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SMASHWORDSFORMATTINGGo to ToCSMASHWORDS FORMATTING LIMITATIONSBY MARRAII DESIGN’S BOOKAHOLIC Fiverr Client ManualThe 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 BookaholicLicense 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 thereader 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 oradministered by, or associated with, Smashwords.com. The author hereby releasesSmashwords.com of any liability. If you have any additional questionsfeel free to send a message to the author on Fiverr!Marraii Design Smashwords Formatting1www.marraii.com

SMASHWORDSFORMATTINGGo to ToCWHY THE MANUAL?After having formatted numerous books for Smashwords publishing platform,my experience tells me that clients who know what to expect from Smashwordsformatting are thrilled by my service, and come back for more. Many of themhave 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 theclient didn’t know what Smashwords formatting was all about, wonderingwhere all the huge fonts, text boxes, and colors went. The expression forbidden onSmash 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 withmy service:Smashwords Style Guide – is a set of formatting rules that must be obliged in orderto sell your book through major retailers such as the Apple iBookstore, Barnes &Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel, Baker & Taylor and others—via Smashwords. Your bookwill also be available as a multi-format ebook at Smashwords.comAutoVetter – software that inspects your document upon submission forformatting errors according to the Smashwords Style Guide.Premium Catalog – a collection of books that get distributed to major retailersbecause they meet Smashwords Style Guide requirements.Meatgrinder – software that creates reflowable ebooks that look great on anyeReading device. “Reflowable” means that the text of your ebook will easily flowacross all screen sizes, whether your book is read on a small screen likesmartphone, or a larger screen like a tablet. Reflowable books enable yourcustomer to click a button, and instantly enlarge the font size for more comfortablereading.Marraii Design Smashwords Formatting2www.marraii.com

SMASHWORDSFORMATTINGGo to ToCI guarantee your book will pass the AutoVetter on the first run and thus will getinto the Premium Catalog, but if your book is a public domain work, incomplete orpartial book, appears elsewhere on the Internet under other authors’ name, yourerotica 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 booksFormatting limitations listOther important noticesSmashwords formatting serviceMarraii Design Smashwords Formatting3www.marraii.com

SMASHWORDSFORMATTINGGo to ToCIMPORTANT!THE DIFFERENCE BETWEENEBOOKS AND PRINT BOOKSEbooks are absolutely different from print books, so do not expect them to look likean exact replica of a print book.With print, you control the layout. It’s a fixed format. The words, fonts and fontsizes appear on the printed page exactly where you want them to appear. Yourreader cannot change how it looks, except damage the book. If a chapter begins ona 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 lookdifferent on every e-reading device. Page numbers are irrelevant. What oneperson sees on their screen will not necessarily be on other person’s screen. Thetext of your ebook will shape, shift and reflow while looking good on multiple screensizes.Most e-reading devices and e-reading applications allow your reader to customizethe fonts, font sizes and line spacing. Your customers will modify how your booklooks on-screen to suit their personal reading preference and environment (even ifthat means they like to read 18 point Helvetica with blue fonts, lime backgroundcolor, and triple spaced lines).So unlike print edition, it’s important that your epub/mobi is coded, and MS Wordfile is formatted to liberate the words in digital form.Marraii Design Smashwords Formatting4www.marraii.com

SMASHWORDSFORMATTINGGo to ToCFORMATTING LIMITATIONSOther publishing platforms may allow many types of formatting, but Smashwordsisn’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 listthat 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 paragraphindents 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/numberingMarraii Design Smashwords Formatting5www.marraii.com

SMASHWORDSFORMATTINGGo to ToC Drop caps(a drop cap is the large initial capped letter you may see in the firstparagraph 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 appeartwice 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 Smashwordsebook, not your print edition. In most cases, your book will fail Smashwords’manual review, and get rejection from Premium.Marraii Design Smashwords Formatting6www.marraii.com

SMASHWORDSFORMATTINGGo to ToC Not to encourage readers to visit a specific retailer to leave a review. “Pleaseremember to leave a review for my ebook at Amazon” —again rejection fromPremium (click to see why) It’s not necessary to place your ISBN inside your ebook, but you have toassign it to your book via Smash Dashboard If the book is also available in a print edition, do not name retailers, justwrite, “This book is available in print at most online retailers.”Marraii Design Smashwords Formatting7www.marraii.com

SMASHWORDSFORMATTINGGo to ToCOTHER IMPORTANT NOTICESCOVER — the image must be at least 1400 X 2100 pixels wide, and the heightshould be greater than the width.Book covers cannot contain: NudityPriceHyperlinksAdvertisements of items not already included in the bookThe cover cannot be grainy or pixelated(pixelation occurs when you start with a small image and expand thedimensions)It must include: The book title and author name(the title & author name must match the title & author name inside yourbook and in the metadata)Your image must be in RGB colorTAGS — never add more than ten tags (keywords)—this will cause rejection fromthe PremiumTITLE AND COPYRIGHT PAGE — the very first page in the book that is required inorder to publish on Smashwords. The copyright portion should be in English, evenif 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 properlyformatted text wrongly, and your book’s appearance in there should not concernyou too much (you don’t sell html versions).Marraii Design Smashwords Formatting8www.marraii.com

SMASHWORDSFORMATTINGGo to ToCLINKS TO AMAZON — please do not link or refer to any other digital downloadsource other than Smashwords or your personal blog or website. Retail partnersdon't want to see links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., or mention of the Kindle orNook. 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’swhat you hired me to do!By giving up the control of fixed format print layout,you gain a lot with reflowability by making your bookaccessible to millions of potential readers Keep an open mind! Let your digital books flow! Bookaholic Marraii Design Smashwords Formatting9www.marraii.com

SMASHWORDSFORMATTINGGo to ToCMARRAII DESIGN’S BOOKAHOLICSMASHWORDS FORMATTING SERVICEThe Best Smashwords Formatting Is Here!Anyone who's ever dealt with Smashwords knows howmuch hassle that can be. After all, Smash is a wellknown headache inducer when it comes to manuscriptformatting. Therefore, if you're planning to get your books up there, you shoulddefinitely check out my Fiverr Gig for Smashwords.Independent authors/publishers' goal is to get their books to as many readers aspossible. Consequently, that's where Smashwords comes into play—love them orhate 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.Marraii Design Smashwords Formatting10www.marraii.com

SMASHWORDSFORMATTINGGo to ToCMy Smashwords formatting service includes formatting of your MS Worddocument to pass Smashwords AutoVetter on the first try! Passing means yourbook meets all their standards, and will be submitted to Smashwords PremiumCatalog 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 alwayspasses! 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 forinteractivity!)Paragraph styles & line spacing properly set not to break Smash rulesChapters starting on top of the next pageTables converted to images or text (depending what looks better sinceSmash doesn't allow tables)Images downsized to Smash requirements and 96dpi resolutionAnd all other things not allowed on Smashwords removed/replaced/fixed!Marraii Design Smashwords Formatting11www.marraii.com