has a pet peeve as a reviewer: Authors who can't follow the amazingly simply formatting rules to make an e-book work.

It's SO simple. Even worse is when a publisher messes up an e-book!

This is where Smashwords is more than just another outlet - their high standards for formatting (beware the Meatgrinder!) are good for learning how to do it right.

Indeed. The free Smashwords Style Guide is a godsend! For print manuscripts, I find the preformatted document templates from CreateSpace to work really well.

I managed the CreateSpace templates all right, after a couple stuttering starts. Learning curves... every indie writer has em. But overall, CreateSpace makes an elegant book. I'm very happy with them.

Likewise!