Writing a novel has been a life long dream of ours. After loosing my job and having time to do it we decided to do it while we had the chance. We wrote and we edited and we had friends beta read and we corrected and read again. Loaded it on micro soft word and are following smash words style guide trying to format. It's been 4 days of marathon reread combing our manuscript and we still aint got it right. Has any one here done this? It's frustrating but we seem to be making progress.
Hi, Yes. Smashwords is easy. Easier than Kindle if the truth be told. Format your book in Word 2000 - like it or hate it it's the industry standard and you'll have less problems uploading from it. Then just send it off as a .doc file and Smashy will do the rest. Cheers, Greg.
Thanks so much for the encouragement Greg!!! We are combing through and following the style guide and preparing to publish Please say a lil prayer for us we hope to do this for a living to bridge the gap tween now and official retirement ie 5 years. We are on the verge of a dream 45 years in the making and needles to say stressed out as we near the end. We plan to go smashy we really like the concept. Thanks so much for the encouragement
I find Kindle easier, but Smashwords gets your books onto numerous sites around the world. I often see sales in countries where I didn't even realize people could buy my books. That said, my lifetime Amazon sales have still been 5-10x my lifetime sales through Smashwords and the sites they distribute to. In the long term, I'd suggest uploading an epub file for them to distribute, and only using their Meatgrinder for Smashwords itself. That way you have total control over what your book looks like on sites like B&N and Kobo.
We are almost ready to submit to the meat grinder. I plan to read through one more time. Last time I found a very few errors mostly spacing and a few placement errors. We are having trouble getting our cover art right but its a soft ware problem. Pegody my wife is a very good artist. It's stressful and we are both stressed out as we reach this point. Thanks for the encouragement.
