META-INF/calibre_bookmarks.txt in EPUB not listed manifest

[andreas]

In my despair with meatgrinder I tried another way to get my book into distribution with SW.

I converted my doc with Calibre to epub.

This looked good. All footnotes worked, the ToC worked etc.

So I uploaded the epub to SW and got an ack:

"Congratulations!

Your work, Scientology Rescued From the Claws of the Deep State - Vol 1: Rehabilitation of Study Tech, Auditing Basics and Metering has been published on Smashwords and is now available for readers to sample and purchase ."

But a minute later (or so) I got this red error:

File 'META-INF/calibre_bookmarks.txt' in EPUB not listed in manifest!
Your .epub file is missing one or more elements in its manifest. A complete manifest is required for distribution to Apple. Here's how Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB) defines "Manifest":"The manifest element lists all the files contained in the package. Each file is represented by an item element, and has the attributes id, href, media-type. All XHTML (content documents), stylesheets, images or other media, embedded fonts, and the NCX file should be listed here."

I unzipped the epub but could not find any META-INF/calibre_bookmarks.txt

The manifest seems to be included in the text-file content.opf
And yes: no calibre_bookmark could be found in that file.

What can I do?

Andreas

[unclegarf]

Welcome to the incomprehensible thanai forum. 
I understood about 1 word in ten of what you said. But then I've only got a bunch of ebooks out there, so what would I know. Always willing to learn. Yes, SW always did have its idiosyncracies, (should be a smell checker on this thing) so I defected to draft2digital. Sorts most of this stuff out for us. I leave a bunch of freebies on smash for old times sake, but serious stuff I go d2d. So as long as it's a properly formatted word doc, proper page breaks and heading styles, it should go through ok. Keep things simple. Oh. And I don't use calibre. Good luck.

[ChrisLAdams]

Sept 4, 2020 11:22:37 GMT -8 unclegarf said:

Welcome to the incomprehensible thanai forum..

Tell me about it.
Thanai needs to go the he77 on.

[ChrisLAdams]

Sept 4, 2020 10:08:11 GMT -8 andreas said:

What can I do?

...

Andreas,

I'd recommend going with a .doc in Word 97-2003 format.
I believe that is what Smashwords recommends.
Calibre is great, and i've used it, but mostly to make my own ebooks to sideload on my Kindle or the devices of others.
I sometimes share my ebooks with friends that way.
If you're familiar with how to insert Bookmarks to manually build your Table of Contents, you already have all the skills you need.
There is also the necessity of cleaning up the Bookmarks that Word automatically adds.
I can advise on that when you're done building your TOC etc.

[unclegarf]

I used to jump through all those smashwords hoops years ago often finding frustrating obstacles. For me, D2D simplifies things. They looked at the SW model and ran the flat iron over the bumps. T O C's are just one of the things that just happens. The usual proper page breaks, headings and footers formatting still applies, but that just becomes second nature eventually. Ten or more years ago I cried a bucket of tears with my first ebook, Dust Miller 1, getting it through the S W meatgrinder. (is it still called that?) I found it more stressful than writing the book but I was pretty drunk back then. D2D came on the scene a couple of years later and went through their own learning curve. Keep it simple is their mantra, and it works for me. The only downside as far as some might think, they don't market the books themselves, just pass it on to the retailers like Zon and Apple, etc. That doesn't bother me. Nothing wrong with going to Smash, and I have huge respect for Mark Coker and his team as pioneers. Each to their own.