Formatting Archives - Suns Golden Ray Publishing

Posted on January 8, 2018June 5, 2018 by Whitney Evans

How to Format a Book in Word (Simply)

Book formatting is probably the easiest part of the self-publishing process. Even still, for those who haven’t used Microsoft Word’s formatting features, it can be daunting to figure out how it all works. We’ve listed the top few tricks for how to format a book in Word. Note: This merely scratches the surface of book formatting. There’s much more to consider, from interior scene breaks to font choice, to

Looking for Scrivener formatting? Check out our Scrivener formatting series.

1. Paragraph Settings

First and foremost, on behalf of anyone who’s ever formatted a book, let us tell you: when you’re writing, you do not need to manually add spaces in front of every paragraph. You also don’t need to add a tab or anything other than a carriage return (also known as pressing the enter button).

Instead, you can set your first line indention, spacing, justification, and everything else using the Paragraph Settings in Word. This serves two purposes: First, if you decide to use a formatter, they’ll be able to import your book without having to fix every paragraph. And second, if you decide to format yourself, you won’t have to fix every paragraph, either.

Very important: When you’re ready to export, you must make sure the text is justified. It’s a real bummer when we pick up a good-looking book to read and find the manuscript is left-aligned.

2. Chapter Headings

One of the cooler, bookish features of Microsoft Word is the Headings feature. A heading is simply a reusable formatting set, like font size, type, and spacing, that you can re-use across your manuscript. So, for example, if you’ve got letters in your manuscript, and you’d like them to be formatted in Comic Sans 14pt (don’t do this), you can set up a heading for letters.

When it comes to Chapter Headings, the benefit is twofold. First, as we said, it will format your chapter headings the same across the board. But more importantly, when you set all your chapters as “Heading 1,” you’ll then be able to put an automatic table of contents at the front of the book. No more scrolling through your book to find page numbers.

3. Page Size and Margins

Most self-publishers use either 6×9, 5.5×8.5, or 5×8 for their paperbacks. Luckily CreateSpace offers templates for you to use to help make those sizings correct. But if you’ve already got a formatted manuscript, you can simply copy those parameters. Here’s a handy step-by-step guide to help you.

Now, depending on certain factors like book length, print pricing, etc., you may want to make your margins a little bigger or smaller. As long as they meet the minimum requirement, there shouldn’t be an issue uploading to Ingram or CreateSpace.

Continue reading How to Format a Book in Word (Simply)

Posted on January 1, 2018June 5, 2018 by Whitney Evans

Top 5 Things to Know When Working with a Formatter

We here at SGR-Pub have formatted a slew of manuscripts (both for our releases and for other publishers). And we also tend to see the same misunderstanding of what a formatter does, and how authors should work with them. If you’re working with a formatter, we’ve compiled some tips to help you both get the most out of your partnership.

1. Don’t Worry About Page Numbers

One of the biggest points of consternation with newer authors is knowing what to send when hiring a formatter. Should you worry about the table of contents? Should you add page numbers and make sure everything’s aligned right?

Short answer: Nope.

Longer answer is that when your book is formatted, the formatter will change the size and shape of the paper, thus creating a new page numbering system. In addition, we automatically create table of contents from chapter headings. So that means if you want us to add additional pages, the program we use will automatically shift the rest of the book down.

2. Tell Us What’s Weird

Most books that come across our desk are very simple: front matter, interior with chapters, back matter. But on occasion, folks will want some custom formatting. Whether it be an interior section that’s handwritten or something more complex, let us know up front if there’s anything to be concerned about.

3. Give Us Your Front and Back Matter

Per the Independent Book Publisher’s Association checklist for self-published books, there’s a few things that need to be in your book. While self-publishing gives authors the freedom to work “outside the box,” generally, it’s a good idea to adhere to the industry standards.

For Front Matter, you’ll need a Half Title Page, Title Page, Copyright page (to include ISBN and name of author), and Table of Contents. The TOC shouldn’t exceed two pages.

For Back Matter, you should include acknowledgements (if not in the front), about the author, and where to find your other works.

While you don’t have to give these to us formatted, we will need the text (especially the ISBN) before we send you the final documents.

4. Managing Edits

With most formatting jobs, we’ll offer one pass of typo incorporations (note: typos are errors you made in writing, formatting errors are errors we made in spacing or chapter headings). For our clients, since, as we said above, we won’t know final page numbers until the book is fully formatted, the best way to submit edits is to provide a few words around the edit so we can quickly search the manuscript for the error. For example:

…baloney.” she said…. Should be “baloney,” she said.

Other formatters may have other requirements, so check with them to find what method words best for them. As well, make sure you’re sending them a mostly typo-free draft, unless you’re also paying for additional help.

5. Show Us Your Fonts

Finally, we’ll need to know what kind of font you want to use for your chapter headings, and what kind of scene separator you’d like. For most books, the chapter heading font (and front page title font) will resemble or be the same as what you used on your cover. Be aware: Some cover designers use custom fonts that may require additional fees from your formatter to replicate. If we can’t get exactly the same font, we’ll do our best to find something similar.

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Posted on December 18, 2017October 11, 2017 by Whitney Evans

Managing Front and Back Matter in Scrivener

Scrivener is a wonderful program many writers use to set up and manage their books, screenplays, and research projects. Nearly every aspect of the program can be customizable, from the drafting settings to the export format. But with so many options, many authors find themselves overwhelmed. To that end, we’re posting a blog series on our favorite features of Scrivener. Today, we’re going to cover setting up front and back matter in Scrivener, including some tips and tricks to set you up for success.

Note: The screenshots are for Scrivener 2.0. for Mac. We hear from our friends at Literature and Latte that version 3.0 is coming soon, and when we get access to it, we’ll update this post.

Front Matter Tips

Every book format will have a different ISBN, and occasionally, different front matter, so we separate all of them out into their own folders. For our series, we have a main folder for each book, then separate them down into formats. When it’s time to compile, we select the applicable format (and applicable compile preset) and we’re good to go.

Speaking of front matter, there’s a brand new checklist from the Independent Book Publishers Association that contains the basics of what every self-pub and indie-pub book should have (at a minimum). We use the <$Blank_page> shortcode to keep pages a verso or a recto (that is, on the left or right side).

Back Matter Tips

As with the front matter, we separate out eBook and physical copy back matter. At the end of your eBook content, you should have a “call-to-action,” or something a reader can do to stay connected. Many authors opt to have a link to a newsletter sign up or Instafreebie. Whichever you chose, aim for the long-term. Otherwise, you’ll be updating your back matter every few weeks.

For the print back matter, we have to fudge a few things. We usually add the section header into the text itself (“Acknowledgements” and “About the Author”) then use Preserve Formatting to retain the chapter heading formatting. Or we’ll mark the entire scene “Compile As-Is.”

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Posted on December 11, 2017December 5, 2017 by Whitney Evans

Using Compile Presets in Scrivener

Scrivener is a wonderful program many writers use to set up and manage their books, screenplays, and research projects. Nearly every aspect of the program can be customizable, from the drafting settings to the export format. But with so many options, many authors find themselves overwhelmed. To that end, we’re posting a blog series on our favorite features of Scrivener. Today, we’re going to cover how to use compile presets in Scrivener, including some tips and tricks to set you up for success.

Note: The screenshots are for Scrivener 2.0. for Mac. We hear from our friends at Literature and Latte that version 3.0 is coming soon, and when we get access to it, we’ll update this post.

What is a Compile Preset?

A Compile Preset is exactly what it sounds like – a pre-selected group of compile settings that you can use and reuse. In other words, you can have a setting for paperback to keep your margins and font size the same, one for hardcovers, one for Kindle, etc. There are two kinds: Project Presets and Global Presets.

Project Presets are saved settings only available in a single file. We like to keep our series books in a single file, then create project presets for each format. The settings for Razia aren’t available in the Madion Trilogy, for example.

Global presets, on the other hand, are available across all Scrivener projects. This is a good way to keep your general settings for paperbacks and hardcovers consistent. You can create a new project preset starting from the global preset, or keep your oft-used presets, like exporting a clean .docx to your editor.

Project Preset Tips

Once upon a time, we did a print run of one of our books. All was well until we opened up the first page and saw our headers showed the wrong book title.

Truly. There were thirty books in that print run.

Ever since then, we’ve made it a habit to create separate print settings for every book. That way, we’re absolutely sure we’re printing the right book. Also, our hardcover formatting differs (usually) from the paperback formatting, so having those separate presets is convenient. For example: when you have updates to back matter, you don’t have to spend time trying to guess what the margins were. Your books will be consistent every time.

Just make sure you double check those headers.

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Posted on December 4, 2017October 11, 2017 by Whitney Evans

Top Formatting Hacks Scrivener: Our Most-Used Tricks

Scrivener is a wonderful program many writers use to set up and manage their books, screenplays, and research projects. Nearly every aspect of the program can be customizable, from the drafting settings to the export format. But with so many options, many authors find themselves overwhelmed. To that end, we’re posting a blog series on our favorite features. While we could post fifteen blogs on the formatting features, today, we’ll just cover our top formatting hacks in Scrivener.

Note: The screenshots are for Scrivener 2.0. for Mac. We hear from our friends at Literature and Latte that version 3.0 is coming soon, and when we get access to it, we’ll update this post.

Hack #1: Scene Labels and Images

For our Madion War Trilogy series, we had the challenge of multiple POVs. We wanted to label each POV with the character’s name and a unique icon. To accomplish this, we added a Custom Metadata field to our project and called it POV. Then, in the Compile settings, we added the following to the Section Layout under Prefix:

<$img:<$custom:POV>;h=50>
<$custom:POV>

In the Compile setting, you’ll see that the POV is listed there under Level 2+ (we’ll go into levels a bit later).

When we compile the draft, we get the POV name along with the image.

Hack #2: Preserve Formatting

Sometimes within the text, we want to preserve formatting. That is, the rest of the book is Garamond 12, single-spaced, left aligned, and maybe this one section is a letter, and we want it centered and Times New Roman 13. In this case, we have two options: We can create a separate scene and select “Compile As-Is,” or, the better option, we can highlight the text and use the “Preserve Formatting option.” You can find it under the Format menu, under the Formatting sub-menu.

Here you can also find the Copy and Paste Formatting options, which allow you to take the formatting settings from one scene to another. Generally, though, you shouldn’t do too much in-line formatting in your final manuscript. And make sure if you’re using Preserve Formatting that you’ve got your formatting exactly as you want it.

Hack #3: Compile a Section

If you’ve taken our advice and kept all the books in a series in one Scrivener file, then you’ll need to know how to Compile just a section. Luckily, this is pretty easy:

In the Contents section of Compile, use the drop-down menu to select the grouping you’d like to export. Under Compile Group Options, you can select to either include the container (generally you don’t want to do this), and treat selected group as entire draft (generally you do want this).

You can also use a Filter based on a particular label. So, for example, if you were compiling a preview of an ebook, you could tag specific chapters with “Preview” and compile only those.

Hack #4: Compile Levels

A lot of folks are confused by the idea of Compile Levels. We’re happy to announce that in Scrivener 3.0, they’ve changed Compile Levels to a much more user-friendly version. As it stands now in 2.0, your Compile levels work like this:

Part (Folder) -> Level 1
- Chapter (Folder) -> Level 2
  - Scene -> Level 3
    - Subscene -> Level 4

Each level can have its own formatting. So your Part would be different from your Chapter, and so on. In Scrivener 3.0, they’ve gone back to the drawing board. Instead of assigning formatting by level, you can now assign formatting by type. So if you’d like your Part and Chapter to share formatting, you can. And if you have a certain set of scenes with particular formatting (like a dream sequence, for example), you can set individual scenes.

As formatters, we’re looking forward to this new feature!

Hack #5: Getting a Clean Manuscript

Our last hack has to do with getting so-called “clean” manuscripts from Scrivener to editable formats like Word. If you’ve drafted your book in Scrivener, then you’re probably already mostly there. In the Compile Format feature, you can add additional so-called “presets,” or settings that you can re-use. This is especially helpful when you’ve got several books in a single manuscript, or if you need to export to hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and more. For exporting a “clean” manuscript, create a project preset using the formatting standards your editor requires. Usually, that’s 12pt, double-spaced letter-sized pages.

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Posted on November 6, 2017October 9, 2017 by Whitney Evans — 3 Comments

Scrivener: Our Favorite Writerly Tool

Welcome to our newest blog series, all about the wonderful tool known as Scrivener. At SGR-Pub, we use Scrivener from the very beginning of the writing process all the way through formatting. It’s the best $50 we’ve ever invested, but it’s taken us a while to figure out all the features. To that end, we’ll be sharing some of our best tips for using Scrivener over the next eight weeks, culminating in a Q&A post. So if you’ve got questions, let us know in the comments!

Please note: Our tips and tricks are primarily for Scrivener 2.0. We’ve heard from Literature and Latte that 3.0 is coming at the end of 2018, so we’ll be holding our breath until then.

What is Scrivener?

Scrivener is, at its heart, program writers use to draft manuscripts, screenplays, research papers–you name it. Over the years, more features have been added to help with exporting your manuscript to different formats. For most writers, having an all-in-one solution helps pare down on the messiness that arises in the drafting process. Here are just some of the features Scrivener has.

With so many features, it’s easy to quickly become overwhelmed. So the first thing you should ask yourself is not what is Scrivener, but how can it help improve your writing experience.

Plotters and Pantsers, Rejoice

No matter how you choose to write, Scrivener has a method for you. If you’re a writer who loves to know where they’re going before they set out, you can use folders and scenes to outline your book. If you’re a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of writer, Scrivener offers a full screen mode, and the ability to reorganize and adjust as you go.

All writers, however, can benefit from the structure of Scrivener. It’s designed to be flexible, which can be daunting. Let’s begin by defining each of the levels.
When creating a new project from the Fiction preset, you’ll get something like this. There’s a tutorial, some items called Places, Front Matter, Research, Template Sheets, and more. At the outset, it’s best to leave most of these alone and focus on the boxes in yellow.

This is where you’ll be focusing all your energy. Scrivener will automatically create a Manuscript bucket for you, adding a template Chapter and Scene. As with the above, if you’re not yet ready to divide the writing into chapters, you can delete the chapter folder.

Then just write! Add scenes, add chapters. Write everything in one scene and divvy it up later, or break them up as you go.

If you’ve got research to do, you can drag and drop images, PDFs, and more into the Research bucket. Under Template Sheets, you can create basic character profiles, if that’s how you write. You can keep photos and descriptions of scenes under the Places tab.

Editing and Formatting in Scrivener

We’ll have a more in-depth look at editing in Scrivener in the coming weeks, but for now, we’ll touch on some of the basics. With all your scenes and chapters in Scrivenings and folders, reordering is a cinch through drag-and-drop. Select two or three scenes at once and view a subsection of your manuscript. Add comments and notes to keep track of things you’ll need to fix later. Use the Project Replace to change character names. The possibilities are endless!

One of the downsides of Scrivener is tracked changes aren’t as easy to manage as in, say Word. You can use the Snapshot feature to keep track of what changed and when, but it’s not as collaborative as Word or Google Docs.

But the big upside to Scrivener is the relatively easy way to export your manuscript into a variety of different formats. From ePub to Kindle, PDFs formatted for print to .docs for your editors, you can keep one master file. Anyone who’s ever wondered “which version is this?” can appreciate the benefit of not having to edit a period in fifteen different documents. And when you’re on to Books 2 and beyond, having the same formatting presets can save you time and frustration.

Suffice to say: We love Scrivener, and we wouldn’t think of writing a book without it.

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Posted on February 13, 2017January 30, 2018 by Whitney Evans — 2 Comments

Getting Your Book in Print: IngramSpark

Last week, we talked about Amazon’s CreateSpace platform, and how we get our books into paperback. This week, we’re going to talk about the other tool: IngramSpark.

Ingram vs. CreateSpace

Ingram is the largest print book distributor in the world, and is what the big-dogs use to distribute their books. IngramSpark is their indie-publishing arm, which has lowered the barriers for small fries like us to get our books in the same places as the big pubs. Unlike Amazon, Ingram isn’t used to dealing with customers, so their user interface leaves a LOT to be desired. Once you figure out how to do the things you want, it becomes easy to navigate.

Getting Started

Once you’ve got your account set up, you’ll need to start creating your titles. Unlike with CreateSpace, if you go with Ingram, you’ll need to create an imprint name and bring your own ISBNs. Ingram does not offer ISBNs for free, and you will not be able to use a CreateSpace ISBN on Ingram.

Let’s repeat that:

If you create a book on CreateSpace with a CreateSpace ISBN, you will not be able to use that same ISBN on Ingram and will have to have two ISBNs for your book.

However, if you bring your own ISBNs to both CreateSpace and IngramSpark, you will be able to use the same ISBN. It’s a small distinction, but important when deciding how you want to approach ISBN acquisition.

IngramSpark also will allow you to create an eBook, although we at SGR-Pub prefer to go direct to KDP and use Smashwords. If you want to use Ingram for eBooks, you’ll need to remove them from other shops, like iBooks or Nook.

When you’re setting up your title, you’ll need to have the same information as with CreateSpace, like description, ISBN, and BISAC number. In addition, you’ll need to select your size, page number, and print type. You’ll want to make sure these match if you’re using CreateSpace and IngramSpark together.

The good news is that if you’ve been using CreateSpace to proof your book (and they share ISBNs), you can upload the same cover and interior for IngramSpark.

Preorders

One of the main reasons we use IngramSpark is they offer preorders for up to a year in advance. We’re firm believers that preorders mean more sales, and having a landing page on Amazon 3 or even 6 months ahead of publication date is a big leg-up. You’ll also be able to order books before the sale date in case you want to fulfill orders early. CreateSpace, on the other hand, doesn’t let you order books until you’ve approved the book, and made it available.

Creating a Hardcover

If you’ve gotten to the title stage, you’ll see that IngramSpark does, in fact, offer hardcover versions. Our view is: If you’re already formatting and creating for paperback, why not go for the gold? Having your book available in multiple formats increases the potential for sales. Keep in mind, you’ll need to create a new cover with a full-wrap (including those fun inner flaps). Also, Hardcovers are much more expensive to purchase, so you’ll want to consider your sales price.

Returnable Books: Pros and Cons

When you’re creating your book, IngramSpark will ask you to set the retail price and also determine returnability. What that means for you is if a store buys 40 of your books and sells none, they will ship them back to Ingram, and Ingram will either ship them to you or destroy them, while charging you for the cost to print and ship them. Or, you can set the returnability to “no.” This setting isn’t available in CreateSpace.

Why would you want books to be returnable? Most brick-and-mortar stores won’t stock books that aren’t returnable, although you can find occasional stores with exceptions to this rule. For them, it’s a low risk: they can purchase books and not have to eat the cost if they don’t sell. If your sales goals include these kind of stores, checking “returnable” is probably a good option.

Keep in mind that if you do get a big, fat box of books, you can still sell them on your own to make back the cost.

Buying in Bulk

As we said above, CreateSpace doesn’t let you buy books before they’re officially “on sale,” whereas Ingram does. However, apples-to-apples, Ingram is the more expensive Print on Demand service. For our purposes, we purchase direct from CreateSpace when we can, and when our books are only available for preorder or in hardcover, buy from Ingram.

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Posted on February 6, 2017January 31, 2018 by Whitney Evans — 1 Comment

Getting Your Book in Print: CreateSpace

It’s every author’s dream to hold their book in their hands, right? Well, just like KDP and Smashwords are platforms, CreateSpace is a tool you can use to help put your formatted PDF or .doc into a printed book. It’s kind of our favorite part of the process, you know?

CreateSpace vs. KDP’s New Paperback Program

Recently, KDP offered a new system whereby authors can turn their Kindle book into a paperback through KDP. They’ve continued to add features, such as offering printed proofs for authors, but still lack some of the better features of CreateSpace. Over time, this tool will replace CS and continue the consolidation of Amazon’s publishing platforms into a single entity.

For now, we’ll focus on CreateSpace and revisit Kindle’s paperback publishing when it becomes a robust tool.

Getting Started

CreateSpace is one of the few platforms that isn’t integrated with your Amazon single-sign on, so you’ll have to create a new account. Once you’re there, you’ll be taken to your dashboard. For first-time publishers, and for folks who like to see the process in a step-by-step fashion, we recommend doing the guided process.

Keep in mind that CreateSpace doesn’t support preorders, so don’t press that “Approve” button until you’re ready.

In order to publish, you’ll need the following:

Manuscript in .pdf (sized correctly, more on that below) or .doc (free-flowing)
Wraparound Cover in the right size
ISBN: We’ll have a discussion on ISBNs in a few weeks, as there’s pros and cons to using CreateSpace’s free ISBNs versus buying your own
Various other metadata like the BISAC code and Description

Formatting Your Book

Much like KDP and Smashwords have guidelines for uploading files, CreateSpace also has formatting requirements. The easiest solution is, of course, uploading a .Doc Word document and using the autoformatter. You can find more information here.

However, we prefer to have a little more control over what is uploaded, so we create a .PDF file and upload that. In this case, we have to make sure we have the right document size on the PDF (so 6×9 or 5×8). We’re the world’s biggest Scrivener fan, for drafting and also for formatting, so we’ve set up a template for each size, and use that for easy exporting. We can also format for you, if you just don’t want to fool with it.

Getting Your Cover Right

While we’re always proponents of DIY, when it comes to covers, this is one area where, like plumbing, unless you absolutely know what you’re doing, hire a professional. Your cover is your first impression. Along those same lines, your graphic designer will be able to calculate the width and sizing of your wrap-around cover. For our money, we use Ingram’s calculator, but we’ll talk about that next week.

ISBNs: Buy Your Own or No?

We’ll go into more depth about this in a few weeks. Bottom line: If you’re using a CreateSpace-provided ISBN, your book will not be available for purchase by mortar stores (for the most part). So if you think you’ll primarily be selling books on Amazon or at small bookstores that will allow you to bring your own stock, save some cash by using CreateSpace’s ISBN. If you’ve got aspirations of big signings at Barnes and Noble, then you might be better off buying your own.

But if you bring your own, CreateSpace won’t allow expanded distribution, so you might want to look into augmenting with IngramSpark.

How We Proof

For our own books, we use a hybrid approach between CreateSpace and IngramSpark, and have our own ISBNs. We use CreateSpace to create our proofs for final QA checks, then upload the finished manuscript to IngramSpark and make it available for preorder, then, on publication day, return to CreateSpace to approve the final draft. Purchases direct on Amazon go to the CreateSpace dash, purchases everywhere else go to Ingram. Our books also can be bought and stocked in bookstores, should they be requested.

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Posted on January 30, 2017February 1, 2017 by Whitney Evans — 2 Comments

The Smashwords Meatgrinder: Not As Scary As It Sounds

You’d think that Smashwords would’ve come up with a less grotesque name for the system used to convert .doc into the various formats they sell, but here we are with Meatgrinder.

If you joined us last week, you read all about Smashwords and how we think it’s a good idea to diversify your eBook distribution outside of Amazon. While there are other services you can use (such as Draft2Digital or going direct to the vendors themselves), we’ve stuck with Smashwords. Inevitably, that least to the following question:

How do I deal with the Meatgrinder?

Back in the olden days (read: 2014), Smashwords only allowed authors to upload manuscripts in .doc formats. Then they used a proprietary conversion software to turn that Microsoft Word file into a .mobi (for Kindle), .epub (everyone else), .pdf and more. The problem was this software required the .doc file to be clean and formatted properly.

Now, if you’re someone very familiar with Word, you know all about paragraph settings and headings, and how to create a table of contents. If you’re not, the Meatgrinder was a huge barrier to entry.

Nowadays, Smashwords allows authors to upload an .ePub file directly, which is what SGR-Pub does when we have a tricky manuscript with difficult formatting, such as the Razia series. Since most vendors accept ePub, this makes it easy. Our recommendation for those authors who have their manuscript in .ePub format is to just upload that, making sure that it passes all ePub checks. Most files created with Scrivener will pass this with flying colors.

(Need a formatter? Check us out.)

What if I want a .Mobi?

Smashwords says that .mobi (Kindle) is one of their most popular formats on the Smashwords direct store, so some authors may still want to deal with the frustration of the meatgrinder in order to have .mobi file available for sale. Smashwords has a Formatting Guide that you can download, but here’s our top trip-ups that we’ve encountered.

Tables: For our Razia series, we have tables for bounty posters and whatnot. For both the .ePub file and the .doc files, we have to create “images” where the tables are. Luckily, our formatting program of choice, Scrivener, allows us to create images from tables in the Compile settings. Otherwise, you’ll have to individually create the images from your tables.
Paragraph settings: Many authors add 5 spaces or a tab in front of each line. There are a few reasons why this is a bad idea, but the biggest is that it doesn’t pass Meatgrinder specifications. Check out this handy article for how to create paragraph settings in Word.
Table of Contents: Related to paragraph settings, the Meatgrinder wants your table of contents to link to Chapter Headings. Therefore, instead of making each chapter title 24pt and bold, you’ll create a new Heading Style, and apply it to all your chapter headings. Then, you’ll be able to create your Table of Contents.

The Style Guide has more in-depth discussion of all these topics, so download it!

Why All This Formatting Stuff?

Think of your manuscript like a web page and the Meatgrinder like your web browser (Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, etc). In order for the browser to render the web page correctly, the back-end coding has to be correct and free from extra spaces and errors. The same goes for the Meatgrinder: In order to render the book the right way, the back-end code needs to be right.

What back-end code, it’s just text, right? Well, not really. Line spacing, tabs, and weight, italics, and size of font are all coded into the Microsoft Word document. You don’t see it because Microsoft gives you buttons and pop-up windows, instead of expecting you to know all the coding. So when Smashwords asks for a clean manuscript, they want all of that to be system-generated, instead of user-generated.

Other Things to Know with Smashwords

Smashwords is a great distribution service, although it is persnickety. Take care in your front and back matter to not mention Kindle specifically (i.e.: if another book is available through Kindle Unlimited) and also to not link to other stores. Back matter sells books (we’ll write a blog about that soon), so it’s important to use verbiage that won’t trigger a flag on your book. We recommend something like “This book is available for eBook, paperback, and hardcover” and a link back to the book page on your website.

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