Update on the ebook repub

One of the things I learned in the book business is to read the guidelines carefully, whether it's agent, editor, or publisher you are dealing with. To that end, I downloaded Mark Coker's Smashwords Style Guide and have been going through it page by page while reformatting Pilikia Is My Business. If you're considering publishing with Smashwords, you will find this invaluable.

After going through the whole manuscript, I finally had it complete, so I saved it (or thought I did) and went to the Smashwords site to load it up.

Loading was easy, just a click of a button. There were a few items to check off, such as what format(s) to publish in and distribution systems. Then I got a message that the mss was received and was 47th in the queue. A few hours later, I had a message that it was published. A link was included. The message suggested downloading Stanza and Kindle in order to check the format. I already had Stanza, so I downloaded Kindle and then downloaded the epub and mobi versions of the book. Good thing I did, because I discovered I had sent the wrong version of the mss. It was missing the end-of-book information such as my bio and links to my websites. Otherwise, the book looked great.

Fortunately, Smashwords allows for corrections. I simply went to my dashboard where I canceled the publication and then reloaded the correct file. That was this morning. I was 306th in the queue. It is still grinding away as I write this, so I don't know how long it will be before republishing. Oh well.

I caught the mistake before it was reviewed for the premium catalog, which is what I want, so this should not affect that catalog. I'm not sure what would have happened if it was already in the catalog and the Apple store. Would I be able to make changes then? Don't know. I'm glad I caught it when I did.

An interesting feature of Smashwords is that you can purchase an ISBN from them for $9.95, a tenth of what Lulu charges. I did and received it in a matter or minutes. See my post below about the Lulu delays. The one catch with Smashwords, is that they won't sell you the ISBN until the book is published. So you can't include the ISBN in the front matter of the book unless, like me, you cancel and republish. It seems odd to me, but maybe it doesn't matter where the ISBN appears on an ebook as long as it appears in the catalog.