I don't normally post other writers material but I found this article packed with useful links and info.
What Every Indie Author Needs to Know About E-Books
Reposted from publishers weekly
What Every Indie Author Needs to Know About E-Books
A quick guide to the evolving e-book industry
It
has never been easier to publish your own e-book. The wealth of tools,
platforms, and services available to self-publishers continues to grow
and be refined for an ever-broader reach and greater efficiency. But
with so many good options, it is also more important than ever for
authors to choose carefully how best to position themselves for the
greatest chance of engaging the largest possible audience.
Choosing a Retailer and Distributor
The first major choice a
self-published author makes is which major retailers (Amazon Kindle
Direct Publishing, Barnes & Noble Nook Press, Kobo, Apple
iBookstore) and distributors (Smashwords, BookBaby) to use to publish
his or her e-book. These services are for the most part nonexclusive, so
an author holds on to her rights and can use any or all of them
simultaneously—making revisions, price changes, or removing the work
altogether, whenever she chooses.
This makes it desirable for
an author to distribute across as many platforms as possible, typically
publishing with Amazon and then using Smashwords or BookBaby to
distribute to all other major retailers.
But Amazon has complicated
this with its introduction of KDP Select. The program gives
self-publishers the option to join the publishing giant’s Lending
Library, where readers check out as many digital books as they like for a
monthly subscription fee. Amazon pays authors who join every time one
of their books is rented. Authors can also offer their books for free
for up to five days every 90-day opt-in period, enhancing an author’s
sales rank and discoverability.
The catch in all this is
that authors have to publish exclusively through Amazon. For those who
already sell most of their e-books through Amazon or whose top priority
is getting more readers (rather than high payouts), KDP Select offers
attractive benefits. For more established authors or those with
significant sales on Nook, Kobo, and elsewhere, the math makes less
sense. Either way, authors who do opt in to the program are only locked
in for 90 days, so it is easy to experiment with what offers the
greatest return.
“There’s chatter among
authors that the algorithms have changed in a way that doesn’t favor
books that are free or cheap as much as they used to, so there may be
less incentive to use KDP Select,” says Jane Friedman, online editor of
the Virginia Quarterly Review, who covers e-book trends and strategies
at www.janefriedman.com. “But smart authors are always testing and experimenting with what works.”
Creating a Quality Product
Once an author has written a
book he or she is proud of, and gotten feedback from friends or other
“beta readers,” it is worthwhile to pay a professional to review the
text. At the very least, invest in a copy editor to review the
manuscript for any typos or grammatical errors. A more thorough content
editor may also be valuable to help with the story arc, or to spot
inconsistency in character behavior or speech.
A great-looking cover is
also essential for an e-book -- one that’s eye-catching and looks
professional, but also easy to read when seen as a tiny thumbnail image
on a smartphone or in Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item Also
Bought” section.
“E-book covers need to be
simplified from print book covers,” says Joel Friedlander, a book
designer who covers e-book design at www.thebookdesigner.com.
He adds that
author-designed e-book covers tend to fall short in their use of
typography, since it is not an easy discipline to learn, and often
suffer from an author’s “attempt to squeeze in lots of symbolic
representations of plot points or characters, and this rarely works out
well.”
Authors will also want to
seek out blurbs and reviews to include on the book jacket or as part of
the front matter. These can be responses from other authors, book
bloggers, reviewers, or other well known figures to advance reading
copies or other work by the author. There are thousands of book blogs
and reviews you can consider reaching out to, including Self-Publishing
Review, Indie Reader, and of course PW Select, as well as the site Book
Blogs, a hub of more than 20,000 independent bloggers and authors. The
Indie View provides a useful roundup of available reviewers at www.theindieview.com/indie-reviewers/.
All told, hiring a
reasonably priced editor and designer should not put you out more than
$1,500 to $2,000. If that seems too expensive, an author might consider
crowdfunding the project, through a site like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, or
Fundly. While crowdfunding is a great way to pull in the money needed
to produce a high-quality self-published e-book, it also creates an
early buzz for the book and tests whether there is a market for the book
before the author takes the next steps toward publication. If it proves
tough to raise a few hundred dollars from friends and fans with a
concerted Kickstarter campaign, selling a few thousand copies may prove
even more difficult.
Manuscript to e-Book
While the manuscript is
getting a final proof, an author can begin taking steps to actually turn
it into an e-book. The text must be formatted so it wraps and resizes
as readers zoom in or out or toggle between devices, the table of
contents needs to be made clickable, and in a format that works for
every retailer. Authors can do this themselves with a few hours of
technical self-education, or pay for a service to take care of it.
For those going the DIY
route, the manuscript will need to be converted into three documents
(assuming you are looking to publish across all major e-book platforms):
A Microsoft Word document for Smashwords; a MOBI file for Amazon
Kindle; and an EPUB file for other e-book retailers, including Barnes
& Noble, Kobo, Sony, and Apple iBooks.
For the Smashwords Word
document, Microsoft’s automatic formatting will need to be cleared to
create clean source copy based on the company’s particular style guide
(details of which are at www.smashwords.com/books/view/52).
While just doing this could allow authors to distribute their book to
every major retailer beyond Amazon, the Smashwords “meatgrinder” gives
authors limited choice in how their final layout looks.
“I want my e-books to look
the way I want them to look,” says LJ Cohen, author of several
self-published novels as well as detailed guides on e-book formatting
(available at her website www.ljcohen.net).
“So I send the Word document to the meatgrinder, and once it gets
approved in the catalog, then I upload my hand-coded EPUB file on top of
that.”
To do this for EPUB and
MOBI, first use a word processor program that allows for cleaning up
formatting and creating custom fonts, paragraphs, and headings. A number
of software programs are available for converting documents into EPUB
and MOBI files. These include free tools PressBooks, Leanpub, and Jutoh
(which has a for-purchase version offering more functions) for both EPUB
and MOBI, or Sigil for EPUB files. The programs Scrivener and Apple
Pages can export EPUB files but cost money.
But perhaps the most
popular conversion program in the industry remains Calibre, which
converts documents to both MOBI and EPUB. It is free, versatile, and
works for both Mac and PC as more than a simple e-book converter.
If all this sounds like
more trouble than it’s worth, it may be easier to reach out to a
conversion service, which charges a flat fee to convert text into
e-book. Providers of this service include BookBaby, eBook Architects,
Bowker, and 52 Novels. Smashwords offers its own referrals for e-book
formatters at www.smashwords.com/list.
Final Steps to Publication
Before uploading, be sure
to preview each file format on its respective devices (Kindle, Nook,
Kobo, etc.). For those who do not have access to the devices, Kindle
Previewer from Amazon and Nook Everywhere from Barnes & Noble allow
for desktop-based previews of the files and can be downloaded for free.
With your cover and your e-book file, uploading just takes a couple
minutes. Authors are asked to provide basic information such as name and
address for royalty payment, as well as the book’s metadata.
This metadata—title, ISBN,
description, etc.—is key to how your book will come up in searches. Your
book’s description should be crafted to catch a reader’s eye and appeal
to fans of books in a similar genre and style.
Aim for categories as
specific as possible (you get only two with Amazon) keeping in mind that
selecting a more distinct category (such as Noir or Heist) will
automatically include you in a number of general categories (Mystery and
Crime Fiction). The advantage of drilling down into subcategories is
that your book will be more likely to appear in the top 100 or top 10 of
those subcategories, getting it in front of more readers who browse the
bestseller lists.
Similar advantages can be
found in getting specific with keywords. An extensive list of both KDP
keywords and categories can be found at bit.ly/pwKDPCategories.
An author will also have to
select the book’s price. Opinions differ on the ideal amount to charge
for an e-book, and it can vary depending on the author, genre, and
format, but generally lower is better for sales, especially since many
readers still expect e-books to cost less than print books.
Amazon royalties reward
authors for charging between $2.99 and $9.99 for their books (receiving a
70% royalty for publishing direct with Amazon Kindle in that range, and
only a 50% royalty outside of it). Outside the U.S, UK, and Canada,
Amazon pays 35% royalties no matter what the price.
However an author prices
her books, it is key to be flexible about the number, ready to raise the
price at the right times (e.g. when sales at a low price point have
been steady for a few weeks), or lower them at other times (e.g. when a
new book in a series is being released, lowering the cost on previous
installments will boost sales).
Selling the E-Book
Of course, writing and
publishing an e-book is not all there is to self-publishing. Without the
marketing and promotional apparatus of a traditional publishing house,
authors must invest a sizable portion of time and energy into getting
the word out about their books and connecting with new readers.
This should start as the
book is being written and edited: Authors should create a professional
website and a basic social media presence through which to connect with
fans and post updates and information about their e-book and the
progress they are making. This can include profiles on Twitter,
Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, a personal blog, and other platforms where
the author can find interested readers, such as Amazon’s Author Central
and Goodreads. Authors who find this proliferation of social media
outlets too time-consuming or overwhelming may want to focus on just one
or two platforms that they enjoy and seem like a natural fit.
An author mailing list is a valuable but often overlooked tool for e-book writers.
“[E-mail] is older and for
that reason it’s overlooked, but I can’t think of any author I’ve heard
speak who didn’t say ‘my email list is indispensable,’” says Friedman.
“There’s been a little shift from social media to more of a focus on
promotional pricing and giveaways.”
When books are released, authors should announce it on their social media pages and the Book Bazaar section of www.kindleboards.com.
They may consider a blog tour in which they write guest posts or offer
interviews to websites that cover similar genres, or self-publishing and
e-books more generally.
Giveaways through
Goodreads, Lib-raryThing, BookBub, or through individual book blogs are
an effective and popular way for authors to get the word out about their
books.
“A lot of authors I work
with have found that being on that free list gets them more visibility,”
says Kate Tilton, an author assistant who offers an extensive list of
available free listings at katetilton.com/free-books/. “But it shouldn’t
be overused—don’t constantly offer books for free, avoid holidays and
weekends, and I wouldn’t put it free close to when you are releasing
it.”
Rather than giving away the
entire book through the drawing-style platforms, the e-book format
allows an author to also consider giving away a portion of the
book—whether the first few chapters of a novel, a summary version of a
how-to book, etc.—to anyone who would like to download it.
Authors should be sure to
include links at the end to where the full-length version can be
purchased, and in the back matter include links to their website, social
media platforms, and other books.
In all of this, remember
these efforts are investments in a long-term career. Social media and
marketing work are as much about selling your new book as boosting sales
for your back catalog—and building connections to help your next book
succeed.
It is for that reason that
personality-driven marketing is likely to prove more valuable in the
long run than paid advertising. While Goodreads, Facebook, and other
sites offer affordable ad schemes, these are less likely to give an
author the kind of return that an active social presence or live events
(promoted through Goodreads Events and elsewhere) can provide.
Keep Learning
While this has covered the
self-publishing industry as it currently stands, the industry is
constantly evolving and changing. New services pop up continually and
established players regularly offer new promotions to make it easier for
indie authors to succeed.
With this in mind,
self-publishers will want to stay abreast of developments by reading
industry news sites, such as Digital Book World (www.digitalbookworld.com), Kindle Boards Writer’s Café (www.kboards.com),
and of course PW Select. A number of self-publishing authors also cover
the industry, including David Gaughran (davidgaughran.wordpress.com),
Kristine Rusch (www.kriswrites.com), and Joe Konrath (www.jakonrath.blogspot.com).
The e-book landscape is always shifting and authors who stay current and remain flexible will find rich opportunities.
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