Help with "Amateur Hour"

[tgmiko]

Hi Folks,
I am new, here. I attempted to upload my book "Amateur Hour" and its book cover Monday night without success.

1.The NINC binder for 2011 said that you must have a book cover, and it (the jpeg) must be UNDER a certain size, so that's what I had the artist do, so, of course, when I tried to upload the book cover, the Smashwords computer told me that my book cover was too small. I contacted my artist, who emailed me a 1400X2200 version of the book cover, Thursday night, and when I logged onto Smashwords last night, both my book AND its cover were on display, as if for sale (I haven't done the credit card stuff, yet, so nobody can pay me, to buy the book. Why would I have done that, if my book "wasn't" uploaded, yet?) So, did I made my artist do more work for nothing, or are different sized jpegs required for different web sites like barnesandnoble.com vs amazon.com ?
2. I have read, and re-read all of the instructions for formatting your book into a form that the Meatgrinder will accept, and then use for Premium Publishing. I have followed the instructions. I have used the nuclear option THREE times. I can't get past the meatgrinder. If you tell me to go and read the directions for how to submit a book that will get past the Meatgrinder, I will jump off the Vincent Thomas Bridge. I even asked my friend Dave, who is a computer genius to remove all of the tabs. He spent over and hour cleaning up Amateur Hour and the Meatgrinder still keeps telling me that I have tabs. Can somebody out there please look at a .doc copy of Amateur Hour, and help me figure out what the problem is?
3. I found three typos (my fault) on the Smashwords on-line page for Amateur Hour. This looks really unprofesional, and is guaranteed to make sure no one ever buys my book. I want to fix the typos, and cannot find what you click on, on Dashboard, to edit the author's page where you talk about your book in a short version, and a long version.
TG Miko 909.241.3300 cell
PS: I have submitted these topics to Smashwords, and no one has gotten back to me.

[Nathaniel Phillips]

tgmiko,

I typically make my book covers 3600 x 5760 pixels. They can be smaller, but you don't want them so small that when someone clicks on them they look like graphics from the original DonkeyKong game. If you have a really small cover uploaded, you can upload a new version anytime.

Have you used the Hide/Show feature in Word to display non-printing characters in your document? Tabs will show up as a right-facing arrow.

To edit the short and long descriptions or to upload new cover art, go to your dashboard and click on "settings" under "Operations", or on the page for your book, on the right hand side of the page under the price click on "Edit book's settings". This will take you to the page where you can change everything.

[tgmiko]

OMG I think I finally got past the meatgrinder. I swear all I did was repeat what I and my friends did earlier this week, but this time it finally gave me one simple little paragraph of what it needed me to do, and how to do it, and following its instructions, I eliminated the hidden tabs, and then it accepted my manuscript. All of this happened 3 minutes after I turned 46 years old.
Holy crap, I'm 46 years old. My brother was 46 when he died.
Okay, I'm going to sleep. Gotta take my kids to school in the morning.
PS: I suspect that following the manual's instructions may need one more step: repeatedly filtering your manuscript through "the nuclear option." Once might not be enough.

[Stephanie]

Happy Birthday!