A few months ago Smashwords started accepting epub files. Since then I’ve seen lots of authors having issues with their epub files. Even though the ebooks look 100% ok in their ereaders, they’re getting rejections from Smashwords filled with lots of weird sounding errors. The reason for this is because Smashwords wants your epub to pass their validator. Different validators check for different things. The one Smashwords says to use in the troubleshooting guide is the IDPF validator.

What the validator does is check the code that is within the ebook. It does this to ensure that your file will be readable on a wider range of ereaders. If the code isn’t written according to what the validator expects to see, then it’ll show an error. Even though the error may not be visible to you.

When you upload your epub file, if there are errors, you’ll see lots of lines of what looks like garbled mess. It can be difficult to figure out what those lines mean. In order to fix the errors you’ll need an epub editor like Sigil . And it’s free so that makes it even better. There are others available, like Jutoh, you can use, but Jutoh isn’t free.

So now you have your epub uploaded into the validator. Here’s what it looks like when there’s errors:

errors screen in validator

You’re probably ready to run away after looking at that. It doesn’t seem to make much sense. This is why you have to have an epub editor to fix all this mess. I’ll try to explain what each box stands for and where to find it within the file. The first box is kind of obvious it says error which means there’s something wrong in that spot. The second box tells you which  file the error is in. Often times epub files are a series of HTM files so you need to look at the title in the second box to know which file to open. If you look at the above image you’ll see, 001.htm. That is the file you need to look for in your epub editor.

This is what you’ll see in Sigil (below image). If you look on the left hand side, you can see all the files within the epub are listed on the left hand side.  Double click .001.htm to open it

epub file being edited with Sigil

Once you double click on the file, it will open in the center of the screen. In the image above, you can see the titlepage.xhtml is open. You will also see numbers on the left hand side, 1,2,3,4,5 etc, those are the line numbers. That is what the third box in the errors screen is referring to. From the above errors screen, you need to find line 12 in file 001.htm.

The last box tells you what the error is. In the above example, the error is regarding the attribute vlink. Now this type of line in your HTML code won’t necessarily make an issue when you open it in your ereader, but it’s been deprecated in HTML 4.0 and is not recommended for use.  That is the reason it’s flagged as an error. Therefore you need to update it with more current code. If you look within the error, it tells you what it expected to find so you just need to rewrite the code for that.

I realize this is a lot of technicalese (yes that’s a word). And it can be quite confusing especially if you’re not that familiar with HTML codes or using an epub editor. Most of the errors you encounter are going to be easy fixes. You can even Google the error and often times will find the solution. It just takes a bit of patience and time to work through and fix all of the errors.

I plan on doing a couple more posts on epub for Smashwords explaining what the common errors are and how to fix them. If you have specific questions, you can email them to me or leave a comment.

I can’t promise to address every question, but I will do my best to address as many as I can. Clients keep me busy these days so I don’t have as much time as I did before to do tutorials. Although I do hope to do at least one a week from now on.

Importance of a Properly Edited Manuscript in Formatting

Having your manuscript fully edited and proofread before sending to your formatter is extremely important. Especially if it’s formatting for an ebook.

Most authors don’t realize ebook formatting is entirely different from print formatting. The majority of ebook formatters use HTML to format because HTML is the best way to ensure a properly formatted ebook regardless of what e-reader someone is using. Other formats, such as word or PDF, won’t hold their formatting in all circumstances.

This means if you happen to notice you wrote “threw” instead of “through” your formatter has to  rebuild your ebook, even if it’s only a single word that has to be corrected.

I know sometimes things get overlooked. Even the traditionally published books have the occasional misspelling or grammar error. For them, they usually leave it unless there’s a second reprinting due to excess demand. But indie authors don’t necessarily have this luxury. Indie authors have to ensure their books are completely error free and for that reason they will ask their formatter to fix even the smallest of issues.

However, authors have to realize that there may be excess fees to fix these errors. Every formatter has a different policy for changes after the document has been completed. It’s important you find this out before you begin just so you’re aware of what the policy and cost may be in case you have any issues that need to be fixed later on.

Another option authors have is learning how to edit the HTML documents themselves. This isn’t very difficult to do especially if you’ve already had the document properly formatted by a professional. You don’t even need expensive software. You can simply use notepad. Just right click on the HTML document and choose open with. Then choose notepad. You should see something that looks similar to this:

image source

If you look before each sentence you’ll see something in brackets; <h1> </body> etc. You want to be sure you don’t edit any of those. Simply highlight the misspelled word and make your corrections then resave. By learning how to edit your formatted HTML document, you can help to lower your formatting costs. I always suggest if you’re unsure ask a professional whether it’s editing, cover design or formatting. But since most indie authors are on a tight budget learning how to do these smaller things can make a big different in not only your budget but in the overall appearance of your ebook.

When laying out your book, you have to decide in advance if you want squared off pages or if you want no widows and orphans. But before we get into deciding, let’s talk about what each is.

Squared off pages are pretty self explanatory. It just means every page is squared off and level with every other page.

Widows and orphans are when a portion of a paragraph, usually a partial part of the first or last sentence, is on the opposite of the rest of the paragraph. Which is the widow and which is the orphan depends upon what source you use. According to the Chicage Manual of Style, the widow is at the top and the orphan at the bottom. Other sources define it as the other way around.

Getting Rid of Widows & Orphans

In most cases, either you have squared pages or you have no widows and orphans. There are instances where you can adjust the spacing between the words/letters to bring the sentence up or to push it onto the next page, but that doesn’t always work. Especially when the page already is filled with text. By expanding or condensing the text further, it can cause the text to look crowded or too spaced out. For this reason, I normally prefer to have no widows and orphans even if that means I have a blank line at the bottom of some pages.  That’s just my personal preference. There really is not a right or wrong. If you look at most mass market paperbacks, you’ll see they go with squared off pages more often, but that means they have lots of widows and orphans. In the end it boils down to what you like best. As long as the text is spaced evenly and is easy to read then that’s all that really matters.

Although if you’re hiring a formatter and have a particular preference, it’s best to let them know up front. Every book designer has their own style and way of formatting so unless you communicate your preferences to them, then most likely they’ll format according to their own personal preferences.

So which category do you fall into? Do you prefer squared off pages or no widows and orphans?

Being a self published author usually means you’re on a tight budget. While it has been said numerous times, just because you “can” design your own cover doesn’t mean you “should”, there are some people out there who have the ability to design a decent cover for themselves. However handing over $300+ for a software program plus all the doodads and trinkets that go along with it, may be more expensive than just hiring a cover designer in the first place.

For those authors who don’t have the money to either hire a cover designer (although I must insert my “unsolicited” opinion here and say that you really should at the very least discuss your design with someone who is a designer. Your friends mean well but they may not know what works best when it comes to book cover design), there are free alternatives to Photoshop and other design programs which will allow you to get a semi professional cover without breaking your budget.

Free Alternatives to Photoshop and InDesign

Adobe Photoshop is pretty much the must have for every professional designer. 99% of all the current photomanipulation work done today is done in Photoshop, but with a retail value of nearly $699 it’s usually beyond most independent authors budgets. The alternative to Photoshop is GIMP.

GIMP is a versatile graphics manipulation package with handy plug-ins and brushes similar to photoshop. If you visit their website, they have an introduction page as well as a page of tutorials to help get you started.

If you’re used to working in Photshop, you will have a learning curve attempting to figure out GIMP’s user interface. Its design isn’t the same as Photoshop so it’ll take some time to get use to.

For interior book design, Adobe InDesign is the #1 go to software used by professional interior book formatters. It allows you to create professionally laid books with lots of unique features like drop caps, headers, etc. There are two alternatives to InDesign.

The first would be MS Word.  I do realize this isn’t necessarily a “free” alternative, but the majority of people probably already have MS Word installed on their computers. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to utilize it to create a professionally designed interior book layout. MS Words has tons of features and options which are perfect for creating an amazing interior book design. So if you already have this installed, then it’d be worth attempting to figure out how to use it to your advantage.

If you don’t already have Word or would like to look at what else is available, then Scribus would probably work best for you. I’ve never used Scribus so I can’t give much info on how great it is or what its pros or cons would be. But I’ve heard it highly recommended by others.

While I’d always suggest hiring a professional, if you’re determined to DIY it, then these are a few programs to help you get started and they won’t break your budget.

Have you ever used either of these free alternatives? Tell me your experiences in the comments section.

Picking the proper font for your book cover is as important as picking the proper image. Font tells the genre and theme of the book as much if not more than the image itself. Fonts can even be directed towards a specific audience. If your book’s audience is mostly women, then you’d most likely use a different font than if you were trying to target a male only audience. If a font is done well, then most of the time you don’t even notice it. It blends seamlessly with its background and becomes part of the image.

It’s mainly when fonts aren’t done well that you notice them. Typography is an artform in itself. Even the best of image designers can have trouble with typography. When you’re choosing a font for you ebook, browse through the best seller lists in your genre. See how they use fonts in their images. This is one of the easiest ways to get ideas on what fonts would look best for your ebook.

Like most other designers, I have my own list of favorites. These are the first fonts I normally attempt to use. If they don’t work then I’ll look for something else. But even if I don’t use these fonts in particular I’ll use one from these family of fonts (ie one that has a similar look and appearance). Click on the font names to download them. Trajan is available at Adobe but the others are available free at Fontsquirrel.

When you’re downloading fonts for your ebook, you do want to be sure there is a commercial license use available on the font. Just because a font is free for download doesn’t necessarily mean you can use it on your ebook. Even if it doesn’t say it’s available for commercial use, normally if you email the designer they’ll sell you a license quite cheaply. So just be sure to double check before you download.

3 Great Fonts for Your Book Cover:

Trajan Pro– I use this font a lot not just for book covers, but also for chapter headings inside the book. It’s a clean, streamlined font with strong features.  And if it looks familiar to you that’s probably because it’s often used on movie posters.

League Gothic– This font works well on thrillers or nonfiction, professional books and is available free. (image source)

ChunkFive–This font can work on numerous genres and is available for free.

Have you used any of these? If not, then What is your favorite font?

If you know you’re going to want your book in both print and ebook, there is a simple method which will allow you to convert your ebook quickly and efficiently. And it’s something you most likely know how to do but just didn’t realize how much easier it’d make your formatting, and that is paragraph styles. (see screenshot below for where to find paragraph styles)

How to Convert Your Ebook to Print with Ease

Whenever I know I’m going to be doing both print and ebook formatting for a client, I’ll start with the ebook as it has less of the specialized formatting than a print version will. By starting with the ebook formatting first, it allows me to insert a lot of minor details like headings. Instead of highlighting your chapter headings, subheadings, etc, make sure to use your paragraph styles. By using paragraph styles as opposed to highlighting and just changing it, when you get ready to format for print, all you need to do is go into the paragraph style for your headings and change it to your print settings.

Then half your work is already done. The same applies by using the normal style for the body text. You can then easily adjust from an ebook font to a more complex print font and formatting. When you change the settings in the paragraph style, it will change all items in the document to that style. Which means you just need to go through and insert section breaks and do a bit of tidying up. You won’t have to format the entire book because 75% of it will be done for you already when you formatted for ebook.

I’m not going to go into details on how to format for ebook using MS Word. I’m kinda assuming you know that already. If you’re not using paragraph styles, then I’d highly recommend trying it the next time you format. Especially if you intend to have a print and ebook version of your book. You’ll be amazed at the amount of time you’ll save just by using something as simple as paragraph styles to set up your book.

Paragraph styles aren’t just for headings. You can use them on all of your specialized formatting including italics and bold. If it requires you to highlight it and make a change, I’d always suggest using a paragraph style for it. Especially if you’re going to have that particular format in more than one place.

This will also help you to convert your ebook more easily as well. When I format ebooks, I normally start  in Word, and lay out all of my paragraph styles. Then I convert to HTML. All I have to do is a bit of deletion and cleaning up the code slightly and I have a 100% formatted HTML document with half the work.

Do you use paragraph styles when you format? If not, what method do you prefer?

(screen shot taken from  The Entrepreneur’s Trap: How to Stop Working Too Much, Take Back Your Time and Enjoy Life
available at Amazon)

If you read the instructions on Createspace, or any of the POD sites, then you probably ended up just downloading a template and pulling a few hairs from your head while trying to get the template accepted. Calculating the book and/or spine width dimensions is actually pretty easy once you realize you only need to know a couple of things.

How to Calculate the Spine Width for Createspace

Step One:

Determine the interior page count. Before you can begin figuring out what the spine width is you need to know what the final formatted interior page count will be because the spine width is calculated using the interior pdf page count. If the page count changes, then the spine width changes. This is why I usually advise people not to worry too much about the exterior until they fully get the interior prepared.

Step Two:

Once you’ve formatted the interior and know the final pdf page count, you’re ready to begin your calculations. It’s pretty simple. Just mulitply the page count by the paper width. At Createspace you have two papers to choose from– white or cream. Each has their own width. If you calculate using white but when you upload decide “hmm I think I like cream better” and choose cream then your exterior pdf could get rejected because the size for cream paper is not the same as the size of white paper.

Now once you’ve decided on what paper you prefer you’re ready to multiply. For this example, I’m going to use 5×8 trim size with 250 pages, but regardless of what trim or what the page count is, the same method applies.

The formula is:

page count multiplied by paper width.

White paper width is 0.002252

Cream paper width is 0.0025

So for a 250 page book with white paper your formula looks like this: 250 x 0.002252= 0.563

I usually round up so I only have two numbers after the decimal so my spine width would 0.56 if I used white paper.

For cream paper it would be 250 x 0.0025= 0.625 (or 0.63)

As you can see depending upon which paper you use alters the width of the spine which is why it’s important for you to give your cover designer the exact specifications you intend to use when you upload because if you change your mind last minute you might incur fees because the cover designer would have to alter the entire cover. Because changing the spine width changes the overall cover dimensions.

When you  convert your ebook with Calibre to epub, there’s a little trick to getting your epub ebook cover sized properly. While it’s not absolutely necessary, it does help to give your ebook a more professional looking appearance. Without knowing what little box to tick most likely your cover ends up looking something like this:

Now granted this doesn’t look too bad, but with some covers it can really stretch them out until they’re almost unrecognizable. So how can you fix it so your epub cover looks more like the ones in your kindle ebooks? Very simple when you’re converting your ebook using Calibre, first you need to click on the epub output tab.(It’s in the red circle in the image below)

When you click on that a new window will pop up that looks something like this (see pic below). When it does make sure the box beside the preserve cover ratio is checked. The box is located in the upper right corner. By default this is automatically unchecked so you need to go in and click on it so that it’ll keep your ebook cover sized proportionately.

And that’s it. Your ebook cover will now be its normal size and not stretched out the way it was in the first image. Now it should look more like what you automatically get when converting to mobi. This only applies when converting to epub. If you’re converting to mobi, your ebook cover is automatically sized.

(Thanks to Cheryl Bradshaw. I used her ebook “Whispers of Murder” for this. It’s available on Amazon)