Sunday, September 27, 2015

On Indie Publishers

I have been publishing with smashwords for three years now and have had a generally pleasant experience, but I must admit I am thinking about 'seeing someone else.'  Through a certain blog post, I became aware of a site called Draft to Digital, which does very much the same thing.  My only quibble with smashwords is their so-called Meatgrinder, the software they use to convert your word document into an ebook, has trouble with a complex internal navigation system (the hyperlinks and bookmarks that form your table of contents) and it is like trying to herd cats whenever I try and update or publish a 'box set' or volume with more than one book or table of contents in it.  The resulting ebooks work just fine, but the Meatgrinder has indigestion and the people that supervise the process chuck my book into the 'needs attention' bin wherein I go back and edit, and reset everything and rinse and repeat for about 8 times before someone finally lets it slip through and gets it updated.  This draft to digital seems to have a much smoother upload process, but I can't just start over.  Apparently you lose all your reviews, links, etc. if you switch and basically start with a clean slate, so all the momentum (if any) I've built up over the years is summarily lost.  I might try it with something like my 'Sampler Platter' and see what happens.  For a simple book, smashwords is great, but I dread the coming update of my 'In Shadow' complete volume when I release the new book.

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