[Gabriel Beyers]

Smashwords is really  me off.  After finally getting on the premium catalog, I decided to add my updated cover and a better book description.  It's bad enough that these simple changes casts you out of the catalog, but now I have a message saying that I have an NCX error that needs to be fixed before it can be added back to the catalog.

The only changes I made was to the cover and the description.  I did nothing to the book itself.  Why would it go through once and not the second time?

 

[Joyce DeBacco]

I had a similar problem when I fixed a few typos in the original document used to upload. When I learned there was a problem I contacted them and told them it was the original doc. Mark wrote back and said he checked it and it looked fine and was probably just a glitch, so he approved it.

Joyce

 

[RobertY]

Looks like the "Meatgrinder" still is having hiccups. Ever since they changed it to accommodate Kobo more it has been having problems.

 

[Todd Russell]

Looks like the "Meatgrinder" still is having hiccups. Ever since they changed it to accommodate Kobo more it has been having problems.

My book has been in the premium distribution for a couple months and Kobo still hasn't shipped. It just says "ready to ship." Hopefully if Mark Coker stops by he'll demystify Kobo shipping.

Other than that, Smashwords has worked great for me thus far.

 

[Decon]

The last I heard, smashwords were having to drip feed books to KOBO because they couldn't cope with the numbers.

 

[swolf]

If you're in the premium catalog, and you resubmit and there's an error, that doesn't mean you're removed from the catalog. It just means your new version won't be uploaded to the vendors until the problem is cleared up.

I've been getting NCX errors every time I've submitted for the past few months. I email Mark, and he flips a switch, and the book is approved. So there's nothing I'm doing wrong - it's something wrong with the meatgrinder.

As for Kobo, here's Mark's update from a few weeks ago:

June 21, 2011 - Kobo update: Continuing my notes below, Kobo has asked us to throttle (limit) the shipments to only a few thousand new titles per week until they're caught up because they're unable to deal with the volume. Considering their multi-month backlog of unloaded titles prior to the complete catalog regrind, it means a small number of books will face shipment delays of up to eight or nine weeks, and half of the books will ship within 4-5 weeks. We're shipping three times a week to them, 1,000 at a time, so some of you are already starting to appear there. For the intermediate term, this means newly approved Premium Catalog titles are likely to appear at Kobo much later than other retailers.

 

[lalondeseattle]

I am new on the e-book scene.
I just went through the Kindle, Nook and Smashwords processes to get my novel Holotar: Last Queen of the White Shamans up.
Of course I had to reload after the first upload. I found the Smashwords process the easiest regarding reload.
Smashwords was very responsive (Mark Coker directly) and Meatgrinder was impressive -- much easier to deal with than the Kindle technical process.
Kindle help is very response to queries, a day lag, but the Amazon technical process is amazingly klunkie; for example, you can not get a copy of your new upload to preview it unless you contact them by email to request one. The Kindle previewer does not show things like images and TOC, which you only discover after asking for help.
That said, I am still waiting for the Smashwords distribution process to complete (and show sales); but have made sales and hit the Amazon ranking as high as #14,153 with Kindle sales.
Are people having sales via the Smashwords channels? How are you marketing using Smashwords once those channels have your book?.
This forum is my first stab at learning the marketing ropes and hearing what other authors are experiencing and trying as far as marketing goes... all input welcome!

 

[EGranfors]

I feel your pain. It took me about 20 tries with my husband's photo editing to get the cover to the required pixels.  On CreateSpace, I just called customer service and they fixed my cover, snap snap!

 

[JRLeckman]

Also, for anyone trying to go Premium, it looks like there's a bit of a delay because they are training new staff. Generally, I see threads here that are covered by Mark's updates, so feel free to check this link when you have problems. It may have answers for you.

http://www.smashwords.com/about/beta

 

[Gertie Kindle]

All I changed recently was a cover but since the meatgrinder now puts the cover in the file, it had to be processed again. In Epub, the first two paragraphs were bolded, but they weren't in my doc. I removed the formatting from those two paragraphs and reformatted. It worked fine.

 

[FictionalWriter]

That sucks. I'm still waiting to be approved. Sigh.

 

[Gabriel Beyers]

Aw man.  I forgot all about the cover being in the file.  I'll need to update that, too.  Sometimes there is so much going on my head starts to spin.

 

[T.M.souders author]

It's taking my novel forever as well to get on the premium catalog.  It took forever to get it uploaded in the correct formula for Kindle too!  I'm new to this and am not the most savvy when it comes to this stuff.  I can't even figure out how to get the pic of my book in this comment with the link, lol.

 

[Gertie Kindle]

It's taking my novel forever as well to get on the premium catalog. It took forever to get it uploaded in the correct formula for Kindle too! I'm new to this and am not the most savvy when it comes to this stuff. I can't even figure out how to get the pic of my book in this comment with the link, lol.

There's an instructional thread stickied at the top of The Writer's Cafe that will help you.

 

[Steve the Bear]

My two novels and two short stories are in Premium Catalog but for some reason The Gilded Treachery is bugging with epub/Apple when I formatted it exactly like I did my other titles.

I've been meaning to reformat it from scratch for a few weeks but it pisses me off so much that I've been putting it off. Besides, I don't think I'm raking in the sails on Apple iBookstore anyway...

Otherwise, I always loved how fast and easy it is to upload to Smashwords.

 

[Gertie Kindle]

My two novels and two short stories are in Premium Catalog but for some reason The Gilded Treachery is bugging with epub/Apple when I formatted it exactly like I did my other titles.

I've been meaning to reformat it from scratch for a few weeks but it pisses me off so much that I've been putting it off. Besides, I don't think I'm raking in the sails on Apple iBookstore anyway...

Otherwise, I always loved how fast and easy it is to upload to Smashwords.

Apple has been very disappointing but Kobo has been doing extremely well for me.