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After 5 hours reading the Smashwords style guide, and attempting to implement it's draconian formatting rules, (a feat only mostly accomplished, since I don't use word, and don't have the 100$ to buy word) I read the owners's ideas on covers.
Apparently, I am to not use classical art, or anything similar to depict my books, but am instead to pay 100 to 300$ to get a professional cover done. Something I really can't justify when based against my empty bank account and sales totaling something like 30 books all told.
But the real kicker is, according to the owner of the site, in order to make all these problems go away, I can also pay someone to format my book for me.
Yeah, don't think I'll be using Smashwords. Sorry to all of you who might like it better than amazon, I just can't justify the pain, anguish, and loss of writing time.
Anyone else have a site that is a bit less... well, stupid about such things?
Comments
Doppler Press
Doppler Press is our home-grown publishing arm here at BCTS. Four of us have got together and are working to produce, publish and promote ebooks for the community. Our first publication from our Lavender Rose imprint was the re-issue of Kelly Girl but we will have more books, new as well as re-issues, coming out soon in several different genres.
The idea is that our little company will let writers be writers and not have to worry with designing books. We've even got professional cover designers lined up to do that for us and for our authors, along with in-house editors and some marketing savvy. And it won't require any up-front expenses paid by the author, we'll do that part and share in the royalties from the books to get paid back.
More info soon and a website you can visit.
Hugs,
Erin, Piper, Cat and Katie
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Sounds good to me.
I'd rather you all get a share anyway, as opposed to some random hack, assuming you want my stuff. Lavender Rose was all about biographical, I thought? I don't really consort with demons... much.
And don't get me wrong, I'm still using amazon, I was just told more than a few people hated it and so was looking for an alternative.
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If you appreciate my tales, please consider supporting me on Patreon so that I may continue:
https://www.patreon.com/Nagrij
More on Doppler Press
We will be using Amazon, Lulu, Smashwords and other such sites to sell and distribute books, as well as having our own direct sales website. There will be several imprints, functioning rather like genres, Lavender Rose is just the first one to get something out. :)
The idea behind all this is to support the community and this website while making it possible for authors to get some return on their efforts, too.
Anyone can PM me here for more info. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
What we focus on
We are not just about biographies. We are also about real world fiction (so basically nothing to do with magic transformation or way out there sci-fi or historical fiction). We want stories that focus on transitioning in the real world and issues that transgender people face. It's a wide spectrum.
I was confused about the consorting with demons comment, can you explain that.
Also, Amazon still gets the lion share, especially for newer authors. Their site make it easier for new authors to be found by others.
I was happy with Amazon
1. You can get gift cards almost anywhere so that you do not need to worry about exposing you credit card information on Amazon
2. I'm already familiar with Amazon
3. Their search tools are pretty good
And...
I don't want to have to search another website for your stories. :) Besides, Amazon isn't going anywhere.
Hugs,
Monica.
Amazon and Doppler Press
All, or almost all, of Doppler Press's publications will be available on Amazon as well as our own site. We and authors both will make more thru direct sales, percentage wise but for the reasons you list above, Amazon will always have a huge penetration in the market.
There will also be some special availability at Doppler Press for Hatbox members and some perks for just being a reader here. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Well, as to that...
It's simple, and something I was kicking around anyway. I seem to have tons of ideas lately, and if I can find the time, I don't see why I can't let you have one of mine, all to your own. Might help solve amazon's market penetration and bring more readers to the site.
Of course, that assumes I'm not deluding myself, my writing doesn't suck, and the only reason I'm not drawing in more people is because of bad marketing. Guess we can find out together on that one. :)
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If you appreciate my tales, please consider supporting me on Patreon so that I may continue:
https://www.patreon.com/Nagrij
eBook covers and formatting
I'll be glad to format your book for you. I've done both Smashwords and Kindle formatting. It's not tough once you get what they're looking for.
As for the cover, I may be able to help there as well. Here's two cover's I've done for Smashwords eBooks.
The pictures are free from freedigitalphotos.net I have software that allows me to convert them into book covers.
Selecting the picture to use is the hard part. I've sometimes spend and hour or more sifting through possibles to find the one I like.
PM me if you're interested.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Requirements and recommendations
Some of the things the style guide says about cover art and cover design are recommendations, not requirements. They don't recommend using classic public domain art, but they don't forbid it either; I used paintings by John William Waterhouse and Edmund Dulac for the covers of my books, and composited them in GIMP. I agree that with the moderate sales levels we have, it doesn't make sense to pay an artist and/or a cover designer to create a cover for you.
As for the formatting, -- you say that you don't use Word. Do you use OpenOffice or LibreOffice? If so, you can avoid a lot of the work involved in formatting the book to Smashwords' specification by using the writer2epub plugin, exporting your ODT file to an ePub, and then uploading the .epub (instead of a .doc file) to Smashwords. If you use some other word processor, try looking around to see if someone has created an epub conversion plugin for it.
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http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/trismegistusshandy
http://shifti.org/wiki/User:Trismegistus_Shandy
I do in fact...
Use and swear by libreoffice, maybe I'll check that plug in out. Assuming some of my bad habits will translate better if I use that approach?
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If you appreciate my tales, please consider supporting me on Patreon so that I may continue:
https://www.patreon.com/Nagrij
Hopefully
I'm not sure what "bad habits" you're referring to. I'm not doing any fancy formatting with most of my books, just using heading style for the chapter headings and body style for everything else, and italics or block quotes here and there. writer2epub handles all those things fine, and generates a table of contents from your headings. If you're manually setting the font size or something for chapter headings, instead of using styles, then the table of contents may not work -- you'd have to read the writer2epub documentation and test it out.
Oh, and writer2epub has a bug when you're exporting a file with bullet lists. If you have bullet list directly followed by a heading, without a normal paragraph (or a blank line) between them, the exported epub won't validate. It's easy to work around by adding a blank paragraph after the bullet list.
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http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/trismegistusshandy
http://shifti.org/wiki/User:Trismegistus_Shandy