I FINALLY got 3 out of my 7 titles on allromanceebooks.com. This was quite a learning curve, so I wanted to relate some of the problems I ran into. Maybe it will help someone along the line.
First, some of you may remember I was frustrated because my quotes and apostrophes were turning into weird stuff. Well, that was because in Calibre, I was converting from a pdf file. When I converted from an html file, everything looked okay except on pdb. I still had those weird black retangles, and all my formatting was shot. So I chose not to publish a pdb file until I could figure it out. Right now I have pdf, html, mobi, epub, lit, and rb.
Some other things. You have to add yourself as an author in their database before you can add books. Then when you do a search for your author name while adding books, you have to make sure you click “add” after it finds you. I messed up on that the first time. And your file names for html and pdf cannot have spaces in them (I have no idea why). I had to rename those two file types and reload them. And one big thing…when they say your cover has to be 200 x 300, they mean exactly! Some of mine turned out to be 201 x 300 when I re-sized them from the normal 600 x 900 size. It would not take the cover because of that little “1”. So save yourself some time and aggravation and make sure the cover is EXACTLY 200 x 300.
This was harder (or at least more time consuming) than either Amazon or Smashwords, but I think it was well worth it. Smashwords converts your book to all the formats, but you have to do it yourself before uploadng to All Romance. I’m going to put my other four books on soon, but I didn’t have any more time during my lunch hour. LOL. Plus a couple of the books need some formatting fixes. I love the way the All Romance website looks. It almost makes you WANT to buy something from them. That is, if you’re into romance. Anyway, this is my page in case you wanted to know what it looks like. I think many of you need to give it a shot. I’ll be glad to help in any way I can. :0) Lauralynn Elliott
I made all of the same goofs you did. Lol-ing at the 201×300. I was like, “REALLY!” I still haven’t got around to putting more formats up there, but it sounds like Calibre is the way to go, huh? I’ll deal someday when I have patience like you. Don’t suppose you have any to spare? 🙂
I actually am a very patient person as a general rule. 😛
Isn’t allromancebooks for authors seeking to publish backlists? And I have not heard of a pdb format at all! Is Calibre the only one who does that conversion?
Anyone can publish on All Romance as far as I know. You just fill out a form and they approve you as a publisher, and then you upload your books. I don’t know why it would be limited to backlists. I published every book I have out on there.
The pdb format is the format that Palm uses (I’m not sure what other device might use it). I used to read ebooks on my Palm Pilot and downloaded that format. Drop Book used to convert to that format, but I haven’t tried it in a long time.