I’ve waded through the Smashwords Style Guide and come out the other side, humbled and wiser. I’ve learned more about Microsoft Word than I ever wanted to know. But at last I’ve loaded up Vampire Road to Smashwords, and I’ve got my hour in the sunshine that is the New Releases page.
Next task is marketing, but for an indie e-pubbed author the fun never ends. I also want to put it up to Barnes and Noble through Pubit, and by the fall Kobo intends to have a version of self-pubbing as well.
The good news is that now I know how to format my MS document as I write it, so that I don’t have to go through the excruciating cleaning process with my next novel. This cleaning of Vampire Road’s formatting was required to enable the Smashwords Meatgrinder program to digest my words and spit out multiple e-book formats.
I’m still waiting with fingers crossed to find out if I qualify for their “Premium Catalog,” which is proof of my prowess with Microsoft Word formatting. It also gets me into the ibook store and the Sony Reader store, which was the whole point of publishing through Smashwords.
For all you indie authors out there, I’m going to finish the guide that will take your manuscript to Kindle. It’s far easier and the biggest e-book market. I’ll write up my notes about Smashwords later next week.
Tomorrow: the clickable table of contents.
