Is Smashwords worth the trouble?

Ever since I decided to self-publish my book, I was determined NOT to use Smashwords. I'd read a lot of complaints from those who do use it, and didn't like the idea of having to put my novel through their meatgrinder. I'm very particular about how my end product looks, and I thought if I did it on my own, retaining complete control over my ebook formatting, I would be happier with the end product. (I'm a part-time web designer, so I'm very comfortable with HTML and other types of coding.)

I hand-coded both my Kindle and ePub files, and they came out beautifully. I'm very proud of the result. The problem is, the ONLY places I can seem to get my ebook listed on my own is Amazon & B&N. The Amazon DTP and B&N PubIt! sites were very user-friendly, and I had my books live in a matter of days. And then I came to a screeching halt.

Kobo is impossible to deal with. Multiple emails to them have gone unanswered. I requested information on publishing through them, got a questionnaire in reply, filled it out, returned it to the person who sent it to me... and the email bounced back with a "that address doesn't exist here" message. I emailed the generic contact account again, but have had no answer yet.

There's no way to get into the iBookstore if you don't have a Mac, so Smashwords or another (paid) aggregator is the only way in there. Same goes for Sony Reader. I thought I could get around them by putting my ePub for sale through Google Books. I started the process, have emailed many times with questions, got no responses, and finally today contacted them again with a request to remove my book completely. Not only did the ePub never go live, I was never able to get anyone to tell me why or what to do to fix it. And in the meantime, I became increasingly uncomfortable with how much of my book is available to preview. Despite it being set for only 20% (which is already a lot, in my opinion), they technically have all but 3 chapters uploaded. The way it seems to work is, the first 20% of the book that loads at any given time is all the user can see. So someone can start reading, get through the first 7 chapters, stop, go back to the page the next day (or open it in a different type of browser), start on chapter 8 and read another 20% from there... (I know this because I did it myself as a test). In the end, someone can read nearly my entire novel for free. Not acceptable!

So now it appears that, if I want people with readers other than Kindle or Nook to be able to purchase my book, my only option is Smashwords. Which means I now have to take my InDesign file and convert it in OpenOffice (I don't have Word), go through their style guide with a fine-toothed comb to be sure I have it formatted perfectly, and hope and pray their meatgrinder produces a passable ePub file, even though I spent a good week hand-crafting an ePub on my own that is just about flawless. It's incredibly frustrating, to say the least!

I suppose my question is: is it worth all that trouble? So far, my sales are all coming from the paperback and Kindle editions. I've sold only a couple in Nook format. Do those of you who use Smashwords find you get a lot of sales through Kobo, iBooks, Sony, etc? I want my novel to be widely available, and not discriminate against certain ereaders, but I'm really wary of dealing with SW.

Thanks, Eric. I do have images in mine (the chapter headings are images so I can use a fancier font), but after reading that section of the formatting guide, I gave them up and am using just basic "Chapter 1" text. Not as pretty, but I'm not going to risk the file getting all screwed up just for a few pretty fonts here and there!

I ended up going the Smashwords route today. Spent all afternoon formatting and uploaded. It passed validation fine and the files all look good. (except the online viewing HTML doesn't like centered text for some reason, but I'm not going to sweat that. The ePub and other types look fine.)

It really wasn't as painful as I had expected. Granted, I had to strip out a lot of the "prettier" formatting I have in my hand-coded ePub and lose the footnotes in the research section, but the resulting files are just fine. Now I get to wait and see if/when it passes approval into the Premium Catalog. Anyone know what the wait time for that has been lately? I had no errors and the ePub passed ePubcheck, so I'm hoping it'll be approved on the first shot.

I was very surprised to sign on to Smashwords this morning and see that I was already approved for the Premium Catalog! My books are shipping out this week to the vendors I've opted in to. I'm pretty impressed. I have to admit, I was expecting a long wait after reading so many horror stories from others, especially since I used OpenOffice and not Word to do my formatting. I guess all it really takes is to format it right on the first try. I'm glad I made myself read and follow the style guide so closely. It probably saved me a lot more headaches.

As for the footnotes, I think if I had the patience to reformat them, I would have gotten them to work. I read somewhere that the meatgrinder couldn't do superscript, so I couldn't figure out how to get the smaller footnote numbers to look right. As it turned out, superscript does work (I had used it in one spot to raise the "th" in 20th and forgot to change it back.), so I could have done them. But by the time I noticed it, I was tired and had a splitting eye strain headache, so I couldn't bring myself to go back and add them in and resubmit. I have a bibliography with all my sources listed, so footnoting the research notes wasn't really that important in the long run.

Erik M said:

I've pubbed four shorter works through Smashwords and the majority of sales, by far, have been through B&N, followed by Sony.

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They finally shipped mine to Sony, so maybe that will help my sales sow. I pubbed to B&N on my own through PubIt, but have seen almost no sales there. So far all my sales have been through Amazon, about an even split between Kindle and paperback.

Though I won't be able to see sales figures from the other outlets on SW for a month or so. Maybe iBooks & Sony will move some. I'm still waiting for them to ship to Kobo.

uscgbyron said:

I've avoided Smashwords so far, honestly, I've been intimidated by what seems to be an extensive formatting process, but you all have encouraged me to give it another go. Look's like I know what I'm doing tomorrow morning!

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The formatting was part of the reason I avoided it, too. I don't have Word (I use OpenOffice), and since I had spent so much time creating my own ePub and Kindle files, I hated the thought of starting over with a Word doc for SW. But by following their formatting guide, I was able to get a doc finished in an afternoon that passed through the meatgrinder on the first try and got into the Premium Catalog the next day.

I'm still waiting for them to ship the darn thing to Kobo, though. They've shipped to every other site I opted into, but Kobo still says it's waiting to ship. What's the holdup, Smashwords???