With that said, it’s important to realize that E-publishing has a whole different set of rules when it comes to formatting your manuscript.  Rather than list them here for you, I’m going to point you in the direction of a formatting guide written by Mark Coker, Smashwords CEO.  It’s called, quite simply, The Smashwords Style Guide and it can be downloaded for free!  That’s right.  It’s free!  Thank you, Mr. Coker!

This style guide is not just a guide to follow when choosing to publish on Smashwords, but also rules to consider for the Kindle and other E-reading sites.  As Mark points out, e-publishing follows a whole different set of guidelines.  Guidelines that I myself have broken because of the lack of formatting options available when making your Lulu book available on Lulu as a download.

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t polish that manuscript when you DIY for the Kindle, Smashwords, or whereever else you make your book available for downloading.  Afterall, that’s why they call it SELF-publishing!  So, just when you thought you’d conquered all there is to know about putting your best trade book forward… now you’ve got a whole new set of rules to learn and follow for the next generation in reading.  The E-Generation!