Steps two and three are handy for all Word users: show paragraph marks (aka "pilcrows") and other formatting, and disable Word's auto-correct and auto-format features. (Appropriately, the first of the guide's 29 steps is to make a backup copy of the file before you do anything else.) #HOW TO CONVERT A WORD FOR MAC DOCUMENT TO A BOOKLET HOW TO#The Smashwords guide explains how to remove all existing formatting from a Word DOC file and then reformat the material in a way that will display well as an e-book. I may have benefited from having the e-book material in a non-Word format to begin with because I was able to start the book-formatting process from scratch. These are among the formatting elements that will give the Meatgrinder fits. Even if you wrote your book in Word, the file will likely require quite a bit of reformatting to make it through the Smashwords Meatgrinder without encountering some errors during the conversion.Īs a for instance, your file likely has tabs, tables, or text boxes. #HOW TO CONVERT A WORD FOR MAC DOCUMENT TO A BOOKLET MANUALS#Find and save user manuals with ManualsLibīecause the contact-management tips were written and published in HTML originally, much of my production time entailed copying and pasting the text and images from their Web pages into Word. It includes an extensive FAQ and links to Coker's publications on marketing your e-books. The style guide is written by Mark Coker, Smashwords' creator. It took me about 6 hours to combine the tips into a DOC file, reformat the file following the 29 steps in the Smashwords Style Guide ( pdf), and upload the file to Smashwords' Meatgrinder file converter. I chose contact-management tips for my initial foray because the tips are among the most popular I've written, and the resulting e-book would be a manageable length (just under 8,500 words). My goal was simply to convert about a dozen of my blog posts on managing contacts into a free e-book: Workers' Edge Guide to Contact Management. CNET's David Carnoy has written two great overviews of the current state of e-book publishing, both of which he recently updated: "How to self-publish an ebook," and "Self-publishing a book: 25 things you need to know."ĭavid's stories mention Smashwords along with several e-book-publishing alternatives. If your magnum opus (or even half-pint opus) is a Word document that's ready for the world to fall in love with, give the free Smashwords e-book-publishing service a try.įollow the style guide's formatting tips before submitting to the Meatgrinder Lots of people have unpublished novels and other book-length documents sitting forlornly on their hard drive, waiting and waiting for an audience. Writing can be painful, but there are limits. The first time I heard someone say "Everybody has a book in them," I recommended that they see a doctor right away.Īt least that explains all those books I've read that appear to have traveled through the author's colon.
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