[stylist] eBook publishing experience, a warning about hiring eBook formatters

Wed Jun 26 16:46:46 UTC 2013

Donna,
Thanks so much for your explanation. I just now answered one of Bridgit's
and if you read that, you will understand my wariness with long sequences of
numbers. You have increased my understanding at least one step.
Jackie 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Donna Hill
Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2013 1:59 PM
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [stylist] eBook publishing experience,a warning about hiring
eBook formatters

Hi Jackie,
Thanks. The example you gave is called a URL or link. It is a web address.
"http://" or "https://" is the code that preceeds all internet addresses,
though you may not always see it. In Simple URLs, you often just have
letters like
Google.com
Or:
Nfb.org
Simple addresses like these get you to what is called the homepage. Once you
want to get further into a website than it's homepage, other information
gets added to the end of the web address. You don't have to know the URL/web
address for a website, but your computer does.  
HTH,
Donna 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jacqueline
Williams
Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2013 2:47 PM
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [stylist] eBook publishing experience,a warning about hiring
eBook formatters

Donna,
My hat goes off to you for this tedious and challenging journey. This is a
good resource for us. The discouraging part to me is the amount of numbering
throughout this piece, and almost every other informative e-mail I get about
websites, resources. I do not know what they refer to. An example:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-heart-of-applebutter-hill-donna-w-hill/1
115426305?ean=2940016415000. If you use JAWS this is mind-blowing.
Regardless, congratulations on the end result.
Jackie

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Donna Hill
Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2013 10:33 AM
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: [stylist] eBook publishing experience,a warning about hiring eBook
formatters

Hi Fellow Writers,
Below is the text of my latest post on my self-publishing adventure. 

There are links to Smashwords' free Style Guide (.rtf) and to my book pages
on Smashwords, Bookshare, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The article starts with
a photo of the book cover, and there's a mini sound bite at the end which I
didn't include here (It's Sound Cloud & it works with Jaws on Firefox but
not IE10). It's all at:

http://donnawhill.com/2013/06/20/a-writers-wormhole-ebook-self-publishing-mi
stakes-mystifications-and-misdemeanors/

Enjoy,
Donna

A Writer's Wormhole: eBook Self-Publishing Mistakes, Mystifications &
Misdemeanors: by Donna W. Hill 

June 20, 2013

The Heart of Applebutter Hill book cover shows a cave scene: stalactites
reflected in an underground lake, while a hand holds the Heartstone of
Arden-Goth, a blue, heart-shaped sapphire

When people struggle to interpret grammatically butchered sentences, brain
scans reveal an energy dip below the left temple. The phenomenon is the
"left anterior negativity effect" (Discover, 12/2013, "The Brain"). I
experienced that dip first-hand many times while in the eBook
self-publishing stage of my novel, The Heart of Applebutter Hill. Did I say
I was going to leave formatting to the professionals? That didn't work.
Could my experiences be a warning to other soon-to-be self-published
authors?

Self-Publishing eBooks Through Smashwords

There are loads of eBook sellers (Kindle, Nook, Sony, Apple, Kobo, and on
and on). Wanna format, upload and keep track of each one yourself? Not me.
Smashwords is the largest eBook aggregator, distributing books that meet
their rigid demands to more outlets than I knew existed. Currently, they
don't routinely distribute to Kindle; I had to publish it separately through
Kindle Direct Publishing

 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CNG6DDM

Nook is the next biggest seller, so I decided to do that one through Nook
Press

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-heart-of-applebutter-hill-donna-w-hill/1
115426305?ean=2940016415000
<http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-heart-of-applebutter-hill-donna-w-hill/
1115426305?ean=2940016415000&itm=1&usri=2940016415000>
&itm=1&usri=2940016415000

 I provided an accessible version for readers with print disabilities to
Bookshare

http://www.bookshare.org/browse/book/639304

and let Smashwords

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/313071

do the rest.

The Smashwords system, affectionately known as "Meatgrinder," converts
properly-formatted .doc files (never .docx) into seven different file types.
The trick is making that properly-formatted .doc. Smashwords has a free
<http://www.smashwords.com/b/52> Style Guide:

http://www.smashwords.com/b/52

It explains everything you need to know -- almost. I've read it many times.

Smashwords founder Mark Coker is quite specific that you must make
manually-linked tables of contents and not use Word's automatic TOC option.
The process starts with writing up your table of contents, bookmarking each
chapter in the book and then linking to those bookmarks from your TOC.

Let the Professionals Format Your eBook?

OK, so I hired a company to format the eBook for Smashwords. I assumed the
professionals would use Smashword's Style Guide. My guys were great to work
with, friendly, impressed with my book, and have an answer for everything.
Ultimately, they refunded my money and assured me that what happened with my
book never happens. I hear that a lot.

We got off to a confusing start; I sent them the wrong file -- my bad. When
they approved my book, they asked me for the JPeg of the cover. I
immediately sent it with the right file, an explanation and my apologies.
Their first attempt used the wrong file anyway. They said they never got the
right one, but had the JPeg I sent with it. Hmm, my left brain is having
trouble processing. Did I say I'm compulsive and keep my e-mails? As stupid
as I felt for sending the wrong file to begin with, I didn't get a warm and
fuzzy feeling from their obviously flawed explanation.

Their next attempt -- using the right file this time -- came back without a
table of contents. They had removed it. They said, to my further confusion,
that Meatgrinder would generate one. But, to appease me, they said they'd
re-do it with something they hoped would "trick Meatgrinder" and satisfy me.
There's that dip again.

Their last attempt showed up with my Smashwords book page URL missing. How
do you accidentally eliminate one URL in the middle of a page? I can feel
that left anterior negativity just remembering it.

Solutions, Results & Excuses

I fixed the missing URL and uploaded it. It passed "Autovetter" --
Smashword's' automatic format checker. That meant I could sell it on
Smashwords. To get in their Premium Catalog, however, it would have to pass
a manual inspection. It failed. The problem? "Inoperative Table of
Contents," among other things.

I was so sick of going back and forth with the formatting folks at that
point that I went to work. It took ten times to get it right, but it was
finally approved. That's when I contacted the pros with a postmortem. By
then, I knew how to determine how many bookmarks and hyperlinks the pros had
created. My novel has 54 chapters -- all with names (don't be scared,
they're quite short) -- and a half-dozen sections of front and back matter.
My .doc -- approved by Smashwords -- ended up with 60 bookmarks. The
professionals had none. And as for hyperlinks? How does "2" sound? And, they
were auto-generated -- just what the SW Style Guide says not to do.

To my further confusion, they claimed that, despite what SW's Style Guide
says, Smashwords does take files with Word's automatic TOC, and that it was
really Meatgrinder's shortcomings. They were magnanimous enough to say that
-- under the circumstances -- this was quite understandable. The real
culprit, according to my guys, is Microsoft. MS has never fixed their fiddly
Word program, which adds secret bookmarks and hidden code that can't help
but wreak havoc with other software. Blame Microsoft; I'm cool with that --
mostly -- but following the Style Guide eliminates that crap. There goes
that left anterior negativity again.

Advice from a Novice eBook Formatter

Formatting is tedious; it offers none of the joys of the simplest writing
endeavors ... until you learn that you did it right. I did it right once;
you can too. Save your money. Do it yourself!

###

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