is best for fiction and narrative non-fiction.
Don’t mix the two methods in the body of your book. For reference, pick up virtually any printed novel. Novels almost always use first line indented paragraphs, with no separation between one paragraph and the next. One paragraph ends on one line, then the next paragraph begins on the next line.
The image below further illustrates the difference between block and first line indent:
First line paragraph indents are preferable for fiction and also work well with a lot of narrative non-fiction. Block paragraphs work well for other non-fiction, especially if you’re managing multiple sections, or the layout is more complicated. DO NOT USE both first line indents and the block style. Use one or the other only. Yes, I know I’m repeating myself here (it’s one of the most common errors our authors make).
Also, avoid separating blocks of paragraphs using a paragraph return on an empty line. Instead, modify your paragraph style to define a trailing space. The next few sections below, along with their accompanying images, will help you learn how to modify your paragraph style to define a trailing space after each block paragraph
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-36 show above.)