Friday 23 August 2013

Self Publishing formatting stress

Well, I have only recently joined the Indi Author world and even more recently tried to navigate the world of Smashwords. The website itself is fine, but getting my brain around all the formatting steps to get my book into the world of iBooks was a drama I don't want to repeat. I uploaded, I re-formatted, I uploaded, I re-formatted ..... this has been going on for a couple of hours now. Finally I went with the nuclear method they discuss in the 28 odd steps to formatting your manuscript. Once I finally trolled through the explanations and actioned the steps it actually turned out to not be that difficult and I have successfully uploaded my book. On reflection I realise I was putting up roadblocks which caused all the delay and stress. If I'd just read the instructions first time around it would have been done hours ago. How many of you don't read the instructions? Most I bet. Well, if you want to upload your novel to Smashwords I highly recommend following their instructions with every step. It will save a lot of stress later.