Ebooks

Articles specific to writing and publishing ebooks.

How to Create Ebook Covers with Phoster Application

by

Phoster is a fantastic application for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, perfect to create posters, cards, invitations and, yes, ebook covers.

I’ve used the word “create” instead of “design” because it better describes what you’ll be doing.

You don’t need to design a layout, it’s already done by the developers of the application, folks from Bucket Labs – Phoster comes equipped with as much as 72 layout templates. All of them are top-level design. Thanks to that the application can be a very powerful tool to create professionally looking ebook covers.

Below I’ll show you how easy it is to create a cover. The general advise is to keep things simple and not to change the layouts too much. They are perfect as they are and there is no need to improve them.

4 steps of creating a cover with Phoster

I’ll create a cover for a book about mobile natives (I hope one day I’ll write this book).

1. Choose a template

I’m sure you’ll find a template which is closest to your needs. Layouts differ in selection of fonts, position of text boxes and a general style. For each of the template, in a next step you can add a picture. You can also leave a background as it is or just change its color – this would make a nice non-fiction book cover.

When you’ll be selecting a template just keep in mind that you can’t add any more text boxes. So, pick up the template, which is closest to what you want and has enough number of text fields positioned where you want them to be.

For my book I’ve chosen the template below. I like simple design and I want to use a picture which will work best with the title aligned to right. I also need only three text boxes – two for the title and one for the author.

After choosing a template, tap on a Next button at the bottom right.

 

 

2. Insert a photo or choose a color of the background

Use an icon of a camera to add a picture, either directly taken or from a photo library. You can make basic color adjustments within the application (brightness, contrast and saturation) by tapping on a slider icon.

Remember, you can always use one of the photo applications, which can give a stylish look to your picture. I’m sure you have one of them: Instagram, PictureShow, Camera+ or Hipstamatic.

Second option is not to add a picture, but only change a background’s color. To do that, tap again on a slider icon – you’ll see at the top a set of predefined colors to pick up from.

I’ll be using for my cover a photo previously edited in PictureShow (by the way, you can see a #1picstory made with it). As you see it’s dark enough to use against white letters and there is a lot of space in the upper right corner. That’s where I’ll place the title.

 

3. Type the text

To change text tap on a “T” icon. An edit box will appear, where you can replace the existing text with your own title. Use Previous and Next buttons to switch between text boxes. Alternatively you can open the edit box if you quickly tap on the text.

You can change the color, the size and the font style of the text. There is a plenty of typefaces to choose from, but I recommend to keep the predefined style. Any major change may break the original design idea of the template.

If you want to move a text box, tap and hold it until you see a shadow.

I moved the title a bit to the right and higher. As you see, I didn’t change anything else.

 

 

4. Choose the effect

After you’re finished with texts and pictures, tap Next to move to the last step – applying the effect.

This is the most enjoyable part of the work. There are 19 style available. You can select one of the vintage styles, including paper and dust textures, or you can decide to use color stripes or patterns (see picture below).

I’ve selected a simple pattern and the cover looks like this. What do you think?

Although Phoster is positioned as a tool to create posters, cards, invitations, I think it’s an awesome way to create professionally looking ebook covers. It’s one of those mobile applications which redefine our approach to creation. You can focus solely on finding a concept and big picture, leaving the craft to the application itself.

Phoster costs $1.99 (iTunes link). Consider it as a money spent for a professional cover artist, who gives you 72 proposals of the layout.

Remember to include credits to Phoster in your ebook. Write down a link to both the application at iTunes and the developer’s webpage: http://www.bucketlabs.net.

Read also about another great tool, Wordle. You can use it to create great-looking covers based on a word cloud from your book.

 

This is a reprint from Piotr Kowalczyk‘s Password Incorrect.

Ebook With Audio!

by

Everyone loves a good spy story … especially when it’s true.

Double-agent’s memoir integrates actual taped phone conversations into e-book

 

Colorado Springs, Colorado, July 21, 2011 – How does a roofer with a Master’s degree in Library Science become a double agent recruited by the FBI, the Russian GRU and KGB? In John Pansini’s explosive new memoir, you’ll learn exactly how an “average Joe” was recruited by some of the world’s most powerful intelligence services.

But what makes this new book release truly unique is the embedded recordings of the actual conversations between Pansini and his spy masters and handlers. Ten of the seventeen chapters that make up Roofman: A true story of cold war espionage have embedded conversations taped by Pansini throughout his years as a spy during the height of the cold war in the 1980’s.
 
“What I have published has never been done before. This is an “enhanced” ebook with real conversations of real people,” said Pansini, the author of this revealing new memoir. The fact that most of these ‘real people’ also happen to be spies and spy-chasers make’s ROOFMAN all the more "intriguing". 
 
Those interested in receiving a review copy of Roofman: A true story of cold war espionage may request a free copy of the memoir by emailing him at roofmanpansini@aol.com. Please specify which publication you represent and in which format you would like the review copy (available format’s include .Pdf, epub or mobi).
 
The author is available for interviews. Please email John Pansini at roofmanpansini@aol.com with “Interview Request” clearly printed in the subject line. For more information on Roofman: A true story of cold war espionage, please go to http://www.roofmanthespy.com/

To listen to all the embedded audio tapes, please go to http://www.roofmanpansini.com
 

 

 

 

Thank you.

 

Borders Liquidation

by

It’s official: Borders is liquidating all of its remaining inventory and equipment and closing its doors. What follows is a reprint of Borders’ press release, dated 7/18/11.

Borders Group to Submit Hilco and Gordon Brothers Proposal to Court for Approval

Hilco and Gordon Brothers to purchase store assets of the business and administer liquidation process
Borders extends gratitude to dedicated employees and loyal customers

ANN ARBOR, Mich., July 18, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ —

Borders Group reported today that, in accordance with the terms of its financing agreement, the Company will submit to the Court for approval the previously-announced proposal from Hilco and Gordon Brothers to purchase the store assets of the business and administer the liquidation process. Borders said that, in the absence of a formal proposal from a going concern bidder, it did not require an auction prior to presenting the proposal to the Court at a scheduled hearing on Thursday, July 21, 2011.

"Following the best efforts of all parties, we are saddened by this development," said Borders Group President Mike Edwards. "We were all working hard towards a different outcome, but the headwinds we have been facing for quite some time, including the rapidly changing book industry, eReader revolution, and turbulent economy, have brought us to where we are now," he added.

"For decades, Borders stores have been destinations within our communities, places where people have sought knowledge, entertainment, and enlightenment and connected with others who share their passion. Everyone at Borders has helped millions of people discover new books, music, and movies, and we all take pride in the role Borders has played in our customers’ lives," Edwards continued, "I extend a heartfelt thanks to all of our dedicated employees and our loyal customers."

Borders currently operates 399 stores and employs approximately 10,700 employees. Subject to the Court’s approval, under the proposal, liquidation is expected to commence for some stores and facilities as soon as Friday, July 22, with a phased rollout of the program which is expected to conclude by the end of September. Borders intends to liquidate under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code and, as a result, Borders expects to be able to pay vendors in the ordinary course for all expenses incurred during the bankruptcy cases.

About Borders Group, Inc.

Headquartered in Ann Arbor, Mich., Borders Group, Inc. is a leading specialty retailer of books as well as other educational and entertainment items. Online shopping is offered through borders.com. Find author interviews and vibrant discussions of the products we and our customers are passionate about online at facebook.com/borders, twitter.com/borders and youtube.com/bordersmedia. For more information about the Company, visit borders.com/media.
 
 

Use Autoresponders And Emails To Promote Your Book

by

Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, it’s important to have an opt-in form on your website to capture email addresses of visitors, so that you can contact them now and in the future. Keeping in touch through email helps to build relationships, reinforce your expertise, and keep potential customers from forgetting about you.

You can send "broadcast emails" to your list at any time and use "autoresponders" to automatically send out one or more pre-written emails at specified intervals after someone joins the list. Here’s an example of an autoresponder: when you submit an online form to get a free ebook from someone, you might get an email with a link to the ebook immediately, and then get a follow up message seven days later, and another message ten days after that.

Here are just a few of the ways that authors can promote through autoresponders and broadcast emails:

  • Offer a sample chapter, short story, prequel, ebook, report, or instructional video to people who sign up for your mailing list. This free bonus should be designed to promote your book or other products.
  • Send a newsletter to subscribers with educational or entertainment value.
  • Send your list an announcement of new books or products, and new editions and formats of your book.
  • Offer free or paid mini-courses, online training, or teleseminars, and use the autoresponder to deliver information to the registrants on an automated basis.

In my latest newsletter, I published a more in-depth article that explains how autoresponders work, explores ways that fiction and nonfiction authors can use autoresponders to promote books, and offers tips on choosing a service provider. If you’re not already a subscriber, sign up today to get access to the archive of in-depth newsletter articles and get three free ebooks on book marketing.

This is a reprint from Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer.

TOP TEN: The Divide Between the Published and the Self-Published

by

This post, by Robert Chazz Chute, originally appeared on his Chazz Writes site on 7/16/11.

At a recent writers’ conference, I was in grand company. I met a lot of cool people. Almost all of them were traditionally published authors. I watched them ask questions of panels of publishers, agents and editors.

Here’s what I noticed:

1. They don’t want to change along with the rest of the publishing landscape. Inertia is powerful, even in broken systems. And why should they want to change? Things haven’t actually been good, but they didn’t have to worry about things they have to worry about now with the DIY route. It used to be that they were expected to write, mostly to the exclusion of all else. That was job #1 and everything else was supposed to be, in theory, someone else’s job. However, many authors have already felt this pressure change because more and more book promotion and publicity duties have been unloaded on them by publishers.

2. Some of them are excited to self-publish. Either they had bad experiences with agents and traditional publishers or they simply want more control of their books. Their out-of-print books and their unpublished books may have new life as self-published works. The digital revolution, to these authors, is an opportunity. (Also, some DIY authors see self-publishing as their way into legacy publishing.)

3. Some are still wringing their hands, aggressively…as if that will turn back time. Like the music industry, Blockbuster, milk men, buggy whips and enjoyable air travel, there was a lot of nostalgia in that room. But nostalgia isn’t an argument against the proliferation of ebooks. It’s sadness at loss and change. They mourn the loss of some of the perks. Though many authors complained about the six city book tour and hanging out in bookstores ignored and unnoticed, admit it: all those bookstore signings had cachet. Book signings were part of the dream of being published and it was nice to rely on the publisher to pay for the trip.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes 7 more observations about mainstream-published authors’ take on self-publishing, on Robert Chazz Chute‘s Chazz Writes.

Do you create a Facebook Profile or a Facebook Fan Page?

by

This post, by Bill Walker, originally appeared on his site on 7/7/11 and was originally entitled "Businesses: Do you create a Facebook Profile or a Facebook Fan Page?" While the piece is targeted to small businesses, it contains information equally valuable to authors who use Facebook so we’re including it here.

Do you own a business and want to have a presence on Facebook? Everywhere I go I hear people talking about the importance of Facebook for businesses.  In fact, I am one of those people telling business owners that it is important to have a presence on Facebook.

When a business sends me a friend request, I applaud that business for wanting to create a presence on Facebook. However, I feel the creator(s) of that profile don’t really understand what they are doing or they wouldn’t have used a Personal Profile for their business.  At least that’s what I’m hoping, because I can’t imagine why anyone would knowingly use a Personal Profile as their business page as part of the internet strategy.

I’ll get off my soapbox so we can continue…

So, how does one promote a business on Facebook?  The first thing to do is to create a Personal Profile on Facebook. Once that is done then you as a person can create a Fan Page for your business.

There seems to be much confusion about this so let’s begin by going over the differences between a personal profile and a fan page:

Personal Profile vs. Fan Page 

First off there are some very important differences between a Personal Profile and a Fan Page.

The biggest difference is that Personal Profiles are for people.  Real people that put their face (i.e. personal photo) in the section for profile photo. Even if the primary reason you are joining Facebook is to gain visibility for your company, it is very important to keep your Personal Profile current. This allows you to build and maintain relationships with family, friends and potential clients.

Fan Pages are for businesses, organizations, places, brands or products, musicians, authors, speakers, public figures, etc. Facebook set up this ability to create a Fan Page for the express purpose of promoting your business, brand or product.

In fact, it is actually against Facebook terms and conditions to use a Personal Profile for a business. If Facebook finds your Personal Profile set up as a Business Profile, it’s possible that they may delete your profile. Any friends gathered, status updates, photos, events, games (i.e. farmville) will be lost.  All that hard work will have been wasted.


Read the rest of the post on Bill Walker‘s site.

7 Distraction-Free Writing Environments for Authors

by

As someone who writes and publishes constantly, the tools that I use are pretty important to me. I’ve written before about how the distraction-free writing enviroments that are embodied in some recent writing software really help me to focus and get a lot done in the time I have available.

So far, my favorite is iAWriter for the iPad, a program I use just about every day for the bulk of all my drafts. On the Mac I’ve been using Omm Writer Dana, another brilliant implementation of this idea.

informationArchitects just came out with their version of iAWriter for the Mac, and it’s a brilliant app. They have re-thought what they did on the iPad, and made this application just as good for the Mac.

I thought this was a great time to have a look at other programs that also try to solve the problem of too much distraction to get any writing done. Here are 7 solutions, many free, that you can try whether you’re on Windows or Mac.

Click through and check these programs out. Some offer amazing levels of customization, others are bare-bones and fixed in their format. Some try to mimic monospaced character-mode screens, others provide backgrounds and ambient music. It’s only by trying them out that you can tell whether one will work for you.

If you’ve got others to add, let me know in the comments.

Windows

Darkroom
Free from They.mislead.us
“Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text. Basically, Dark Room is a clone of the original WriteRoom that is an OS X (tiger) exclusive application.”

Darkroom for self-publishers

Q10
Free from Baara
Available in English, Portuguese, Dutch, German, Italian and Spanish
“Q10 is a simple but powerful text editor designed and built with writers in mind. Q10 is freeware. That’s right, you can download and use it at no cost.
Q10 is small, fast and keeps out of your way. Q10 will clean your kitchen, walk your dog and make excellent coffee. Well, not really. But it’s really good as a full-screen text editor.”

Q10 for writing

Writemonkey
Free from Iztok Stržinar in Slovenia
“Writemonkey is a Windows zenware* writing application with an extremely stripped down user interface, leaving you alone with your thoughts and your words. It is light, fast and free. With an array of innovative tools under the hood, it helps you write better. Editing is for another day … ”

Writemonkey

Creawriter
Free and Donation versions from SPL
“CreaWriter is a Windows program designed to boost your productivity and creativity. Its full screen, minimalistic interface provides a distraction-free environment. Indulge yourself in a relaxed and calm atmosphere and achieve a whole new level of concentration! Inspired by OmmWriter, a Mac OS X only application, CreaWriter allows you to customize both background image and ambient sound.”

Creawriter

Macintosh OS X

iAWriter
$17.99 from Information Architects
“iA Writer for Mac is a digital writing tool that makes sure that all your thoughts go into the text instead of the program. iA Writer has no preferences. It is how it is. It works like it works. Love it or hate it. It’s unique FocusMode allows me to think, spell and write at one sentence at a time. iA Writer is fast; it works without mouse. It automatically formats semantical entities such as headlines, lists, bold, strong, block quotes written in markdown.”

iAWriter for Macintosh

Writeroom
$24.99 from Hog Bay Software
30-day free trial
“WriteRoom’s full screen writing environment gets your computer out of the way so that you can focus on your work. The result is a subtle clearing of the mind that I think helps you write better.”

Writeroom

Multiple Platforms

FocusWriter
Free from Gott Code
“FocusWriter is a simple, distraction-free writing environment. It utilizes a hide-away interface that you access by moving your mouse to the edges of the screen, allowing the program to have a familiar look and feel to it while still getting out of the way so that you can immerse yourself in your work. It’s available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X, and has been translated into many different languages.”

Focuswriter

If you’ve never tried this approach to boosting your writing productivity,

 

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

The Fear Factor

by

In which L.J. Sellers explains why letting bits of your personal life spill into your pages may not be a bad thing.

In my personal life I try to be optimistic, but in my fiction I write about my fears. It’s been true since I sat down to write my first novel. At the time, Jeffrey Dahmer was in the news and my greatest fear was that a sexual predator would kidnap and kill one of my three young boys. So I wrote a story about a woman who tracks down her son’s killer. The experience was cathartic, and I continued the practice in future novels, because as it turns out, many readers share the same fears.

Being kidnapped and held against my will is another dominant fear for me and millions of other women as well—because it happens!—so the theme occurs often in crime fiction novels, including two of mine (The Baby Thief, Secrets to Die For).

Most of my stories though have elements of fears that are very personal to me. For example, when I wrote The Sex Club, the first book in the Detective Jackson series, my son was in Iraq and I worried constantly that he would die. My sister had just succumbed to cancer and I grieved for her and worried for other members of my family. So Kera, my main female protagonist, was dealing with those elements. Right or wrong, I couldn’t separate those emotions from my writing and they ended up on the page.

Soon after that, my husband was diagnosed with retroperitoneal fibrosis, which triggered all kinds of fears for me. He faced a life of pain, multiple surgeries, and likely an early death. Without being consciously aware that I was doing it at first, my Jackson character started having pain and health issues. Eventually, he was diagnosed with RF, and in Thrilled to Death, he underwent a surgery, very similar to the one my husband experienced. Readers tell me they enjoy my characters, who are realistic, yet unique, so incorporating true-to-life, frightening details adds richness to my stories while helping me work through emotional challenges.

In late 2009 when I was writing Passions of the Dead, I was dealing with unemployment: mine, my husband’s, my brother’s, and dozens of other people I knew. I witnessed the devastating effect it can have on families. That fearful theme became dominant when I outlined the story. My Jackson novels of course are always about crime, murder in particular, and my main goal is tell a great story. But every fictitious crime needs a unique, complex, and compelling motive, and I look for those motives in the fear I’m experiencing.

Some of my fears are more social and universal. I fear that as a society we have wrongfully imprisoned hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people. Dozens of news stories about the release of prisoners wrongfully convicted continue to feed this fear, so that issue, which is often the result of coercion or intimidation, is part of the plot in Dying for Justice, the fifth Detective Jackson novel.

Right now I fear for the future of our county if the economy doesn’t improve. I also fear for our comfort and safety if the extreme weather patterns continue and grow worse. So I’m writing a futuristic thriller in which those fears come into play. Guilt and redemption are also prominent themes in The Arranger, which will release in early September. (If you’re a book reviewer and would like a copy, please email me.)

Soon I’ll start work on the next Jackson book. I have a list of ideas, many culled from true crime cases found in the news. Regardless of what I decide in the beginning though, you can bet that as the plot develops, whatever fear is most prevalent on my mind will surface in the story.

What fears do you like to read about in fiction? Which fears are too intense for reading pleasure?


This is a cross-posting from The Crime Fiction Collective blog.

The Tsunami of Crap

by

This post, by J.A. Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog on 7/5/11.

Some people believe the ease of self-publishing means that millions of wannabe writers will flood the market with their crummy ebooks, and the good authors will get lost in the morass, and then family values will go unprotected and the economy will collapse and the world will crash into the sun and puppies and kittens by the truckload will die horrible, screaming deaths.

Or something like that.

This is bullshit, of course. A myth. A fabrication. One rooted in envy and fear.

Readers aren’t the ones worried about the scores of new ebooks being released. They have no need to be worried. There are already billions of books in the world. A few more million won’t make a difference.

Readers are able to find what they want, quite easily. They can go into a bookstore and come out with a purchase, even though that store stocks 150,000 titles. They can go into a library, and ten minutes later walk out with a handful of books that interest them.

There are millions of websites, and YouTube videos, and things to buy on Amazon.com. There are thousands of choices on cable TV and Netflix and Hulu. Yet we’re always able to find gems.

No, the readers don’t care if some moron uploads his ten-years-in-the-making opus "Me and My Boogers: A Love Story." They’ll be able to avoid it just by looking at the crummy cover art, the poor description, and the handful of one star reviews.

 

Read the rest of the post on J.A. Konrath‘s A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.

Curation Nation

by

In this new “Beyond the Book” podcast and transcript from Copyright Clearance Center, CCC’s Chris Kenneally discusses the activity of curation with Steven Rosenbaum, author of Curation Nation. Rosenbaum explains that "curation is theoretically the cure to what ails us, which is this pounding headache of data that is really… getting worse and there’s no signs of it easing up… There’s nobody that’s set the gold standard for curation. Huffington Post was a pretty good early model, because what Arianna figured out was that if she could aggregate traffic, which she did really well, that people that need content would come to her and that she could become the arbiter of what goes on the home page."

He goes onto clarify that when information is "organized by some kind of robot online, it’s not what you’re expecting, [or] what you want…. We’re all going to make content and so what we’re beginning to see is a Web in which everybody is a publisher and increasingly what I want to do is narrow the number of places that I go to listen to the world. "
 
To give an example of how Rosenbaum is taking curation head on, he previews that his company Magnify is now powering TEDx, the technology conference TED’s local event operation, because TED wanted a "video experience that felt curated." 

The podcast and transcript are available in the respective links blow:
 
http://beyondthebookcast.com/curation-nation/
 
http://beyondthebookcast.com/wp-images/RosenbaumTranscript.pdf  

Can The Subscription Model Work For Trade Publishers?

by

I recently read a Slate article about how the film industry is repeating the DRM and business model mistakes of the music industry, and of course saw many parallels with, and implications for, trade publishing in it. But unlike the film and music industries, Big Pub has plenty more market and cultural shifts to contend with these days than just the rising popularity and availability of digital media.

The once-mighty Borders has failed, proving once and for all that brick and mortar is no longer the ace in the hole it once seemed for trade publishers. Authors, established and aspiring alike, are seeing fewer and fewer reasons to partner with trade publishers now that it’s become clear they can get their work to a readership more quickly, keep control of their intellectual property rights, and earn higher royalties to boot by going indie. As if to add insult to injury, Amazon seems poised to eat whatever’s left of Big Publishing’s lunch after everyone else has had a go at the trough. But it occurred to me that there may yet be some unexplored and promising territory for Big Pub, if they’re willing to entertain an unorthodox idea: a subscription model of ebook content delivery.

Much like Gamefly and O’Reilly’s Safari Books Online, major publishers could offer a monthly, flat-fee subscription service for
book-at-a-time access to all their ebook titles in various ereader formats. Note that I said access, not ownership. It would be a rental-type paradigm, and like Gamefly and Netflix could be offered at various pricing tiers according to how many titles the consumer is allowed to have checked out at any given time. Such a plan would enable publishers to maintain steady, ongoing revenue streams in addition to their existing sales channels, and would allow publishers to do an end-run around Amazon, B&N’s Nook store, and Apple’s iBookstore, too.

Perhaps just as importantly, it would allow publishers to gracefully exit the ebook pricing, DRM and staged release debacles of the past, and finally be seen as offering a valuable service to consumers instead of being the big, greedy bad guys.

Gamefly charges the equivalent of the cost of one new game at retail prices for its basic subscription; trade publishers could do the same. At $10 – $15 per month I think plenty of avid ebook readers would be willing to sign up, because they’re probably already buying at least one ebook at retail prices each month.

There are only 5 major players left in trade publishing, so even if you had to ‘subscribe’ to all 5 of them individually (since it’s not likely they’d form some kind of collective service), you’re still only talking approximately the same monthly fee as what plenty of people are already paying for their Gamefly accounts.

While publishers would lose money on accounts signed to voracious readers who currently buy numerous ebooks every month at retail prices, those folks are outliers. Most people I know don’t buy ebooks at that rate, and most people I know don’t read more than one book a month, either. Also, there would surely be a large contingent of people who sign up fully intending to wring their money’s worth out of the subscription fee, but ultimately end up ‘checking out’ a book only every second or third month. Once you know the books are there for the taking any time, there’s no urgency.

If you subscribe to Netflix, Gamefly or even a health club, you’re probably personally acquainted with this phenomenon. I say this while gazing ruefully at the Netflix DVD I’ve had checked out for nearly four months now. Yep, I’ve paid the monthly fee for that movie three times over, and in fact could’ve bought the DVD for less than I’ve paid for this rental by now. But I still have no intention of cancelling my Netflix subscription because it’s a convenience I’m willing to pay for. And maybe someday I really will end up checking out a new movie every few days, like I imagined I’d be doing when I first signed up.

Yes, there are technological hurdles to be overcome. And yes, there will be some considerable startup effort and investment. But those things are true of any new business model trade publishers might try to adopt. And heaven knows, the model they’ve currently got is no longer working so they’re going to have to try something.  

 

This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

No Man Is An Island…Unless He Has A Facebook Fan Page

by

Today I made the permanent and irreversible decision (I wanted to phrase it that way because it sounds more dramatic), to convert my Facebook profile into a page. Basically today was the last straw.

I got one too many friend requests from people who don’t know me but who immediately upon my accepting their request started trying to “network” with me. What, to many, this ends up meaning is that they asked me to join their group or like their book page or something that no one is going to do with someone they don’t know. Basically I felt “advertised to”.

In addition to that kind of thing, I’ve gotten spam messages, game and app invites, being added into people’s groups without my permission, etc. Facebook has been ONE obnoxious thing after another. Also, the more friends you get on Facebook, the more you have to “manage” everything. Like if I was away for a day or two I’d have 32 friend requests to approve. Oh, and event invitations I couldn’t freaking opt out of!

For me, I’m SO happy to be done with that. But your mileage may vary.

Facebook now has a conversion tool where you can turn your Facebook profile into a fan page. There are pros and cons to doing this.

First I’ll say that it’s a violation of Facebook’s TOS to use your personal profile to sell anything. Authors, that means you, too. I know we all like to network and socialize, but if you’re selling things from a profile and don’t convert to a fan page, you could later be in deep dookie. Or maybe not. It may be a slim risk for you, but there it is. I just learned that today, actually. And it had nothing to do with my choice to convert. My choice to convert was because of all the obnoxious shit mentioned earlier.

So if you convert… there are some pros and cons.

PROS:

With the conversion tool on Facebook (and you can find this by going to Facebook Help and typing “converting to fan page” in the search box), all of your friends automatically become fans. So you don’t have to “start over from scratch” in your platform building.

You will not have to deal with ANYTHING super obnoxious like unauthorized group adds, spam, advertising from your fellow authors (sorry, but this happens a LOT and it’s annoying. Please please stop doing it. We are not your target demographic. We are your competition.), and really all the crap I listed above. you don’t get event invitations or friend requests or game invitations or basically any of the crap that makes Facebook crappy.

You get analytic tools that let you see the demographic that is visiting and liking and interacting on your page.

You can create Facebook ads conveniently and directly from your page account to help promote your page and get people to “like you”

You don’t have to worry about the dreaded 5,000 friends limit.

Everyone can see your page. It may be more search-engine friendly for that reason. You can allow people to post comments on the wall as well as photos and video. If anyone abuses this privilege, you have the ability to block them from making posts.

You can make status updates just like before and your fans will see them and can make comments.

CONS:

While the conversion process lets you keep all your friends as “fans”, you pretty much lose everything else. Photos, videos, posts, comments. This wasn’t a big issue for me. I enjoy the idea of a fresh start, and I never post anything on Facebook that is so important I don’t have it in fifty other places anyway.

You will suddenly become an island. You won’t get other people’s status updates anymore. (If you were busy like me and didn’t get to see them a lot anyway, you might not miss this. If you were actively social and interfacing with other people’s walls and comments, you might.)

People will have to come to you because you will no longer be able to post on their walls or send them private messages or whatever. (I think actually you can message “all” your fans at once, though this is not a feature I intend to use because I don’t believe Facebook is or should be a newsletter. I have a newsletter for that.)

CONCLUSION:

For me, someone who often hates Facebook, this full conversion is a good thing. (Or potentially so. It remains to be seen.) For others, this may be too extreme. However, it’s still true that if you are selling something you need a fan page and even if you didn’t know about the TOS issue, you probably have had this idea lurking in the back of your mind that you should probably get around to creating that fan page. What stopped you was likely having to “start all over”.

This is especially daunting if you had over 2,000 Facebook friends like I did.

A good compromise might be to have a personal profile for personal engagement with those you talk to a lot in a social capacity and to have a fan page for readers. If you have a small following right now, you might just want to go ahead and create a page and keep your profile and just start segregating your content more.

If you have a huge friend list and it’s WAY too much drama to do it the other way, you might convert your profile to a page like I did. You DO have access to the list of people following you, even though you can’t post on their walls or comment to their posts. You could simply create a second account for personal use and re-add those friends who are actually friends that you talk to a lot.

For me, for now, I’ve chosen to just have the fan page. I get enough social interaction with online friends via Twitter, IM, and email, that I’m not sure I really need more on Facebook. What I can get through a fan page is about what I was doing on Facebook anyway.

 

This is a reprint from Zoe Winters‘ weblog.

8 Myths About Reading Books On Mobile Phones

by

According to Wikipedia there are 4.6 billion mobile phones in the world. It’s a huge number. But people don’t try to read books on them. In this post I’d like to address some of the most popular reasons, which prevent us from doing it.

The screen is too small
This is true – if you still own a 5-year old phone with black&white screen large enough to show in full length only a phone number (if you’re lucky). But things change, and one of the quickest developing ones are mobile phones. More and more people buy smartphones. They have screens large enough to make their producers cry: “Hey you can even watch movies on this phone!”

I’ve heard many times that reading on a mobile phone is a disaster. Now try to watch a movie. It stops every 5 seconds, as it takes a lot of time to download it. THIS is a disaster.

Let’s compare sizes. For a book, you have an A5 format (average paper book) vs a phone screen. For a video, you as a reference we can use a 21″ TV screen. If we can shrink our video world that much, why we can’t do the same with books?

Another comparison. On average the screen of a smartphone has the width of a text column in a newspaper. If the size of a text field in a paper edition of The New York Times is not enough for you, then you can also complain about a mobile phone.

This is bad for eyes
This is truly mysterious point of view. If you read on your 21″ desktop computer monitor – this is bad for your eyes. But the smaller the device is, the less it affects your eyes.

The font is too small
This argument comes usually with a first one, but I guess it’s also connected in some way with a general perception of what the e-book is. There are still a lot of people who think, that an e-book is a fixed pdf document, and that you need to scroll and zoom a lot to see anything.

It’s not true any more. More and more e-books are made with mobile devices in mind. They have a proper format (like ePub), which enables a user to change a font size, among many other features. That means you can enlarge a font to the size you want. Kid book size needed? There you go.

There are few books available
People with the knowledge of modern e-book formats, still think that the number of publications is very limited and they are hard to find.

The truth is that any major e-bookstore now offers books in mobile friendly formats. Do you have an account at Amazon? All books in Kindle e-bookstore are well readable on smartphones. That means you log in to your Amazon account from your cellphone and start reading an e-book in minutes. Same with Barnes&Noble or Borders. What’s more important, there are sites devoted to mobile reading, like Feedbooks or Wattpad. Go there and you’ll see how many good books you can download to your mobile phone – for free.

Extra effort is needed to get a book
If you have a smartphone, you can easily turn it into an e-reader – I wrote a short post about it. What you need is to choose your favourite method. The most popular and the easiest way is to download an application. For iPhone OS you have Stanza. Free books for Android are available via Aldiko application. Kindle and Kobo have apps for both mobile OS-es.

Another way is managing and reading books via a mobile browser. This is what Google Editions is going to bring to an e-book world in the coming days. Reading books will be even easier. No special app needed, you’ll use your smartphone’s browser.

One thing is clear. You absolutely don’t need to learn anything about format-to-format conversions to start reading books on your mobile phone.

It costs money
Most e-book reading apps are free of charge. What you need to pay for is books themselves. So if you think, that turning your mobile phone into an e-reader will cost you an extra money –  you’re just wrong.

What you may want to know is that there are two kinds of apps in the applications markets. One is a program to read and manage books downloaded to it. The other one is a book-app – a book sold as a separate application.

If you want to give the e-books a try at no cost the best way is to download Stanza for iPhone or Aldiko for Android. They both give you the access to free resources from Feedbooks – public domain books as well as new titles from self-published authors.

It’s inconvenient to manage a book library
Some of us think, that building a book library based on a mobile phone is a useless work. Managing all the books from a small device is hard to imagine.

You don’t need to assume that any more. With cloud-based services you can access your library from a lot of devices, like a computer, a tablet, an e-reader – and a mobile phone.

You don’t need to manage your library from a mobile phone – just pick up the most convenient device for that.

Phones will be replaced by better-suited devices anyway
Not true. Tablets, e-readers and phones will be used simultaneously. I’m sure that with the availability of bookshelves in the cloud, anyone will want to have a comfort to access books from whatever device he’s got at hand. The big decision to make will be “tablet or e-reader”, but smartphones? We have them anyway, they can be easily turned into e-reading devices.

And they can be used to read books on the go, anywhere where there was no reason to take a bigger device – but there is time to read books.

 

This is a reprint from Piotr Kowalczyk‘s Password Incorrect.

Nothing Happens Over 4th of July Weekend, Except This Year

by

This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files blog on the Idea Logical Company site on 7/4/11.

Monday, July 4, was supposed to be a quiet day in the publishing business. It turns out it wasn’t. Three developments reported as special holiday bulletins by Publishers Lunch have strategic implications worth pondering that will have trade publishing people all over the world conferring with their friends and colleagues as soon as they shake the sand off their shoes and settle in to read the weekend email.

First of all: Amazon.com bought The Book Depository. What? You’ve never heard of The Book Depository? Well, then you’re almost certainly one of my US-based readers (about 60-70 percent of you.) The Book Depository is really the other global bookstore. They don’t do ebooks, but they’ve bult their global book business to more than $150 million. No, that’s not as big as BN.com, but they have built a sophisticated many-to-many supply chain (they don’t do it holding stock in distributed warehouses like Amazon), have been growing by something like 30-40% per year for several years, and might even make money.

They’ve even invested heavily in untangling the metadata challenges of global book sales, with a large team in the Middle East tackling the problem.

If anybody were going to mount a global challenge to Amazon as a single consolidated book (and content) distribution business worldwide, The Book Depository was the platform to do it from.

This move by Amazon reminds me of when they acquired Mobi-pocket early in the last decade. In the dawn of the ebook-on-devices era, there were two formats competing as pawns of a hardware competition. Microsoft pushed MS Reader, Palm pushed their own format. Mobi had the clever idea of being able to play on either.

So Amazon acquired Mobi. That meant that they owned the only single-file solution; any other retailer trying to serve the market would have to offer both Microsoft and Palm as a choice to reach all the devices. Palm quickly took that option off the table by insisting it would serve all its files itself. That’s when B&N went out of the ebook business, not to return in a serious way until after Kindle launched in late 2007.

It sure looks to me like The Book Depository would have been a great launch platform for Barnes & Noble to go global.

Second: Pearson, owner of Penguin, became a book and ebook retailer by the purchase of the relevant assets from the bankrupt REDGroup. It appears they will run the business, web sites under the Borders and Angus & Robertson brands, with a minimal staff.

Read the rest of the post on Mike Shatzkin‘s The Shatzkin Files blog on the Idea Logical Company site. 

Will Children’s Book Self-Publishers Survive CPSIA?

by

Do you know about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008? No? Do you think you ought to?

It’s absolutely critical that you know about this law if you—or your clients—produce books or other products for children.

I found out about the implications of this law only today. Jacqueline Simonds, who I interviewed here last year about indie book distribution, sent an email to a group of people concerned with indie publishing explaining her experiences learning about this law. She’s posting about it on her blog.

When I realized the impact this law can have on self-publishers, I knew I had to get you this information right away, and Jacqueline was kind enough to take time out of her day to do an interview with me.

Here’s some background on this law:

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 is a United States law signed on August 14, 2008 by President George W. Bush . . . The law . . . increases the budget of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), imposes new testing and documentation requirements, and sets new acceptable levels of several substances. It imposes new requirements on manufacturers of apparel, shoes, personal care products, accessories and jewelry, home furnishings, bedding, toys, electronics and video games, books, school supplies, educational materials and science kits. The Act also increases fines and specifies jail time for some violations . . . Because of the wide-sweeping nature of the law, many small resellers will be forced to discontinue the sale of children’s products.—Wikipedia

Just to reinforce the possible effects on indie children’s book publishing that this law could have, here’s a response to Jacqueline’s email from Dan Poynter, author of The Self-Publishing Manual and many other books on writing and publishing:

“The future of four-color children’s books is the iPad (and whatever comes next.) This is because of the cost of four-color printing, ship and truck transportation, carrying inventory, processing orders and Postal expenses. CPSIA will only accelerate the migration.”—Dan Poynter, ParaPub.com

You need to know about this. Here’s the interview with Jacqueline.

TheBookDesigner: What is CPSIA?

Jacqueline: The Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) was developed to make sure testing was done on products intended for children under the age of 12. Specifically, it is aimed at toys and bedding that a child might put in their mouth. Books somehow got swept into it, possibly because of board books for toddlers.

How did you get involved with this subject?

I first heard about the CPSIA via the Self-Publishers Discussion Group. One of the members, who makes toys as well as books, picked up on it in the early stages. Since we are distributors, my first reaction was simply not to take on children’s books.

However, a new client approached me with one of the most extraordinary projects I’ve seen in a long time. I couldn’t turn it down. Well, yes I could.

The first thing I asked him is, “Is it CPSIA compliant?” Um, what? he replied. And that’s when he told me that the book files were in Southeast Asia about to print. I had him hold the print run until we could get certification lined up. It’s not inexpensive!

Can you tell us what a publisher has to do to comply with CPSIA?

A publisher must:

  • Place the name of the printer, their city and country and “batch number” (work order number) on the Copyright Page.

     

  • You must have a lab report (or a statement from the printer in lieu of a lab report) stating that the book contains lead that is not in excess of 300 part per million.

     

  • The printer or print broker must fill out a Certificate of Conformity (a sample is here: http://www.cpsc.gov/about/cpsia/faq/elecertfaq.pdf). For Question #2, which asks under what sector of the CPSIA the printer/broker is certifying, the answer seems to be “Section 101” which covers lead content.

     

  • You must submit the lab results and certification to your distributor (if you use one) or wholesaler when you enter a new children’s book into the book databases.

Wow, that sounds like a lot of complicated requirements. Are they for real?

It seems pretty ridiculous, doesn’t it? There’s a point at which well-intentioned laws go feral, and this is one of those moments. We all know that there have been several incidents of children’s toys imported from Asia that have been tainted. However, books are another matter.

When does all this take effect?

The law was supposed to go into effect August 2009 – and did for children’s toys. For books, the official date has been moved to December 2011.

So, no one is demanding this yet, right?

Unfortunately, the big wholesalers have taken this law very much to heart, and are demanding CPSIA certification NOW for new children’s book titles, even though the law doesn’t officially take effect until December. This makes some sense if you consider that a book being sold now will most likely still be in the system when the law goes into effect.

Is there any chance this will be overturned or delayed?

The Association of American Publishers has been riding herd on this since the beginning. They are hoping they can get Congress to modify the legislation so that it only covers books with toys or trinkets attached. The chances of this Congress doing anything in a timely fashion before the law takes effect in December is vanishingly small.

What do you think the response of the book manufacturers is going to be to this new requirement? Will they provide the materials and testing so individual publishers don’t have to do this all themselves?

I have discovered that American printers are taking on the responsibility of testing their inks, paper, glues and cardboard themselves, for all the materials they use in all books (that way they don’t have to do separate testing for individual books). For instance, Lightning Source International has testing on-file and has a standard letter of compliance. They also print their name, state and batch number on the back of the book.

However, foreign book printers don’t have any such program. I have a client who is being charged $600 to prove his book is in compliance.

I would recommend that people contact printers for their RFQ (request for quote) and require that the lab test be paid for by the printer. What will likely happen is that the price of your books will probably have a hidden testing fee attached.

Where can people find out more?

You can go to the main website http://www.cpsc.gov/about/cpsia/cpsia.html Pack a lunch. It takes a while to sift through all this.

Can I hire you as a CPSIA consultant?

Jacqueline Simonds Beagle Bay Books self-publishingYes. I’m available for consultation on this, as well as many other questions about publishing. You can e-mail me at jcsimonds@beaglebay.com or call me at 775.827.8654 (please take into account that I am on Pacific time). I’ll quote rates depending on how much work you need.

Jacqueline Simonds is a book shepherd/publishing consultant, publisher, author and book distributor. She is available for consultations and presentations on many aspects of publishing.

 

 

Data

Jacqueline Church Simonds
Beagle Bay, Inc.
Books That Enlighten and Inform
http://www.beaglebay.com
Follow Jacqueline on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jcsimonds

 

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