Right now, as I pointed out yesterday, Smashwords is having their Summer Sale. They have a coupon to get The Voyage of the Minotaur at $1.50, but I’ll do better than that for the visitors to this blog. Use coupon code AN87Q and get if for 99 cents through July 26th. There are many other great books available at discounts and even for free at Smashwords.
Follow this link to Voyage of the Minotaur: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/11536
Smashwords is having its semi-annual Summer/Winter Sale. Right now, among many other great buys, you can pick up Brechalon for FREE. It is available, as most Smashwords books are, for the Kindle, Nook, and virtually any other ereader or tablet. Use coupon code SSWSF at the checkout.
Follow this link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/11537
The Smashwords Style Guide has helped thousands of authors produce and publish high-quality ebooks. This free guide offers simple step-by-step instructions to create and format an ebook. It’s required reading for any author who wants to distribute their book via Smashwords to major ebook retailers such as the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and Diesel.
Download it Free Now: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52#longdescr
INSIDE THE SMASHWORDS STYLE GUIDE
GETTING STARTED
Welcome to Smashwords!
Do-it-yourself, or hire help?
Good formatting examples
What Smashwords publishes, what we don’t publish
Five common formatting mistakes to avoid
How Smashwords publishes books
How Smashwords distributes books
How ebook formatting is different from print formatting
How we convert your book into multiple ebook formats
The three secrets to ebook formatting
How to avoid (and fix) AutoVetter errors
Introduction to Meatgrinder conversion system
Your required source file
Understanding the different ebook formats
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
FORMATTING
Pre-Prep
Making Word Behave
Step 1: Make a back up
Step 2: Activate Word’s Show/Hide
Step 3: Turn off Word’s “AutoCorrect” and “AutoFormat” features
Step 4: Eliminate text boxes
Step 5: The Nuclear Method
Formatting
Step 6: Unify Manuscript around Normal paragraph style
Step 7: Managing and modifying paragraph styles, fonts
Step 7a. How to choose the best paragraph separation method (first line indent or block?)
Step 7b: How to implement your chosen paragraph separation method
Step 7b-a: How to define a proper first line indent
Step 7b-b: How to define trailing “after” space for block paragraphs
Step 7b-c: Special tips for poetry, cookbooks and learning materials
Step 7b-d: How to define proper line spacing
Step 8: Check your normalized text
Step 9: Why you should never use tabs or the space bar for indents
Step 10: Managing paragraph returns
Step 11: Managing hyperlinks
Step 12: Designating chapter breaks, page breaks, section breaks
Step 13: Working with images
Step 14: Text justification
Step 14a: Centering text
Step 15: Managing font sizes
Step 16: Style formatting, symbols and glyphs
Step 17: Headers and footers
Step 18: Margins, page sizes and indents
Step 19: Add the Heading style to your Chapter headers (optional)
Step 20: Building navigation into the manuscript
Step 20a: Creating the NCX
Step 20b: Creating the linked Table of Contents
Front Matter
Step 21: Front matter
Step 21a: Blurbs (optional)
Step 21b: Title and copyright page (required!)
Step 21c: Add a Smashwords license statement below copyright page
The End of Your Book
Step 22: The end of your book
POST-FORMATTING
Step 23: Preparing your cover image
Step 24: Review requirements for Premium Catalog distribution
Uploading Your Book to Smashwords
Step 25: How to upload your book
Step 26: How AutoVetter works
Step 27: After you publish – check your work
Step 27a: Check for EPUBCHECK compliance (important!)
How to Market Your Book
Step 28: Read the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide
Helpful Resources
Send Feedback
About the Author
APPENDIX
Keyboard shortcuts (save hours with this tricks!)
There has been a huge increase in downloads of His Robot Girlfriend in the past month– although it has been downloaded at more than 5,000 times per month for some time. Although available at Manybooks, Smashwords, and Feedbooks, it seems that readers are discovering it now at Kobo, Diesel, iBooks, and B&N.
I’ll be honest. I was happy enough with it when it was first done, but now I think I’ve improved quite a bit in my story telling and writing and I’m a little embarrassed that it’s not better than it is. Oh well, many people seem to like it– there are more 5 star reviews than 1 star reviews.
Today marks the beginning of Read an Ebook Week. Stop by Smashwords.com for many, many discounts on ebooks, including 75% off my Voyage of the Minotaur and 100% off Princess of Amathar.
His Robot Wife — the long awaited sequel to His Robot Girlfriend is now available.
Five years ago, Mike Smith was an unhappy man living all alone. Then he purchased a Daffodil. Far more than regular robots, his Daffodil Patience, changed his life in ways that he had never thought possible. Now it is the year 2037, and Mike and Patience have been married for five years. Retired and enjoying life, Mike thought that all his troubles were behind him, but it seems as though they are creeping up again. California Proposition 22 proposes to define a person as a biological entity, thereby annulling marriages, like Mike’s and Patience’s, performed in other states. Battle lines have been drawn, at least as far as the proponents of the bill are concerned. Now Mike must muster his own support to defeat the measure. But there is more going on than just politics. Daffodil, the robot maker, is in the news again. Hardware issues are leaving robots across the globe unable to function. Is it only an antenna issue? Now Patience herself is behaving oddly. Is there something really wrong with her, or does she just need a software upgrade?
His Robot Wife is available for 99 cents at Smashwords or the Kindle Store.
There was a mini-run on my books right after Christmas at both Amazon and Smashwords. I won’t know until later if the same was true on Apple, B&N, Kobo, and the others. Thanks to everyone who purchased one of my books. Feel free to email me and let me know what you thought.
Tesla’s Stepdaughters is now just $1.99 as an ebook at both Amazon (for the Kindle) and Smashwords (for everything else).
The Voyage of the Minotaur is on sale as part of Smashwords’ Summer/Winter Sale. Follow the link here http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/11536 and use coupon code SWS25.
In a world of steam power and rifles, where magic has not yet been forgotten, an expedition sets out to found a colony in a lost world. The Voyage of the Minotaur is a story of adventure and magic, religion and prejudice, steam engines and dinosaurs, angels and lizardmen, machine guns and wizards, sorceresses, bustles and corsets, steam-powered computers, hot air balloons, and dragons.
Tesla’s Stepdaughters is on sale for 50% off as part of Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale. Follow the link to http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/14068 and use coupon code SWS50.
In a world where men are almost extinct, someone is trying to kill history’s greatest rock & roll band. Science Police Agent John Andrews must negotiate a complicated relationship with Ep!phanee, the band’s lead singer; drummer Ruth De Molay, bassist Steffie Sin, and the redheaded clone lead guitarist Penny Dreadful, as he protects them and tries to discover who wants to kill the Ladybugs.
City of Amathar 