What To Expect When You're Expecting Epub Free Download
Vida Hubbert
Up to 88% of expectant and new parents report problems with their sexual well-being, yet less than 30% of individuals receive information about potential sexual problems from health-care professionals. Lack of information may contribute to difficulty adjusting to sexual challenges, and in turn, to poorer sexual well-being. The current study examined the following: 1) the amount of perinatal sexual health information individuals receive/access; 2) gaps between desired and received information; 3) barriers to accessing information; and 4) links between the quantity of information received/accessed and sexual well-being outcomes in one sample of pregnant couples (N = 102) and another sample of couples in the postpartum (N = 102). Results revealed that most participants reported receiving/accessing little-to-no sexual health information, despite most participants wanting to receive a variety of information related to their perinatal sexuality. On average, expectant and new parents were indifferent regarding how easy/comfortable they felt discussing their sexuality with health-care professionals. Overall, when gestational parents received/accessed more pregnancy-related sexual health information and when either parent received/accessed more postpartum-related sexual health information, both members of the couples reported greater sexual well-being. Access to information might not only address couples' needs and concerns but may also bolster sexual well-being during a vulnerable period.
BUT it seems like the predefined checkboxes in "sample buttons and forms" don't work when published in EPUB. The checkbox works as a charm though if I export in PDF, but none of the other functions don't work (which is expected).
That seems you are also expecting (full? partial?) Javascript support. Again, sure, some viewers may support this, but it sure sounds like a lot to ask from what was designed to be a basic formatted document view format. Perhaps you should not try to wrestle the ePub specs into submission for your very specialized purposes but choose a more appropriate format.
For me, an unexpected benefit of testing my epub file like this turned out to be that simply reading my words on a different screen in a different layout revealed typos and errors that I had repeatedly glossed over on my main laptop.
Although in this article I describe the iPad separately, when I test I am going back and forth between phone ereader apps and the iPad iBook app concurrently. With the epub file in the Dropbox cloud, I single tap to open the Dropbox client on my iPad.
Thanks for making this option available. However, it appears there are still some kinks to be worked out.
When I tried to upload my epub file using the method described in this post, I got this error:
The book file you uploaded is in a format we do not support, or it has a filename extension we do not recognize. Your file appears to be a "application/octet-stream" file, and has a ".epub" filename extension.
Please upload your book in Microsoft Word 97-2003 ".doc" format, with ".doc" as the filename extension. If your file is in another format (Microsoft Word 2007 (".docx"), OpenOffice (".odt"), etc.), you'll need to save a copy of it, exported as a ".doc" file, first. (Use your word processor's "File>Save As..." or other similar export option.)
If you continue to get this error, try uploading with a different web browser.
Alternatively, if your ebook has already been prepared, you may upload it in the following format:
epub (.epub)
You can choose to do this later. Also, you may at a later time upload a .doc to convert to other formats that Smashwords supports. (Error UL4)
I'm not sure what this means, but it appears that Smashwords is not accepting my epub files, for reasons that I do not understand. Of course, it's very early in the process, so I expect these kinks will be worked out soon.
Has anyone else gotten this error?
@Michael - I do all pretty much all the epubs from my clients in Calibre, and have no problem with them passing the epubcheck. But I create the base text in HTML - if you're converting from something else to epub, you'll probably have problems.
Disappointed in the reply, Mark. Really disappointed.
Perhaps my reaction to this news is because when you first started talking about an .epub upload, I thought it would mean a replacement for a .doc file. Where we could use one or the other. I'm not the only one who thought it, though, so I don't feel so bad about the assumption.
But, still disappointed and now looking at the need to use Smashwords at all in the future. The .doc file is an extra step that only your system requires. Time is money, and I'm not willing to pay that money to someone else. I didn't like that part of your comment at all, as it didn't address the issues and felt insulting.
I'll leave the bulk of my response at The Passive Voice. I'm too angry and deeply disappointed at the moment to do more here.
Perhaps I misread what you said, so please, clarify.
First: I don't expect you do make everything perfect instantly. However:
I was led to believe that the ultimate goal in implementing ePub submission was to allow people FULL access to Smashwords (including samples) without using Word.
I have zero interest in replacing my epubs. It's a nice first step, but it doesn't help me in the slightest. What I want to fix is my workflow. Having to provide a finished Word document doubles my labor.
In the discussion above, you seemed to indicate that you have no plans to implement full access to Smashwords features to epub submissions. And that you never plan to source online samples from anything but Word files. (Which is one of Smashwords' most attractive features.)
That is what upsets me. I am incredibly frustrated, and this feels like a bait and switch: I get told that what I need is coming, and then "Oops, but we have no plans for what YOU need." That's infuriating.
And even if it is an eventual goal, at this point, I've had to wait too long. I certainly won't remove current books from Smashwords. I love Smashwords. But I feel that I can't support this production process any more, so I have to think twice about future books.
This is better than the meatgrinder because you can check everything beforehand, like whether the book passes the epub check, and how it looks in different e-readers. So you can know if there are any problems, and have a chance to fix them, before you upload it. But with the meatgrinder, at least when I was using it in 2009, you never knew what would happen, and the book would be published immediately before you could check anything. Then you would have to unpublish it and try again. So this is a lot better.
Billy Winkles
Mark I think two things are causing the confusion:
First: when we all asked for the ability to upload professionally created epubs, we didn't mean that we only wanted to replace the epubs. We meant that we wanted to replace Word altogether with another format.
ePub is great since it has good standards that should make it easier to translate into your other formats. But I'd be happy with anything that would result from an html workflow.
Second: you've been saying things like: "If you want the benefits of multi format, then it's up to you to decide if its worth your effort to supply us a Word .doc." or "...I don't know yet if we'll use it to create the other formats."
That implies that you aren't actually interested in supplying what we asked for. It may be the wrong impression, but you haven't been doing much to allay that feeling.
What we actually want are two things: 1) to eliminate Word and 2) to use Smashwords for what Smashwords does well -- multiple formats and great samples.
If you are working on providing that, yes! Great! Please say so outright. Don't tell us "If you don't wanna use Word, then you can do without multi formats." Say "We're working on it, but we can't provide that yet."
Just remember that we who have been requesting this have been waiting a long long time already.
To the people who are giving Mark Coker a hard time for still accepting Word documents--I think you are misunderstanding the real role of Smashwords in the eBook publishing market.
Smashwords has two purposes. The most important is to provide a platform for writers who do not wish to operate outside of their comfort zone--which overwhelmingly for most is still Microsoft Word. The other is to fill up the little nooks and crannies of the eBook market where you still can't self-publish yet. Purpose #1 is the greater part of Smashwords' remaining relevancy. Let me explain.
Download the .epub format of a "Meat-ground" book. Open it up, look at the code and try not to get seasick.
The Meatgrinder is mostly calibre. And calibre, like any automated software, is not as reliable as a human being to format a book--and as we all know, Microsoft Word farts out HTML that looks like apple sauce, venison sausage and Listerine casserole. The Meatgrinder takes that huge, random mess, and tidies it up into a smaller and less concentrated but still messy mess.
You do not want to use the output of the Meatgrinder if you have any other choice. If you've got a real epub--formatted by a human being with a heart and a soul--you send it to B&N, Kobo (praying that they will pay you) and the iBookstore, and opt out of those distribution channels on Smashwords. After that, you make a few changes, then take your .opf file, use kindlegen, and send the book to Amazon and opt out of that channel, too.
Professionals use Smashwords to publish to marketplaces they absolutely can't get to in any other way. It's great for us. Everybody else who uses Smashwords does so because they don't want to get their hands dirty with HTML. Great for them.
But the code is ugly as sin. That's simply the price of automation.
If you are truly expecting Mark Coker to ever stop accepting Microsoft Word manuscripts, I would advise you not to hold your breath.
Coker's decision to allow epubs to be uploaded hopefully will help assuage the problem of Meatgrinder's occasional random rejections of manuscripts with no mistakes in them. This is my hope.