Crafting eBooks: eReader Formatting Headaches Away!

What the heck Smashwords?!?

Well I thought I’d gotten the formatting right on the Saturday Story Prompts Collection : 2011.06 & 2013.06, but thanks to a review from Nickii I’ve realized I didn’t quite pull it off. (If you’re reading this Nickii, drop me an email and I’ll give you a free coupon for the next eBook in thanks! :D)

I followed the instructions that Smashwords provided in their Style Guide, but I must have overlooked something. As you can see by the example to the right the Meatgrinder (Smashword’s automatic format generator) seems to have gone a bit awry.

Thankfully I’ve been able to find a way to check most of the formats myself (links below)…

Formats Away!

These are all the formats that don’t require other software for me to open:

  • Online Reading (HTML, good for sampling in web browser) – ok
  • Online Reading (JavaScript, experimental, buggy) – ok
  • PDF (good for reading on PC, or for home printing) – ok
  • RTF (readable on most word processors) – What the heck went wrong here? Small Caps, small caps everywhere! :p
  • Plain Text (download) (flexible, but lacks much formatting) – Ugly, but working
  • Plain Text (view) (viewable as web page) – Ugly, but working

These are the formats where I had to download a program:

These are the formats I am still looking for ways to check:

  • Apple iBooks (Epub) – I don’t own any Apple products :p
  • Aldiko (Epub) – My Android phone is too old and stupid to run this, apparently.


Leave a Reply