Month: November 2011

This post, by Gary McLaren, originally appeared on his Publish Your Own Ebooks site on 8/11/11.

There are so many different ebook formats in existence that trying to get your ebook into every possible format isn’t practical. However it is a good idea to make your ebook available in the four most popular ebook formats.

But first a little history.

Ebooks have already been around for a while. In the early days of ebooks people tried various ways of packaging ebooks, even including bundling text files into an EXE file. These “ebooks” typically ran on an application that looked like an internet browser and readers could click on buttons to navigate forwards and backwards through the book.

The problem is that downloading EXE files poses a fairly serious security risk to computers and this format quickly lost popularity as people became more aware of the risks of EXE files and computer viruses. It was only a matter of time until better formats were developed.

The four principal formats for ebooks now are:

• Portable Document Format (PDF)
• Kindle Format (AZW)
• Mobipocket Format (MOBI, PRC)
• Epub Format (EPUB)

Now let’s look briefly at each of these formats. Then I’ll give you a table that shows at a glance how these formats correlate to the most popular ebook reading devices.

Portable Document Format (PDF)

In 1993 Adobe Systems created the Portable Document Format (PDF) as a standard format for document exchange. When a document was converted to PDF each page was basically an image of the original document. Since almost all computing devices have the capability to read PDFs, the PDF format has been widely adopted and remains one of the preferred methods of providing documents on the Internet today.

However, a problem arose with PDFs. With improvements in technology we started carrying around smaller and smaller devices. First it was laptops and then even smaller devices including Palm Pilots, Blackberries, and mobile phones.

The early versions of PDF were designed for computer screens and were not very suitable for viewing on smaller screens. Because each page was like an image the text couldn’t be “re-flowed” to fit on tiny screens. Readers became frustrated by the need to scroll horizontally as well as vertically to read a single page in a document.

Several new formats for ebooks have been developed which don’t have this problem. The most popular of these follow here.

Read the rest of the post, which includes a summary table that compares various ereader devices and the ebook formats supported by each, on Gary McLaren‘s Publish Your Own Ebooks site.

This post, by Moses Siregar III, originally appeared as a guest post on David Gaughran‘s Let’s Get Digital site on 7/22/11.

One of the criticisms that self-publishers face is that they rush their work out. Sometimes it’s bad covers, or poor editing, but sometimes the book just wasn’t ready to be published.

Today’s guest poster, Moses Siregar III, understands the importance of making sure your book is the best you can possibly make it before you sent it out into the world.

Rather than be frustrated by seeing other indie writers dive in and rack up sales, Moses never rushed his work, instead taking the time to assiduously build his platform in a number of interesting ways, all building up towards the release of his novel at the start of August.

He has agreed to do a before-and-after guest post, so we will get to see how effective his strategy is. We’ll have him back some time in August to talk again, but for now, here’s Moses:

Using “Free” to Generate Pre-Release Buzz

Last summer, I wanted to jump into indie publishing before the pool became too crowded. Unfortunately, my novel was far from ready. So I came up with a creative solution to get an ebook out. I looked at my book to see if I could carve a novella out of it, hoping for a long excerpt that I could sell as a 99 cent or free ebook.

The idea was that the novella would be worth reading on its own, even though it was essentially a teaser for the coming novel. To make the purpose of the excerpt clearer, I called it: The Black God’s War: A Novella Introducing a New Epic Fantasy.

It worked, but only because I was able to make the book free at Smashwords, B&N, and eventually Amazon (plus iBooks, etc.). The novella/excerpt got some very nice reviews even when it was at 99 cents, but it didn’t sell many copies even at that price, perhaps because most reviews said things like, “Great teaser. I can’t wait to read the full novel.” Those pesky reviewers!

I wanted to give people a good taste (my novella is 27,000 words) without sharing too much of the story (my novel is 121,000 words). To this date, the novella has been downloaded somewhere between 15-20,000 times. I don’t know the exact number because either B&N or Smashwords hasn’t reported the numbers in a while—it’s a long story.

Here are some of the reasons why a strategy like this, or a variation on it, might make sense for you.

Read the rest of the post on Let’s Get Digital.

Jane and Mark Kalmes have done a lovely Podcast Review of Maids of Misfortune and then followed up with an Podcast Interview with me that discusses the writing of this book and my experiences with self-publishing.

 The review can be heard at http://www.indiebookpodcast.com/2011/11/02/mystery-maids-of-misfortune/

The interview comes in the second half of a  podcast found at  http://www.indiebookpodcast.com/2011/11/14/thriller-this-is-life/

Hope you find these podcasts of interest.

This is a reprint from M. Louisa Locke‘s site.

Everything is moving very fast right now.

Ebooks are going nuts with new Kindles, new markets and sites launching all over the place. Mid-list authors are leaving publishers and getting their back-lists launched online. Indie authors are getting signed to Amazon and Big Six publishing. There are blog posts from all sides being enthusiastic one day and then ripping the indies to bits the next.

We’re social networking, blogging, going multi-media, doing promotion and trying to write as many books as fast as possible to take advantage of the coming ebook boom.

It’s time to take a deep breath and remember what the hell we’re doing here.

It’s very easy to get swept away and be so frantic with production that we forget a few important things.

Life is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the writing process. Enjoy the editing. Enjoy creating something from nothing.

Enjoy the research and the knowledge we learn while we’re writing. Enjoying helping others along the journey.

Busy does not equal productive.

I am extremely guilty of this myself and am taking some time to consider my goals as an author-entrepreneur and what adds to this the most in terms of my activity. I’m also taking some time out from trying to finish my next novel, Prophecy. It’s so very almost there, but it’s not there yet and I need to step away to make space for the final pieces to come together. Thinking time is also productive.

I hit this point every six months or so and here I am again. Time to take a break and refocus.

Take time to refill your creative well

Here are some of other posts that might inspire you to take a break.

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn. Also see these related articles on the same site:

• The Artist’s Date: Take time to refill your creative well

• What do you want to write in your lifetime? Reflections on mortality

• Boost creativity: Let your mind lie fallow

This post, by Israel Vasquetelle, originally appeared on his Awareness Mogul site on 11/14/11 and is reprinted here in its entirety with the author’s permission.

I just published an in-depth story and interview with a seasoned media veteran, former music industry executive, and author by the name of Bill Adler. If you have any interest in music history or the groups that helped define the golden era of rap such as Run DMC, Beastie Boys, or Public Enemy, you should find his insight and story fascinating. During our talk, about his new book entitled “Def Jam Recordings: The First 25 Years of the Last Great Record Label” he provides a great perspective about the future of publishing physical books in an era of what is perceived as digitally dominated. He explains:

  "…the future of books, per se, is very much in question. Having said that, I believe that there’s something to be said for an actual physical book and an image that is twelve inches square and is beautifully reproduced. I don’t think computer screens compete… If it’s a novel, go ahead to your ebook. If the story to be told requires beautiful pictures as well, then make an art book in the way that Rizzoli does and glory in that. It’s still the best medium for stories like that." 

Although the book is published by a traditional publisher, there’s still a lesson here for anyone that is publishing physical goods, including self-published authors. If you make something that is perceived as valuable to a specific audience, and make a concerted effort to present it as the work of art that it is, this will no doubt resonate with some. Plenty will decide to live without it, however, there are those who will receive its purpose, and desire to collect it.

In Adler’s case, his book’s shape and size [are] the same as the classic records that helped make the Def Jam label a success. For those in the know, it’s hard not to perceive this a thick record jacket. As the resurgence of vinyl has shown, people still crave physical media if it provides a significant amount of quality and helps to enhance the consumption experience. In this case, the book was designed by art director, Cey Adams. To convey his importance and involvement in perspective, I must say that he has been responsible for the artwork of countless classic Hip Hop and R&B covers over the last three decades. When discussing the value of physical art with this seasoned art director, he too provided an interesting insight:

  “…there’s something valuable about holding it in your hands, seeing a photograph, touching it, looking at the type design and the choice in color.  I just think sometimes…things online just feel disposable to me.  When you hold a book in your hand the weight of it reminds you that this is something that is important because somebody spent time to give you 300 pages versus a 100 pages.  There’s something tangible.  It’s like a building.  It’s powerful.  I can’t explain it in any other way…We wanted to make something that was as big and as rich and beautiful as the history itself." 

I think it’s worth remembering that as physical beings we will still inherently yearn to have tangible goods when we recognize them as special because they offer us a value. During my discussion with Adams, which will be published in the near future, he adds an interesting point about the craze to own products from the company and man that certainly helped revolutionize the way we consume media today, Apple and Steve Jobs. He reminds me, "they’re not talking about something they saw online. They’re talking about the products that they hold in their hands." Interesting analogy from a man who’s spent a life-time helping to create beautiful works of art that help tell the the story above and beyond what the music presents. Many of these works of art are being held and cherished by fans  today.

The challenge for authors [is] to create something that resonates with an audience, contains value for the consumer, and is perceived as a work of art.  Regardless of how many digital copies of the Mona Lisa there are online, there is only one that is protected and cherished by millions, copies haven’t diminished its value. 

This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on The Shatzkin Files blog on 11/6/11.

Getting ready for our eBooks for Everyone Else conferences, I discovered an author named Bob Mayer who impressed me with his self-publishing zeal and apparent success. Bob has written lots of military fiction, science fiction, even a romance novel, and some non-fiction: dozens of books over the years for major publishers. Most of it was mass-market, most of it reverted relatively easily and Bob systematically secured those rights reversions for years.

He caught my attention with the bare bones of his story. He started putting his work up as ebooks in January, when he sold a few hundred books. By July he had more than 40 titles available and was selling a total of over 100,000 units a month. I had long wanted to put an author before my conference audiences who had achieved self-publishing success to talk about how s/he’d done it.

Joe Konrath and, more recently, John Locke had politely turned me down. I booked a 1-on-1 conversation with Barry Eisler at our Publishers Launch Conference at BEA right after he announced his decision to turn down a 6-figure advance to self-publish. Alas (for this objective of mine), the morning of the event Barry signed a contract with Amazon to do his next book with them. Although he has self-published some short fiction. Eisler’s story became that he is an Amazon-published author, not a self-published author. That’s a good story and we had a good session on-stage that the conference audience benefited from, but it was not a a self-publishing report from an author who truly did it on his or her own.

(Eisler’s wife, the literary agent Laura Rennert, reported at eBEE in San Francisco that Amazon is succeeding very well with Eisler’s current book, The Detachment — which I read and enjoyed – and that his substantial advance has already been earned out.)

So I was pleased to learn with a phone call that, not only was Mayer an enagaging talker, but that he was willing to make the journey from his home in Seattle to San Francisco to discuss his success with a conference audience.

But what became clear when I had a further conversation with Mayer the day before our conference, buttressed by what was said by many other participants at the event, is that the Hocking-Konrath-Locke story — an author managing all the pieces of their publishing program and and achieving a totally private success — is a Dodo bird. Unless we consolidate down to an only-Amazon ebook world, which, despite Amazon’s best efforts, doesn’t seem likely anytime soon but would undoubtedly create a whole new rule book if it ever arrived, the work and expertise required for successful publishing will lead inexorably to one of two results.

Either an author will get help to publish their own material — a distributor like Constellation or Ingram or a publisher — or they’ll find what they built to serve themselves would be better and less-expensively maintained with the work of additional authors to go along with their own. There’s enough work and expertise involved in what had first seemed to many such a simple process that it requires building a bit of a machine to do it. And once a machine is built, it is just wasteful to leave it idling between the works generated by any one writer.

Read the rest of the post on The Shatzkin Files.

It’s Veteran’s Day here in the U.S. and lots of things are closed. No mail service, no banks, that sort of thing.

I’m busy getting ready for Carla King’s Self-Publishing Bootcamp down at Stanford University tomorrow, where I’ll be helping new self-publishers understand how to use the array of new choices in publishing, to their advantage.

The last time I spoke at Carla’s event, I gave attendees an overview of the book design process and ways to avoid making the worst kinds of mistakes.

But there’s no way to give any kind of detailed instruction on book design or cover design to a roomful of people in 40 minutes with 15 minutes for Q&A, is there?

Look at these diagrams that represent the process of self-publishing before print on demand and e-books:

And what it looks like today:

It’s the implications of this change that I’ll be addressing at Stanford, and the way the playing field on which these changes is happening continues to shift underfoot.

It’s a good time to be open to new things and nimble in adapting to developments.

See you back here on Sunday for this month’s e-Book Cover Design Awards. Don’t miss it!

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

This post, by Doug Klostermann, originally appeared as a guest post on Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn on 11/8/11.

Every day we hear more exciting news about self-publishing and the growth of ebooks.

I monitor the US publishing news and blogs and feel that in the UK we are at least a year behind you guys, but the tidal wave is swelling and it’s a very exciting time! Doug Klostermann, author of The Ebook Handbook, is another writer who is passionate about digital publishing and today he shares a useful overview if you are just starting out.

Why now is the time to join the e-book revolution

Statistics about e-books, e-book publishing, and e-readers are being reported and discussed with increasing frequency and the overall conclusion is clear:  e-book sales are rising at a dramatic pace.  E-book sales in the United States currently exceed those of the other formats, including hardback and paperback sales, and grew 200% from 2010 to 2011.  Electronic books are now outselling printed books on Amazon.com – hardcover and paperback combined – and the Kindle e-reader is the best-selling product on Amazon.  Apple’s iPads are selling by the tens of millions, Android powered tablet sales are increasing, and numerous other companies are developing and selling tablet devices.  There is no better time to join the e-book revolution.

The publishing playing field has never been so level for self-published, independent authors.  Your e-books can be up for sale on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple iTunes and iBooks as soon as you complete them, and at no cost to you.  They will be available on these sites along with all the printed and digital books, with the potential to be found and purchased by anyone shopping and searching online.

Formatting and Optimizing Your Text for Various E-Reader Formats

You will likely want to publish your e-book to as many sites as possible in order to reach the widest audience, and this involves offering your text in a variety of formats.  Most publishers will convert your text for you for free, but there are a number of requirements you should follow so that your e-book functions and appears as best as possible in each format.  On your own website and blog you can offer your e-book in PDF format, Amazon will convert it to their proprietary AZW format for the Kindle, and Barnes and Noble will convert it to ePub for the Nook.  Smashwords will convert it and offer it in a variety of formats as well as allow you access to publishing with Apple. [Note from Joanna: This is the best way for non-US citizens to get onto iPad and Nook right now.]

Typically a basic e-book can be written in Microsoft Word DOC (.doc) format.  This format is easily converted to most of the required e-book formats such as PDF and ePub, is the preferred format to be submitted to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, and can be submitted to Barnes and Noble’s PubIt! and to Smashwords for conversion and distribution to Apple iBooks.  Publishers will accept other formats like plain TXT, PDF, or HTML, but unless you have complicated formatting and complex image layouts (neither of which are recommended, especially for your first e-book), then Word’s DOC format is the easiest and best format to use.

Read the rest of the post on Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.