Perhaps the difference is occurring when Goodreads has more ratings than Amazon does?

Most of mine on Goodreads appear to be copies of what is on Amazon, so presumably Amazon doesn't count the duplicates.

So for me, there's not much in the way of extras, since Goodreads for me is normally less than half what is on Amazon.

But for someone with a good presence on Goodreads, it might be making a difference.

Unfortunately, the habit of some Goodreads readers to one star as a place marker, impacts our Amazon rating now.

I had one of those on my last book. The one star appeared a couple of days after release, and vanished about 2 weeks later. When it appeared, it did a horrible think to the rating, but not for long as a whole mess of 5's came in a couple of days later.

In general, converting to epub first lets you check and make sure the format turned out all right. It's been a while since I've heard any stories about a .docx file not loading correctly, but there used to be glitches sometimes.

Is this doing the formatting for paperbacks?

This tool is only for ebooks (.epub). I won't necessarily say never to print, but it would be quite a bear of a project. I would like to really solidify the application and get ebooks excellent first, so even considering print, if I'm honest, may be a full year out.

I decided to make my own tool for ebook creation. I designed it first and foremost for myself, and I am releasing it with a minimum feature set I want for my own novels. It is aimed more toward the power user (at least, for the moment) -- it has a lot of customization options exposed, and doesn't include any sort of "theme" system yet; you have to change everything yourself. It also has much of the raw XHTML and CSS located on disk that can be manually edited.

As noted in the title, this is sort of a preview or early-access release. It's not quite ready for prime time, but it's got all the bones there and needs beta testing to help polish it up.

I would like to emphasize that I make no promises I will implement any feature requests or do it within any specific timeline. The reality is I'm just one guy working in his spare time, and that time is split between everything else in my life (including my own writing).

This program is geared towards primarily text-based manuscripts (e.g. novels). The simpler your manuscript formatting, the more likely it is to be compatible.





Features:

• Cross-platform friendly codebase
• Dark mode
• Import an existing manuscript (.docx)
• Specify section type (for using different templates)
• Basic text formatting (bold, italics, underline, small caps)
• Table of contents
• Selecting which sections to include in the TOC or export
• Book cover
• Ebook metadata (Book title, author, language, uuid, last modified)
• Ability to modify XHTML and CSS templates directly for power users
• Exporting as an ebook (.epub version 3)
• Book designer

Book Designer Features:

• First paragraph customization (indentation, leading words, first line, dropped caps, raised caps)
• First paragraph after scene break customization (with same settings as above)
• Chapter heading customization (alignment, size)
• Chapter heading image (and size and spacing)
• Scene break customization (text or ornamental image)
• 10 included ornamental images to use

What's missing:
This is the first release of a brand new project. It's missing a lot of functionality of other tools, though I plan to continue to work on this project over time. I've got my own TODO list with a lot more ideas, these are just the biggest omissions.

• Saving / loading projects
• A built-in text editor. I'm not sure I want to add one.
• Some kind of global "theme" system to quickly switch the entire book's design.
• Doesn't have any sort of installer or automatic updates

Feedback needed:

• Does the program import your manuscript as you would expect? (Also did it get the category right? [Right click on an item])
• Is it easy to use?
• What features are missing that you would like in order of priority?

After creating an ebook, I recommend previewing it in dedicated ebook viewer, such as Kindle Previewer 3 or Apple Books. Some software such as Sigil or Calibre may not provide any additional styling such as line height that an ereader would. (Also note, Kindle is quite heavy-handed with modifying ebook styles to fit their own format, so best practice is to see how a book would look through different publishing software / platforms.)

Cost:
Matthew's Ebook Creator is free and open source software licensed under the GPLv3. You are free to do whatever you like with the output created by the program.

Why? There are some free tools on the market, but none of them really impressed me. I'm releasing this the way I am for a few reasons. First, the principle of the thing. Free (as in freedom) Software gives you the freedom to use it how you wish, and to take the code and make it yours. Free (as in cost) software should help out the community. I see people requesting no-cost options for creating ebooks, and I hope my software is easier to use than trying to format in LibreOffice Writer, Calibre, or Sigil, and hopefully produces better results than just running a document through Kindle Create. It's also not an online service that can just disappear. Some of the decision is also selfish. I've tried to run a software company in the past. It is absolutely not for me, and releasing this way means I don't have to deal with any of the legal or business side. It also gives me the flexibility to not worry about customers and their demands. I still have a full-time job, so money is not really a concern.

Download:
Windows: https://github.com/dazappa/matthews-ebook-creator/releases
Source code: https://github.com/dazappa/matthews-ebook-creator

I will look to add support for MacOS in the future. The code should be compatible, but I would need to go through the process of becoming an Apple developer and setting up a build process.