How to Format an EBook for Smashwords

I've looked at several eBook publishers, and have decided to go with Smashwords, largely because they transform your manuscript into a number of different electronic formats, all for free. They pay decent royalties, quarterly. And they have a good distribution network if you can make it into the Premier Catalog. That isn't difficult, IF you follow the style guide lines.

The Smashwords Style Guide is a long eBook. It looks really daunting, and it is very detailed. It does need to be followed meticulously, but an overview of what is expected will be helpful to new publishers. Don't use this guide exclusively. You need all the detail in their Style Guide, but this will hopefully make it more understandable.

Principles to guide you right up front
1. You must create your MS as a doc file. Word is the best choice but conversions from Open Office seem to work, while conversions from Word Perfect do not.
2. Your entire MS can not be larger than 5MB. This means that you are limited in the number of images you can use. Smashwords (perhaps any eBook) is not a good venue for image-rich works.
3. Forget artistic formatting. Only a few font styles are recommended, with a small size variation (10-14 point). This is so that the final work will display properly on any number of electronic readers/computers. This was hard for me to give up, but get over it. You want to sell books.
4. There are no pages in eBooks, because different screens are different sizes.
5. Images can be used, but they have to be in-line. There is no flowing of text around them.

Overview of your text formatting goal
1. You want to remove ALL extra line and paragraph breaks, and end up with as few as possible.
2. You CAN NOT have any tabs in the document at all.
3. You want to use only two or at the most three fonts, with minimal size difference between titles and text. Bold and italics are fine.

Clean your text
Start with a blank Word document and right away, and save it under a new name.

Turn on "show formatting symbols" That is done by clicking the icon in the toolbar that looks like a backwards P. (I just learned that it's actually called a pilcrow- what fun!). If you don't see it, use Tools/ Options/ View , then under Formatting Marks click All.

Turn off Word's AutoCorrect features. These are under Tools/ AutoFormat. Turn these all off. They will add unwanted "stuff" to your clean document. (In Office 2007 these are under Word Options/ Proofing.)

Set the default font (Format/ Font) to something basic like Times New Roman or Arial. Then under Format/ Style your Normal font should show as what you just chose.

Next, copy in some or all of your text. You will have less trouble cleaning it up if you start with plain text. In other words, from whatever program you used to write your work, save the whole thing as a txt file. Then open that file, and copy + paste your work into the Word document. This should have removed all the fancy fonts, and many of the extraneous formatting stuff. If you are using images, take them out. You'll probably need to reformat them all anyway.

Set the paragraph style and spacing. Generally non-fiction uses block paragraphs, and fiction uses indented paragraphs. Do not mix them in the same work.
1. For block paragraphs: Under Format/ Paragraph/ Indents & Spacing, make sure that you have single spacing selected, and under Spacing/ After choose 6 pt or 10 pt. (But keep in mind that a larger separation may end up being a lot of blank space on an electronic reader.) See figure 1.

2. For indented paragraphs: Do NOT use tabs. Set them like this. Under Format/ Paragraph/ Indents & Spacing, set the Indentation/ Special to First Line and a value of NO MORE THAN 0.5 inch. 0.3 is better. Remember, your book needs to be viewed on some very small reading devices. Make sure that the Spacing/ After is 0, unlike for the block style. See figure 2.
3. Be especially careful not to choose Line Spacing/ Exactly with a value in the At field. Smashwords reports that this is a common error that causes trouble with overlapping lines in many readers.

Go through your entire document and make sure that it is clean. If you began with a txt file, it shouldn't be too bad. You want to see formatting like in figure 3, either the top or middle examples.

Never have more than 4 "enters" in a row; fewer is better. In other words, if you see 4 pilcrows in a row, take one or two of them out. In fact, having more than 4 in a row may get your MS rejected.

Use no forced page breaks.

Create hyperlinks
Since there are no page numbers in eBooks, you should create some bookmarks and hyperlinks to help people navigate.
1. Bookmark your chapter titles (or other dividers). Highlight the chapter title (not in the Table of Contents, but at the chapter location). Choose Insert/ Bookmark and create a label for it. You'll thank yourself later if you type in the name and not just 1,2,3, etc.
2. Create a Table of Contents at the beginning of the book (think of it as page 2- but we haven't talked about page 1 yet). Just make a list of the chapter titles or divisions, with a title of it's own- Table of Contents. It should be a list of all the places you just bookmarked. Get the font set the way you want it. Now highlight one chapter name in the TOC, and choose Insert/ Hyperlink/ Link to a Place in this Document. That will bring up a list of the bookmarks you just created. Select the correct one. Do this for each item in the TOC
3. Bookmark the initial line that says Table of Contents the way you did in step 1.
3. Link the chapters back to the TOC. Go back through the book and at each Chapter title (not in the TOC) choose Insert/ Hyperlink/ Link to a Place in this Document, and then select Table of Contents. This will mean that to click on one of these links will jump a reader back to the Table of Contents.

Insert images if desired
1. Images should be no more than 500 pixels wide.
2. Insert them between paragraphs. You can not let text flow around them or they won't display right in some readers. Right click the image and choose Format/In line with text.
3. Captions: There are two choices. If you can add text as part of the image you are sure the caption will be displayed with the picture, but the text may be too small to read on some devices. You can add a line of text below the picture as the caption. DON'T use the Caption feature of Word.

Title and copyright page
Even though there are no actual pages on eBook readers, the title and copyright info need to be placed first in the document. They are required to publish on Smashwords.

At the beginning of the document center the following:
Title
Author Name
(optional) Discover other titles by this author at Smashwords
copyright XXXX by author
(optional) ISBN
published by - see Style Guide for options
Smashwords license notes- see Style Guide for exact wording

The Style Guide includes more detailed information on what goes here, depending on who is publishing the book.

Closing
At the end of your book include additional information on how readers can contact you. This can include hyperlinks to your Smashwords page, web site, Twitter page, etc.

Cover
Your book must have a cover to be considered for the Premium Catalog. If you are not comfortable making one, hire someone to do so.
1. It must be in a vertical rectangular format
2. It must be at least 600 pixels tall, but not too large. 500x800 pixels is a good size

ISBN
An ISBN is a number assigned to every book in "print." In fact, a paperback and hardcover and electronic version of the same work will each have their own ISBN. This registers the book with Bowker, who tracks all Books in Print. ISBNs are not free, but unless you are willing to have your work appear only in the Smashwords catalog, you must have one. If you are familiar with ISBNs, you may already own a block, in which case you can assign a number to each eBook. Smashwords offers the great option of purchasing them as you go for $9.99, which is a very good price. You will assign the ISBN after your MS has successfully uploaded to the site for approval.

You're getting close!
This article is not intended to provide all the details you need to create a Smashwords eBook that will be accepted to the Premium Catalog. You must use this in tandem with the free Style Guide. However, having the basic steps in mind as you go along should be helpful to new users.

The world of eBooks is wide open. Take a chance and create one yourself!