HTML Source Files: We previously allowed HTML file uploads, but now we no longer allow them because most HTML files provided to us contained serious corruption as defined by the WC3 HTML Validator at http://validator.w3.org/check and as a result didn’t upload properly. If you only have your source file as an HTML file, follow these instructions: 1. Open the HTML document in a browser. 2. Copy and paste the entire document into a new Word doc by clicking "Edit: paste special" within the Word menu, then selecting "unformatted text" as the output. 3. From here, you'll find that you've got a consistent number of spaces, such as four spaces, making up your indents. This won't work, so do a CTRL+H (press the CTRL key and the H key at the same time) search and replace and search for ^p space space space space (a paragraph return followed by four taps on the space bar) and replace with only ^p. This will eliminate the leading spaces at the beginning of each paragraph. 4. Next, CTRL+A the document, right mouse click, click paragraph, and then under “special” do a first line paragraph indent of .25”. 5. Next, clean up the remaining minor issues, like manually removing the indents from your title and copyright pages, and, using Word’s center button, center those sections.

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Understanding the Different Ebook Formats

One of the important benefits of Smashwords is that we take your single file and convert it into multiple ebook formats. Why is this so important to the success of your book? Because customers read on many different devices, and the more formats you offer, the more books you’ll sell. In early January 2010, we did a survey of the most popular ebook formats for Smashwords customers. The results were interesting. Although PDF is the most popular ebook format, two thirds of customers preferred formats other than PDF. You can read the survey yourself at http://blog.smashwords.com/2010/02/most-popular-ebook-formats-revealed.html.