Publishing your eBook

Hey folks, Just wanted to drop a line about a recent conversation I had with another author who was contemplating which way to go in publishing her eBook. As many of you know there are a myriad of choices out there concerning self-publishing your eBook; however, the question remains, which one is best? I have used both smashwords and createspace for my eBooks and my paperback “Voices from the Heart II.” My first published eBook “Apples of Gold: A collection of inspirational short stories and poems,” was my first attempt at self-publishing an eBook. It was a daunting task but I learned so much on that journey. The task of formatting the eBook was an arduous excursion into the world of an editor. I was no editor, but by the time I was done (nine months later) I was confident in my ability to edit a manuscript. I discovered later that there were still typos; I went back after the first 6mos and re-submitted a new manuscript that was, for all intents and purposes, free of error, and the book has remained in the top 3 of free eBooks under poetry for over 6mos to date. I later published “Voices from the Heart” (first edition) with smashwords as well. Finally, when I published my paperback edition of “Voices from the Heart” (second edition) I saw the huge difference between smashwords and Kindle concerning a quality eBook format. When you publish a paperback (or hardback) through creatspace.com (an Amazon company) they give you the option for a “Kindle” edition as well. I opted to use their ePub to format the eBook version and I was not happy with it at all. The format is lacking to say the least. The table of contents does not have embedded links (it is also smashed together and looks horrible), the body paragraphs are too close, and it just looks unprofessional. I spoke to creatspace and Amazon about this issue and I plan to update the eBook version next week. I say all this to point indie authors in the direction of smashwords in terms of publishing an eBook. If you follow their formatting guidelines (they have a free eBook download for this) you will have a very nice and professional looking eBook; if you are publishing a paperback, than creatspace.com is a fantastic site to use.