Wednesday, January 8, 2014

#WWoW!: More Fun with Formatting and Distributing #ebooks with @dochappycamper #amwriting #MyWANA #ASMSG

Welcome back to Tammy's Tidbits here at Writer's Words of Wisdom. This is my first post of 2014 and I thought I'd continue with my last post of 2013. Formatting your ebooks for publishing can be a daunting task, but with just a little extra work you can produce files that look great on any ebook reader.


Last time I talked about the Smashwords Style Guide. It's a fabulous resource for all self published/Indie authors whether you decide to do your own formatting or not. Just the tips on how to tame Microsoft Word are enough to make it a must read and a KEEPER for your publishing arsenal. The best thing—it's FREE. 

Just this last week I decided to try out another site: Draft 2 Digital. I have to say it's the most user friendly site for self publishers and small independent publishing houses. D2D will take your Word document and convert it into a beautifully formatted EPUB file you use on ANY other site. In fact, you can take this file and covert it to any other ebook format you need with Calibre.

Why couldn't you do this with Smashwords? Well, all the files produced by the "Meatgrinder" formatting process on Smashwords are required to have "Smashwords Edition" in the front matter where your copyright page is located. 

Not so with Draft 2 Digital. With my newest release, I put "Electronic Edition" in the same area I normally would acknowledge Smashwords, All Romance, or Amazon. Now, I can take this one Word document and create all I need. Right after the conversion process, D2D allowed me to download the epub file. I looked it over to make sure it looked good in a NOOK and then accepted it on the site. 

Next. I got to choose the stores to distribute my book. Since it was my first time and I had already set up Smashwords, I decided to opt out of Barnes and Noble and Kobo. At the point when I did that, Smashwords hadn't shipped them the file yet so it worked out.

Now, The Surrender of Julia (Now and Forever 3) is live on both sites thanks to D2D. All the other distribution sites I've got covered with Smashwords, All Romance, and Amazon. The next book I publish, I'm starting out with Draft 2 Digital and distribute to BN, Kobo, iTunes and maybe a few more. They even have Createspace as an option so I could do my print formatting with them as well.

Go ahead and check them out and see what I'm talking about. If you're not ready to publish yet, bookmark the site so you can go back to it when you're ready. They have plans to add more distribution channels in the future and I for one can't wait to see who they partner with next. 

Until next time,
~Tammy

Learn More About Tammy


Tammy Dennings Maggy is a best selling, multi-published poet and erotic romance author with Siren and Sassy Vixen Publishing. Her writing explores many facets of romance from ultimate betrayal to finding your soul mate. Her poetry serves as a companion to her novels and has inspired entire series all on their own. Tammy and her alter egos Lia Michaels and Stephanie Ryan make up the core authors at Sassy Vixen Publishing and together they've created the shared world series Temptations Resort. Look for the first books in that series to come out later this year.

Now happily married to her own Muse and soul mate, she continues to live her dream and act as secretary to all her characters demanding to have their stories told.


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