Photo by tribehut
Formatting you book for publishing is one of self publishing’s little known dirty secrets. The reality is that no matter how good of a writer you are. You will need to layout or rather format your work into one of several approved formats before it can be published. It does not matter if it’s for kindle, epub or for some other format for you book.
When I tried to format my book to make it available for epub. I had a a difficult time doing it. Barnes and Noble allows you to edit your book within their site if you are publishing. But even then it was still unwieldy. When I tried to upload my book to Smashwords, the “auto meat-grinder” gave me several errors, and it was a mess. So much so that after hours I just called it quits. Since then I’ve learned the best course of action is to simply have someone format the book for you so you can take the guess work and labor out of it. To this end I have discovered a wonderful resource on http://fiverr.com/.
Ladies and gentlemen please meet my new friend Bookaholic. Per his website…
“For only $5 I will format your Word document to pass Smashwords AutoVetter on the first run and be submitted to Premium Catalog (guaranteed!).
I follow Smashwords’ strict rules and my formatting always passes!
This offer is for documents under 50,000 words. For other options see my gig extras below, or order multiple gigs.
3 day duration is for longer queues, normally I format in a day or two.”
Now I don;t know about you, but to have someone take my document which in my case was $15 dollars for his services as I had over a 100k document was a wonderful thing. He successfully converted my MS word document to a epub format that can get past the gatekeeper that is the meat grinder of Smashwords. Because he converted it, it means it will work on ALL epub readers. I can use the files he gave me to upload to any other publishing service (again think Barnes and Noble). I have also used this file he gave me to update my kindle book on Amazon. Needless to say. Everything was perfect.
It was the best 15 dollars spent on my book. And I have to highly recommend his services if you want your book laid out properly.
You can thank me later! 🙂
Donovan