The Smashwords Style Guide has helped thousands of authors produce and publish high-quality ebooks. This free guide offers simple step-by-step instructions to professionally create, format and publish an ebook. It's required reading for any author who wants to distribute their book via Smashwords to major ebook retailers such as the Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Scribd, and Kobo. Smashwords also distributes ebooks to public libraries via OverDrive, Baker & Taylor Axis 360, CloudLibrary and Odilo.The Smashwords Style Guide provides a great primer introduction on ebook publishing. Over 500,000 copies downloaded!Updated September 24, 2014.INSIDE THE SMASHWORDS STYLE GUIDEGETTING STARTEDWelcome to Smashwords!Do-it-yourself, or hire help?Good formatting examplesWhat Smashwords publishes, what we don't publishHow to distribute books with SmashwordsHow ebook formatting is different from print formattingIntroduction to Meatgrinder: How we convert your book into multiple ebook formatsUnderstanding the different ebook formatsThe beauty and utility of simplicityAutoVetter helps identify common formatting errorsYour required source fileFREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONSFORMATTING* Pre-Prep*Making Word BehaveStep 1: Make a back upStep 2: Activate Word's Show/HideStep 3: Turn off Word's "AutoCorrect" and "AutoFormat" featuresStep 4: Turn off Track ChangesStep 5: The Nuclear MethodStep 6: Hug a loved one*Formatting*Step 7: Managing and modifying paragraph styles, fontsStep 7a. How to choose the best paragraph separation method (first line indent or block?)Step 7b: How to implement your chosen paragraph separation methodStep 7b-a: How to define a proper first line indentStep 7b-b: How to define trailing "after" space for block paragraphsStep 7b-c: Special tips for poetry, cookbooks and learning materialsStep 7b-d: How to define proper line spacingStep 7b-e: Managing font colorStep 8: Check your normalized textStep 9: How to automate the removal of tabs and space bar spacesStep 10: Managing paragraph returnsStep 11: Managing external hyperlinksStep 12: Designating chapter breaks, page breaks, section breaksStep 13: Working with imagesStep 14: Text justificationStep 14a: Centering textStep 15: Managing font sizesStep 16: Style formatting, symbols and glyphsStep 17: Headers and footersStep 18: Margins, page sizes and indentsStep 19: Add the Heading style to your Chapter headers (optional)*Building Navigation*Step 20: Building navigation into the manuscriptStep 20a: Creating the NCXStep 20b: Creating the linked Table of ContentsStep 20c: Advanced link building (Footnotes, Endnotes)Step 20d: Troubleshooting and testing*Front Matter*Step 21: Front matterStep 21a: Blurbs (optional)Step 21b: Title and copyright page (required!)Step 21c: Add a Smashwords license statement below copyright page*The End of Your Book*Step 22: The end of your book*POST-FORMATTING*Step 23: Preparing your cover imageStep 24: Review requirements for Premium Catalog distribution*Uploading Your Book to Smashwords*Step 25: How to upload your bookStep 26: How AutoVetter worksStep 27: After you publish – check your workStep 27a: Check for EPUBCHECK compliance (important!)Distributing Your Book with SmashwordsStep 28: How Smashwords distribution works*How to Market Your Book*Step 29: Read the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide (how to market any book)...
