by Mark Coker
The Smashwords Style Guide
By Mark Coker
rev 9.11.10
Copyright Mark Coker 2008-2010
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.
Cover design by PJ Lyon
Also by Mark Coker, Published at Smashwords:
Smashwords Book Marketing Guide
Boob Tube
Smashwords Style Guide Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
About this guide
Before you begin
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
Frequently Asked Questions
Introduction to Meatgrinder conversion system
Your required source file
Understanding the different ebook formats
FORMATTING
Formatting your work (the fun stuff!!!)
Making Word behave
Normalize the text (Change everything to Normal paragraph style)
Purging old or corrupted formatting + The Nuclear Option
Managing and modifying paragraph styles
First line indent, or block paragraphs? (choose one only)
How to choose the right paragraph separation method
Why you should never use tabs or the space bar for indents
Working with images
Add the Heading style to your Chapter headers
Create a linked Table of Contents
Front Matter
Blurbs
Title and copyright page
Adding Smashwords License Statement
The end of your book
POST-FORMATTING
Preparing your cover image
Premium Distribution requirements
After the formatting is complete, Publish!
How to upload your book
How AutoVetter works
After you publish: Check Your Work
How to market your book
Send feedback
Helpful resources
Keyboard shortcuts
INTRODUCTION
Back to top
About this Guide:
This guide helps Smashwords authors and publishers format their ebooks for Smashwords. Don’t upload your books to Smashwords until you have carefully read and implemented the recommendations in this Guide.
The Style Guide is written for non-techies. It presents simple, step by step tips to help you format your ebook for the best possible presentation across all ebook formats and devices. It’s required reading if you want your ebook accepted into the Smashwords Premium Catalog for distribution to major online ebook retailers such as Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel and Amazon.
If you don’t have the patience, time or skills to properly format your masterpiece per these requirements, consider hiring someone. Several Smashwords authors have volunteered to provide low-cost Smashwords Style Guide formatting services for around $25/hr and up. If you would like a reference (we don’t earn a referral fee), contact me, Mark Coker for my private list. Please note: if you utilize one of these formatting providers, remember you’re hiring them, not Smashwords. By using them you will not receive any preferential customer support or fast-tracking for the Premium Catalog.
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. Jigglers by Gerald Weinberg - http://www.smashwords.com/books/download/22171/3/386145/jigglers-aremac-a-century-later.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 unless you are the original author. 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 should be adults. And finally, we strongly discourage any book that advocates get-rich-quick “systems” for making money on the Internet. Smashwords is a serious publishing service for serious writers only.
Five Common Formatting Mistakes to Avoid:
1. Improper Indents - Don’t use tabs or space bar spaces for paragraph indents (instead, code your paragraph style to define a special first line paragraph indent, or, use the ruler bar indent: see step # 9 below)
2. Repeating paragraph returns - Never use more than four consecutive paragraph returns 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 become unreadable. Use one 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 6 pt trailing space at the end of the paragraph.
4. Font and style mistakes - Don’t use fancy non-standard fonts, colored fonts (colors often disappear on some e-reading devices), kerning, large font sizes over 16pt, and don’t go overboard with multiple paragraph styles (makes your ebook look ugly, and compounds odds of unexpected problems)
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 and publish to Smashwords. Simply click “Publish” from any Smashwords web page and follow the instructions to upload your book.
Smashwords takes your original Microsoft Word source file, usually in .doc format, 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 iPads, 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. Sample distributors include 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 want to read on the iPhone or Sony Reader. 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 charts 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], consider it an admission 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.