by Mark Coker
Common Reasons for EPUBCHECK failure:
Missing the “http://” in front of a web address - If your book contains improperly formed hyperlinks, it’ll fail EPUBCHECK. For example, if you right mouse click on a hyperlink, and you see the link points to www.website.com instead of http://www.website.com, it’ll fail.
Missing the “mailto:” in front of an email address - If you’re linking to a live email address, the email address underneath the hyperlink (right mouse click then click Edit Hyperlink to see) should begin with “mailto:” so it looks like mailto:[email protected] where, of course, you’ll replace [email protected] with the actual email address.
HTML and Styling errors – This is a catch-all for “that which we mere mortals cannot understand.” Microsoft Word often contains the remnants of old or hidden styling that you can’t see with the naked eye, especially if your book originated in a program other than Microsoft Word, or if your book was once in HTML form. Unless you’re a geek or HTML expert, these errors, even after studying the EPUBCHECK error reporting, are very difficult to decipher and identify. If you can’t figure it out on your own, you may need to reformat your book from scratch by implementing the Nuclear Method, which will purge all the hidden corruption. The Nuclear Method will also purge all other formatting.
Misidentified Image Files - If Word thinks your image is a Gif file when it’s really a JPEG, for example, this can cause an EPUBCHECK error. This is often fixable by deleting the image along with a couple paragraph returns above and below the image, and then re-import the image.
Properties Error - If you examine the Properties in your Word file (In Word 2000 & 2003, go to File: Properties; in Word 2007 click on the round Office button at the upper left of the screen, then hover your mouse pointer over Prepare, then click Properties) and you see strange HTML characters in there, remove them.
PlayOrder Error – If you see “playorder” in the spaghetti messages, try deleting your table of contents and retype it, following the step by step outlined in the ToC section above. Make sure you created your linked ToC using the bookmark method, and not Word’s ToC field codes.
Step 28: How to Market Your Book
Although we make it free and easy to publish and distribute your book, your book will not sell unless you get out there and sell it! It’s your responsibility to promote your book. Read my free companion guide, The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/305 for a complete overview of how to use Smashwords to promote and sell your book.
Send Feedback So I Can Improve This Guide!
I hope this guide was useful to you. Please send me your comments and suggestions. Your feedback will help me improve this guide for other authors.
Won’t you please take a moment to tell your friends about Smashwords?
Mark Coker
Founder
Smashwords, Inc.
first initial second initial at smashwords dot com
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Helpful Resources:
Smashwords Support Center - FAQs, troubleshooting
https://www.smashwords.com/about/supportfaq
The Smashwords Blog - Smashwords news and other ebook trends:
http://blog.smashwords.com
Smashwords operational updates, bugs, fixes, miscellaneous:
http://www.smashwords.com/about/beta
Smashwords Book Marketing Guide - 25+ marketing tips, all free
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/305
How Smashwords Distributes Your Books
http://www.smashwords.com/distribution
Your Dashboard – Monitor Premium Catalog Status
http://www.smashwords.com/dashboard
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Keyboard Shortcuts:
If you take the time to learn some special keyboard shortcuts, you can dramatically reduce the time it takes to format your book. Often the keyboard shortcut involves pressing the CTRL key on the PC or the Command key on the Mac, followed by a ^ (called a caret) and a letter.
HIGHLIGHT ALL: CTRL+A - This key combination highlights the entire book, making it easy to apply a global change to the formatting. After you highlight everything by pressing CTRL+A, for example, a right mouse click anywhere, followed by a click on Paragraph, will allow you to globally modify your paragraphs, or your line spacing, or allow you to instantly apply a special first line paragraph indent.
COPY or CUT: CTRL+C or CTRL+X - Highlight any text string with your mouse (click and hold your mouse key, then drag your mouse to highlight), then click CTRL+C to copy it into memory. After you copy something into memory, the original text stays where it is. If you CTRL+X, or cut it, it removes the text from the screen and places it in memory.
PASTE: CTRL+V - This allows you paste text anywhere you want after you copy or cut it.
FIND AND REPLACE: CTRL+H - This is one of the most powerful features. Let’s say you used the Tab key to create first line indents in your original manuscript, and now you read in the Style Guide that Tabs are about as welcome as the stomach flu. But what if your 100,000 word novel has 2,000 paragraphs? It would take you five hours to zap all those Tabs. With Search & Replace, you can zap ‘em all in about 5 seconds. Just press the CTRL key on your keyboard at the same time you press the H key.
In the Find what: field enter: ^t
In the Replace with: field, enter nothing, then click the Replace All button.
If you used space bar spaces instead of indents, you can use a variation of the FIND AND REPLACE tool as well. Activate show/hide, and take a look at the space bar spaces. Maybe you’re using what looks like three, four or five space bar spaces. In fact, if you used space bar spaces, you might find it varies. Again, if you had to manually remove these it would take hours. Find and replace does it in seconds. Follow these steps:
1. In the Find what: field, enter a ^p followed by five taps on the space bar. ^P is the symbol for a paragraph return. By entering ^p first, you’ll ensure you’re only zapping the space bar spaces you’re using for first line indents.
2. In the Replace with: field, enter ^p only.
3. Repeat step 1, but this time search for ^p followed by four taps on the space bar. Then replace with ^p and then click Replace All. Then repeat it all over again for ^p followed by three spaces, then two, and finally one.
Remember, after you purge the bad first line indents that you originally created with a Tab or space bar spaces, be sure to add either proper first line paragraph indents, or implement the block paragraph method, described above.
THE QQQ TRICK - Have you ever copied and pasted something into Word, only to discover it inserts paragraph returns in odd places? This commonly happens when you copy and paste text from an email into Word, or from a Web page into Word. If you have a lot of text facing this problem, try what I call the QQQ Trick. Do a CTRL+H, search for ^p^p and replace with QQQ then search for ^p and replace with nothing. Then search for QQQ and replace with ^p^p and voila, you have reflowable text again. This trick has other uses with other variations. Essentially, you’re using a wildcard - QQQ - as a temporary placeholder for something. I chose QQQ because the letters are unlikely to ever appear in natural language.
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Top
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: Keep it Simple, Keep it Simple, Keep it Simple!
Understanding the Different Ebook Formats
Step 22. The End of Your Book
Step 25. How to Upload your Book!
Step 28: How to Market Your Book