Publishing E-Books For Dummies

Adding Your E-Book to Smashwords

Before you publish your e-book at Smashwords, you’ll likely need to make changes to your Word manuscript. Smashwords works by running your manuscript through its proprietary (and unpleasant-sounding) Meatgrinder feature. It creates published versions of your e-book in multiple formats, to give readers as much choice as possible — without creating extra work for you.

The following sections explain how to fine-tune your manuscript formatting and then upload the final version to Smashwords.

Following the Smashwords guidelines

You can download the Smashwords Style Guide for free at www.smashwords.com/books/view/52 .

The Smashwords Style Guide has quite a bit of information to review, but Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, wrote the guide in a beginner-friendly way — you definitely don’t need to be a technical expert to use it. Read the guide before starting to format your e-book.

If you follow the instructions in Chapter 4 for formatting a Word manuscript, you shouldn’t have much work to do. Follow this crucial advice:

The manuscript must contain no more than four consecutive line breaks anywhere. If you insert lots of line breaks in the front matter of your e-book or between sections or to end chapters, for example, you have to take them out.

Your e-book must have a copyright page. It likely already has one, but at Smashwords, the page ...