[Victoria Champion]

I just got approved at ARe (All Romance eBooks). Hooray. Couple of questions:

Does an epub formatted for Nook work fine at ARe?
What about a mobi formatted for Kindle?
Should I worry about offering all the other formats they offer or will the epub work with most reader devices and apps?
For any of you who have all formats available, what is the most popular format sold?

Thanks for replies in advance.

V

 

[dalya]

An epub is an epub. Nooks read epub, but other devices read epub as well.

What format do you have your books in now? You can use Calibre to convert your main file into the other formats.

As for "should you worry" -- I think that if you're not doing Select, the strategy is to go wide with wide distribution and file format. I had a look at ARe and some of those formats I've never heard of, but Calibre seems to convert to most of them!

 

[Victoria Champion]

An epub is an epub. Nooks read epub, but other devices read epub as well.

What format do you have your books in now? You can use Calibre to convert your main file into the other formats.

As for "should you worry" -- I think that if you're not doing Select, the strategy is to go wide with wide distribution and file format. I had a look at ARe and some of those formats I've never heard of, but Calibre seems to convert to most of them!

Well I asked about the epub because Kobo for instance takes epub but it has to be formatted differently than a Nook epub (alignment and spaces between paragraphs, etc...).

I have my books in Nook epub, Kobo epub (kepub), and Kindle mobi. I also did pdfs for the Copyright Office.

You are right, I should go wide with distribution and formats - I am not in Select. I'll heed your advice. I think Scrivener should convert to most, I'll check. I have Caliber installed but I have to admit that app confuses the hell out of me and I am not techno-illiterate. I'd like to avoid using it.

 

[dalya]

Well I asked about the epub because Kobo for instance takes epub but it has to be formatted differently than a Nook epub (alignment and spaces between paragraphs, etc...). ...

AHHHH you're right!

I use a stylesheet within the epub document that sets the paragraphing. If you don't, Kobo readers display fiction books in a non-fiction manner, which I think is a bizarro default, but whatevs.

I've never touched a Nook ...

 

[KellyHarper]

Scrivener for Mac can do mobi, epub, doc(x), rtf, html, pdf with ease. I think ARe accepts a few others (just started looking into it myself) that Scrivener cannot generate directly. I don't particularly trust Calibre's conversions (probably unjustly so) so I'll likely only stick with whatever Scrivener can give me directly.

 

[CoraBuhlert]

I use the same epub and mobi files for ARe that I use for Amazon and Kobo respectively. I also offer my books in LIT, PDB, RB and PDF format, all generated by Calibre. So far, I've mostly sold epub and mobi at ARe with the very occasional PDF. But since Calibre converts into the other formats with no problem, I don't see why I shouldn't offer them for those who want them.

 

[Hildred]

I use my files converted from Scrivener, so mobi, pdf, and html. Epub I have to code myself since scrivener for Windows is buggy about epubs. Those are the only formats I bother uploading as those are the most popular by far. If I ever get any sales higher than one a month at ARe, I may consider uploading the other ones.

So far all my sales have been PDFs.

 

[Victoria Champion]

I use my files converted from Scrivener, so mobi, pdf, and html. Epub I have to code myself since scrivener for Windows is buggy about epubs. Those are the only formats I bother uploading as those are the most popular by far. If I ever get any sales higher than one a month at ARe, I may consider uploading the other ones.

So far all my sales have been PDFs.

Aww Hildred where's the kitty-hug avatar?

 

[Hildred]

Aww Hildred where's the kitty-hug avatar?

Kitty got shy.

 

[Victoria Champion]

Kitty got shy.

...oh you did?

 

[Hildred]

...oh you did?

...ahaha now I'm imagining myself as SHY. I bet my friends / family would love to live in that reality.

 

[Jill James]

At ARe I upload .epub, .mobi, and PDF. PDF's sell the most. I get about 10-12 sales there a month.

 

[Speaker-To-Animals]

I'd be interested in hearing what should be different in epubs for B&N and Kobo. I don't have either device, I've checked my epubs in Digital Editions, Sigil, and the Nook app and they look fine. What are the differences and what should I be looking for.

Also specifically about what's buggy about epub out of Scrivener/Windows. I've had very good luck with getting them to fix the issues with kindle output. Their windows epub output does stick font-face tags in, but I hadn't heard that this caused problems--does it?

And for ARe, definitely do PDFs. I can't fathom why anyone would want to read a PDF, but apparently people do. It's my top format there.

 

[Hildred]

Also specifically about what's buggy about epub out of Scrivener/Windows. I've had very good luck with getting them to fix the issues with kindle output. Their windows epub output does stick font-face tags in, but I hadn't heard that this caused problems--does it?

For me and a couple other people I know, it's a hard scene break issue. Well, not just scenes, but anywhere in the front and back matter where you want even a little white space between paragraphs. Scrivener spits everything out fine except epub, which completely annihilates the breaks and squishes all the text together until one scene is literally running into another. So what I do is a compile an epub and then hand code the spaces in Sigil. It only takes about a half hour in all, but it's tedious. (Especially for me, who isn't using chapters at all in her current series - only scene breaks.)

Last I heard the Scrivener people knew about the glitch but I don't think it's been fixed in an update yet.

 

[Gennita Low]

I look at all the formats I have to load and then read here about coding and fixes and...I back away. It sounds like so much work and I don't even have enough time to write. //sad  That's why I go through Smashwords and its Grinder. They do all the formats for you.

Sigh. Maybe I'll put aside some coffee money and pay someone to upload my files into aRE for me. I know I'll sell there. My former trad publishers have two of my books there.

 

[CoraBuhlert]

You should definitely do ARe, Gennita. As a writer of romantic suspense, ARe is your target market and readers who enjoyed your trad books and wondered why there weren't any more can likely find them there.

 

[Gennita Low]

You should definitely do ARe, Gennita. As a writer of romantic suspense, ARe is your target market and readers who enjoyed your trad books and wondered why there weren't any more can likely find them there.

I know. Any good and not-too-expensive converting service you can recommend? I actually have a hot m/m I can put on a ARe. I wish they have a grinder, LOL.

 

[Speaker-To-Animals]

For me and a couple other people I know, it's a hard scene break issue. Well, not just scenes, but anywhere in the front and back matter where you want even a little white space between paragraphs.

Ah! I understand what you mean now.

Are you doing that with a double paragraph return or by changing the line spacing to add space additional space before the paragraph? Some epub readers seem to annihilate double spaces, but if you change it in the Scrivener edit window to add that space, then you compile and uncheck "override text and notes formatting" so it uses the formatting from the editor, it will work fine. I can't check that with the Nook, but Adobe Digital Editions has the same problem.

I'll see if the Mac version does any better when I get home.

 

[Amanda Brice]

I heard that ARe is very particular in the way that they require you to title your files. Can someone help?

 

[Carradee]

I heard that ARe is very particular in the way that they require you to title your files. Can someone help?

I don't have any issues with file names, but it might be something like "No spaces or special characters in the file name", which I avoid anyway. (I upload the the Omnilit section, mainly because I already have the files anyway, so I might as well. I make 'em with Scrivener for Mac.)

Now, the cover has to be some specific insanely small size… 200x300, I think. But the website's pretty good about telling you the changes you need to make.

Figuring out the interface is a bit tricky, though. Like, to change the story summary, you have to click the button "Edit story summary" before you can do so.