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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
Publish, market, and sell your own e-book Although creating an e-book seems fairly straightforward, it is not. You need to select and create a variety of formats that will be read on a variety of e-reader devices--and market and sell your book in a variety of ways. Before you take the plunge, get this practical guide. With clear instruction and sensible advice, it will help you navigate the often confusing, time-consuming, and costly world of self-publishing an e-book. The book gives you solid marketing tips for selling your e-book, including using blogging and social media and how to build an online platform. It also discusses key technologies you'll encounter, including Smashwords, iBooks Author, Amazon, Microsoft Word, Open Office, Calibre, WordPress, E-junkie, and others. * Helps readers navigate the confusing, time-consuming, and often costly world of self-publishing an e-book * Provides both technical how-tos as well solid marketing advice on how to sell your e-book using Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and other social media sites * Covers essential technologies, such as Smashwords, iBooks Author, Amazon, Microsoft Word, Open Office, Calibre, WordPress, and E-junkie * Explores e-book devices, including Kindle, Kobo, Sony Reader, Nook, iPad, and other tablets * Delves into the nitty-gritty of e-book formats Before you self-publish your e-book, start first with Publishing eBooks For Dummies.
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Seitenzahl: 383
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
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Publishing E-Books For Dummies®
Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/publishingebooks to view this book's cheat sheet.
Table of Contents
Publishing E-Books For Dummies®
by Ali Luke
Publishing E-Books For Dummies®
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
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For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.
For technical support, please visit www.wiley.com/techsupport.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012946056
ISBN 978-1-118-34290-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-35202-1 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-35203-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-37278-4 (ebk)
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Author
As well as publishing e-books on behalf of clients, Ali Luke has published much of her own work in digital form — ranging from specialized non-fiction guides to a novel trilogy-in-progress. She has an MA (Cantab) in English Literature from Cambridge University, and an MA in Creative & Life Writing from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her blog Aliventures.com covers writing, blogging, and self-publishing, and she can also be found writing for many large writing- and blogging-related sites. She lives in Oxford in the UK with her wonderfully supportive husband Paul.
Author’s Acknowledgments
My parents, Gill and Geoff Hale, have been a huge support to me throughout my life. My mother fostered my love of writing; my father showed me that you can do what you love and make a living at it — and neither of them have ever suggested that I should stop this writing lark and get a “real” job! I’m incredibly grateful to them.
Paul, my husband, has been eternally patient and understanding of deadlines and writerly mood swings. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without him. His confidence in me helps me rise to new challenges — and he’s always there for me as a very practical support in so many ways (from cooking dinner to organizing my accounts).
Without my wonderful friends in the blogging world, this book wouldn’t have happened. Huge thanks to Rick Calvert, Dave Cynkin, and Deb Ng for accepting my speaking proposal for BlogWorld in November 2011 — and to Nathalie Lussier for invaluable proposal-writing tips. I had no idea that my one-hour session on e-books would lead to Wiley commissioning Publishing E-Books For Dummies . . . but I’m very glad that it did.
Of course, I didn’t simply get to speak at BlogWorld (now New Media Expo) without any prior experience. Four people, in particular, helped me get there: Srinivas Rao and Sid Savara, who founded BlogCast FM and interviewed me several times, and Pace and Kyeli Smith, who had me as a speaker on their online World-Changing Writing Workshop in 2011.
Many people have held a torch to light me on my journey through blogging into e-book-writing: some knowingly, many simply through their own blog posts, e-books, or books. Especially thanks to Rachel Abbott, Brian Clark, Naomi Dunford, David Gaughran, Kelly Kingman, Joe Konrath, Steven Lewis, Holly Lisle, Dave Navarro, Joanna Penn, Darren Rowse, Daniel Scocco, and Sonia Simone.
Through my blog, Aliventures, and my writing teaching site, Writers’ Huddle, I’ve been blessed with a wonderful community of up-and-coming writers. The warmth and support of so many people has encouraged me to write more blog posts, more e-books, and more e-courses. I’m particularly grateful to Bill Polm and Doogie Glassford for their support, both emotional and practical.
Last, but most certainly not least, I want to thank the fantastic people who’ve had a hand in taking this book from initial idea to finished product: Amy Fandrei, Kim Darosett, Becky Whitney, Christopher Speckman, and Sheree Montgomery. I’ve been hugely impressed by your ability to be professional and meticulous whilst also being friendly and fun to work with. Thank you!
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
Acquisitions and Editorial
Senior Project Editor: Kim Darosett
Acquisitions Editor: Amy Fandrei
Copy Editor: Rebecca Whitney
Technical Editor: Christopher Speckman
Editorial Manager: Leah Michael
Editorial Assistant: Leslie Saxman
Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case
Cover Photo: © Yunus Arakon/ iStockphoto.com
Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)
Composition Services
Project Coordinator: Sheree Montgomery
Layout and Graphics: Joyce Haughey, Corrie Niehaus
Proofreaders: Melissa Cossell, Kathy Simpson, Rob Springer
Indexer: Dakota Indexing
Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies
Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher
Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher
Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director
Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director
Publishing for Consumer Dummies
Kathleen Nebenhaus, Vice President and Executive Publisher
Composition Services
Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services
Introduction
Over the past few years, e-books have established a firm position in the mainstream market: Amazon is now selling more electronic editions than paperbacks, and in the United States, net revenue from e-book sales has exceeded net revenue from hardback sales. Whether you want to make your short stories available to online shoppers, find an audience for your novel, or sell a nonfiction book, the e-book world is ready and waiting for you. You can even publish your e-book and spend no money. Many authors are turning to self-publishing — and doing it well. Publishing E-Books For Dummies holds everything you need to know to get your e-book written, published, and marketed to a worldwide audience.
About This Book
This book is the one that I wish had been on my desk four years ago. I had to find out the hard way how to publish an e-book, by tracking down bits and pieces of information online, trying out different strategies, and making a fair number of mistakes. I’ve collected in one handy location everything I know about e-book publishing so that you can get your e-book in front of readers with a minimum of fuss and expense.
This book is designed so that you can dip in and out. Every chapter stands on its own, and you can use the table of contents (or index) to find whatever you need to know right now. I write in a down-to-earth, friendly style, as though we’re chatting (over a pot of tea — I’m British) about your plans to write and publish an e-book. I hope you’ll enjoy Publishing E-Books For Dummies, but most of all, I hope that before long, I’ll see your finished e-book on the virtual bookshelves.
Conventions Used in This Book
To help you understand the information you see in this book, I use a couple of simple conventions — bold text for characters you type and italics to highlight definitions. (I explain these definitions as we go along, too.) Every piece of HTML code and every URL (web address) are presented in “old-.school” monofont:
www.aliventures.com
Foolish Assumptions
I’ve made a few assumptions about you:
You write English capably, and you aren’t seeking advice on grammar, spelling, or sentence structure. You’ve already written a few short stories or articles, though you need a hand in completing an e-book.
You’re comfortable with using computers, and you have basic experience in using word processing and e-mail. Though you definitely don’t need to be technically minded, you need to be willing to try out new programs.
You’re publishing your own e-book, under your own steam. You may or may not be willing to hire freelance editors, designers, or technical experts to help.
Of course, even if all these assumptions don’t quite fit you, you can still benefit from Publishing E-Books For Dummies. Use the table of contents (or the index) to find the parts or chapters that apply to your specific situation. For example, if you’re setting up as a contractor working with independent e-book authors, you can find plenty of useful tips on formatting and publishing e-books in Parts II and III.
How This Book is Organized
Publishing E-Books For Dummies is split into six parts, and each one is divided into chapters. The parts guide you through the entire e-book publishing process, from your first inkling of an idea to marketing your engaging finished product. Here’s the lightning-fast tour.
Part I: Getting to Know E-Books
Part I walks you through the basic tasks involved in publishing e-books, giving you a quick overview followed by case studies and success stories to inspire you — and to give you some workable ideas of your own. You also get a few crucial tips for writing your e-book — an important prerequisite to publishing it.
Part II: Creating Your E-Book
Part II, which shows you how to turn your manuscript into an e-book file, covers every step you need to take, from creating a clean manuscript in Microsoft Word to producing EPUB, MOBI, and PDF files. (Don’t worry if those file formats look like gobbledygook now. I describe them in Part II.) This part also explains cover design because, like it or not, people tend to judge books by their covers.
Part III: Creating Your Website
Part III spells out everything you need to know in order to set up a basic website. This online home or storefront is a crucial part of your author platform (your ability to reach readers). Many writers struggle to set up their websites and update them, so Part III lays out a simple way to create a site that you can easily maintain and update yourself. This part also looks at a crucial sales tool, particularly for nonfiction e-books — your sales page.
Part IV: Selling Your E-Book
Part IV starts with an explanation of pricing strategies, because unless you plan to give away your e-book (which is a perfectly valid option), you need a way to sell and distribute it. The rest of the part tells you how to sell your e-book from your own website, from the Amazon.com site, and from other online stores via Smashwords — with step-by-step instructions for each one.
Part V: Marketing Your E-Book
Part V explains how to promote your e-book online, without spending hundreds of dollars. The first key step is to optimize your e-book’s presence on Amazon and in other stores. You can also find out about the effective use of key social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads, and read tips for using blogging to promote your e-book — not only on your own website, but also by borrowing the much larger audience of other blogs.
Part VI: The Part of Tens
The Part of Tens gives you three bonus chapters that supply quick tips to help you solve common problems, edit and proofread effectively, and enhance your e-book sales (or even your career). These chapters tell you how to get going again when you’re stuck, what to do when no one is buying your e-book, and how to use your e-book to start a digital product empire. You also find plenty of other handy advice.
eCheat Sheet
To give you a quick overview of the key points in this book, I’ve created an eCheat Sheet, which you can find online at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/publishingebooks. The eCheat Sheet gets you up to speed as quickly as possible — and serves as a useful reminder of the material presented in this book. It gives you crucial tips for publishing and marketing your e-book, and it lists several useful websites that I mention throughout this book.
Icons Used in This Book
To focus your attention on special pieces of information, keep an eye out for these icons in the margin as you’re reading:
Throughout the book, these useful tips will help save you time and money — and, possibly, your sanity.
This icon highlights key points that I want you to be sure to keep in mind (no pop quiz necessary).
You don’t have many ways to make huge mistakes in the e-book world — after all, the Undo command exists for a reason — but occasionally one false move can cause serious problems. The Warning icon alerts you to potential disasters, so read them carefully.
You can safely skip these paragraphs. I’ve included them in this book for anyone who (like me) wants to “geek out” occasionally and delve into all the boring details.
Where to Go from Here
Turn the page and start reading, or if you prefer, take a peek at the table of contents and then turn to any chapter you want.
If you’ve already written your e-book manuscript, jump in at Part II. If you have a finished e-book for sale already, you can head straight to Part V to try out some marketing ideas. Or turn to Part III to get your website up and running, if you haven’t done so already.
The e-book world moves fast. If you want to stay in touch with me for up-to-date information, you can find me online:
Website: www.aliventures.com
E-mail: [email protected]
Facebook: www.facebook.com/aliventures
Twitter: www.twitter.com/aliventures
Occasionally, we have updates to our technology books. If this book does have technical updates, they will be posted at www.dummies.com/go/publishingebooksupdates.
Please note that some special symbols used in this eBook may not display properly on all eReader devices. If you have trouble determining any symbol, please call Wiley Product Technical Support at 800-762-2974. Outside of the United States, please call 317-572-3993. You can also contact Wiley Product Technical Support at www.wiley.com/techsupport.
Part I
Getting to Know E-Books
In this part . . .
You’re about to start your journey toward publishing an e-book. To give yourself and your book a good shot at success in the exciting, fast-moving world of e-book publishing, you need to be confident about the basics of publishing and marketing an e-book — and you need to know that you can write it successfully, too.
In Chapter 1, I give you an overview of the e-book world: what readers want, how to publish and market your e-book, and what to expect from various e-reader devices. You can read in Chapter 2 about a few inspiring e-book authors — established writers who’ve had print deals and new authors who’ve seen huge online success. In Chapter 3, I give you all my best tips for planning and writing an e-book, maximizing your motivation and time management, and tackling common problems.
Chapter 1
Introducing E-Book Basics
In This Chapter
Setting yourself up for success
Selling your e-book on different sites
Putting the word out about your e-book
Examining e-book readers
Welcome to the world of e-books. It’s an exciting, dynamic place with lots of opportunities just waiting to be grasped. Whatever type of e-book you’re considering writing — whether it’s a specialized nonfiction guide, a fast-paced thriller, or a simple freebie to build your readership — you have a fascinating journey ahead of you. I’m honored to be your guide.
In this chapter, I give you a quick overview of everything you need to know about e-books. First, I help you give your e-book a good chance of being enjoyed (and even loved) by readers. Next, I tell you about the key ways in which you can sell your e-book online so that you can start evaluating the options you might choose. I briefly explain attention marketing and then end this chapter with a look at the most popular e-book readers on the market.
Creating a Successful E-Book That Readers Will Love
Regardless of why you’re writing (or planning to write) an e-book, your success will be at least partially defined by the number of readers you draw. You need readers if you want to:
Make money
Build an online platform
Convey your message to a wide audience
A successful e-book isn’t necessarily one that makes a lot of money for its author — it’s one that is useful or enjoyable for a number of readers. To give your e-book a good chance of success, you should know your intended audience and then tailor your content and your writing style to them.
When you write fiction, you should be familiar with your chosen genre. Writers sometimes make the mistake of trying a genre that’s popular, such as crime or romance, without first reading enough books from that genre to have a good grasp of common conventions (and done-to-death plots). Pay attention to market trends, of course, but also choose a genre that you as a reader enjoy. You’ll produce a much better book, and you’ll be less likely to abandon it in frustration when you’re only halfway finished.
If you want to write nonfiction, focus (ideally) on a subject for which you already have an audience. If your blog or website has an existing readership, you can easily produce an e-book that’s of interest to those people. If you don’t already have a web presence, you can find out more in Chapter 9 about establishing yourself online.
As you write or edit your e-book, keep your readers in mind. For real success, you need their reviews and testimonials, so be sure to give them what they want. In fiction, it’s strong characters, a gripping plot, and (perhaps most important) a strong climax and conclusion. In nonfiction, it’s easy-to-digest information, with chapters in a logical order, and with extra material such as exercises, examples, and further reading lists to help your readers fully understand your topic.
Your e-book should be well written and well presented, whatever its subject matter. Obviously, a literary novel must meet different standards from a straightforward, factual e-book — but both must be carefully constructed, edited, and proofread to ensure that your book offers a fulfilling and engaging reading experience. You may have written a deeply moving novel or an extremely useful nonfiction book, but if it’s riddled with typos and awkward sentences, readers will give up after a few pages (and leave you negative reviews).
These suggestions for creating a successful and enjoyable e-book may seem intimidating — and with millions of e-books in the world, you may suspect that many of them don’t necessarily meet these standards. Sadly, plenty of poor-quality e-books exist. (Some of them even manage to be successful.) But if you want your e-book to stand out from the crowd, keep your readers in mind throughout the writing, editing, and publishing process.
Publishing Your E-Book on Different Platforms
The e-book market has grown rapidly over the past few years, which has brought a sometimes bewildering array of ways to sell your own e-book. You can sell copies of the same edition of a print book in multiple bookstore chains, but you’ll find that different stores and publishing platforms require differently formatted e-book files.
This section presents an overview of the ways in which you might want to sell your e-book. I cover all of them in more detail in Part IV of this book.
Hosting your e-book with E-junkie
One simple way to sell your e-book is to use a shopping cart site. It hosts your e-book file for you and, when a reader buys your book, delivers it automatically. You can choose among dozens of shopping cart sites and solutions, but I recommend E-junkie because it’s easy and inexpensive.
If you sell your e-book via E-junkie, you don’t even need a website of your own. You can reach potential readers on Facebook or Twitter or by e-mail and give them the link to buy your e-book.
Turn to Chapter 12 to find out more about using E-junkie.
Selling your e-book from your own website
Many authors choose to sell their e-books from their own websites. This option is helpful if you have a blog, because your readers are likely to become loyal customers. Selling your e-book from your own website also means that you keep all profits — no retailer takes a cut. You can also provide your e-book in any file format you want, and you can even package extras (such as MP3 recordings) with it.
In the online marketing world, a specialized e-book is commonly sold from a sales page. This type of page, which typically explains the scope of the e-book and the benefits of reading it, often includes testimonials from satisfied customers. If you’ve written an expensive e-book for a specialist audience, this is a useful way to sell it.
Turn to Chapter 9 to find out how to set up your own website. Chapter 10 explains how to create a sales page for your e-book.
Getting your e-book onto Amazon
Amazon, the largest retailer of e-books, actively encourages self-publishing authors to upload their own books in its Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program, and the process is relatively straightforward.
I don’t necessarily mean that Amazon is the perfect fit for you, though. If you write a specialized e-book with a small potential audience but a high retail price (more than $9.99), you’ll make much more money selling it from your own website, due to Amazon’s royalty structure and customer expectations. However, if you’re writing fiction or general nonfiction, you have nothing to lose by selling your e-book from Amazon.
Amazon pays 70 percent royalties on e-books priced between $2.99 and $9.99 and pays 35 percent royalties on e-books outside this price range. If you aren’t a citizen of the United States, your royalties are subject to withholding tax; if your country has a tax treaty with the United States (many do), you can fill in a form to ensure that this withholding tax isn’t applied to your royalties.
E-books sold via Amazon can be read only on the Amazon Kindle or on a device with the Kindle app installed. (You can find Kindle apps for the PC, Mac, iPad, and iPhone and for Android devices.) Kindle e-books cannot be read on the Kobo, NOOK, or Sony Reader.
Check out Chapter 8 to find out how to turn your manuscript into a MOBI file, which is the file format that Amazon uses. In Chapter 13, I explain how to upload your e-book file to Amazon.
Distributing your e-book to other stores via Smashwords
Of course, Amazon isn’t the only e-book store: Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Sony all have online stores too. Every store has different, often complex, requirements. (Barnes & Noble requires you to have a U.S. bank account in order to collect royalties.) Rather than submit your e-book to every site individually, distribute it via Smashwords (www.smashwords.com) to save time and effort.
Smashwords handles the file conversion, so you provide only a Microsoft Word document, formatted according to the site’s precise guidelines. You must also add Smashwords edition (or similar wording) to the copyright page; if you’re uncomfortable doing so, choose a different method of distribution.
Your e-book will be available via the Smashwords site for readers to buy in a number of different formats. Smashwords pays 85 percent royalties, minus a small transaction fee, for sales via its site, and it pays 60 percent of the retail price for most sales via other stores. For more on Smashwords, see Chapter 14.
Marketing Your E-Book Online
After you’ve written and published your e-book, the hard work isn’t over. (In fact, many authors feel that this point is where it truly begins.) Of course, you’ve completed a fantastic task — your own book is out there on the virtual shelves — but chances are good that you won’t believe it’s a success until you have at least attracted interested readers.
You need to market your e-book, even if it’s available for free. Many authors shy away from marketing and its frequent association with pushy car salesmen, annoying cold calls, or scammy online websites. But your marketing effort doesn’t need to conjure up these unsavory images. In fact, you’ll be much more successful if you focus on sharing your message and giving valuable information to people who come across your marketing materials — even if they don’t eventually buy your e-book.
One popular concept in the online marketing world is attention marketing, which means using valuable content to draw readers to you instead of using ads and other forms of interruption marketing. This valuable content can be almost anything: a free sample of your e-book, a funny or compelling video, a Twitter account where you share useful tips and interesting quotes, or a blog or podcast where you cover topics related to your e-book.
In addition to being more effective than traditional advertising, attention marketing has the huge advantage of being cheap or even free. Though it costs you nothing to set up and maintain a Twitter account, Facebook page, or simple blog for your e-book, they all take time, of course — so know how to use that time effectively.
In Chapter 9, I cover setting up your own blog or website. Part V of this book offers tips for promotion via Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads (a social networking site for readers), and through blogging.
Comparing Different E-Book Readers
Before publishing your e-book, become familiar with at least one e-book reader, and preview your own book to ensure that it displays correctly. You can also see how the device operates and how to purchase e-books directly from the relevant online store.
If you don’t already own an e-book reader, consider buying for your own use one of the devices I describe in the following sections. Doing so is a helpful way to test your e-book, and you gain crucial experience in seeing how readers interact with online stores and with the books they sell. I recommend the Kindle because it’s the most popular and it has a 3G version (handy for travel). Any other brand of black-and-white e-reader gives you a similar reading experience. A basic e-reader costs about $120. All the major e-reader brands use some form of e-ink technology, which means that the display is designed to mimic the experience of reading on paper. This means that e-readers are much easier on the eyes than reading on a computer screen.
Whichever e-reader you have, sample (or buy) at least a few e-books on it to gain a sense of how e-books look, what information is best placed at the start of your e-book to form part of the sample, and what sort of material is currently popular in your genre or niche. In Chapter 2, you can read success stories about independent authors who have sold hundreds of thousands of e-books.
Amazon Kindle
The Kindle is the most popular e-book reader on the market — millions of these devices have been sold worldwide. Several different Kindle models are available, including the Kindle Fire (a tablet computer), the Kindle DX (a larger version of the original Kindle), and standard Kindles with — or without — these features:
Keyboards
Advertising
Wireless only
Worldwide 3G
In addition to being sold via Amazon, the Kindle is sold in certain stores. Because many Kindle models have worldwide 3G access, readers can buy and download books from almost any location; cheaper versions are Wi-Fi only. Check how your e-book’s Amazon page looks on the Kindle itself, because not all buyers purchase from the Amazon site on their computers. The description of your book, for example, displays on only a few lines on the Kindle. You may also find that your e-book looks slightly different on the device itself than it does on your computer.
Most users now have standard Kindles rather than the Kindle Fire or Kindle DX, so preview your e-book and its sales page on the standard model.
Barnes & Noble NOOK
The NOOK, produced by Barnes & Noble, is a direct competitor to the Kindle. Like the Kindle, it comes in several different forms:
NOOK Simple Touch: A basic, Wi-Fi–only (no 3G), black-and-white reader with a touchscreen
NOOK Color: An inexpensive tablet computer
NOOK Tablet: A tablet that is pricier than the NOOK Color and has extra features
One key difference between the NOOK and the Kindle is that the NOOK reads EPUB files and the Kindle reads MOBI and AZW (the Amazon proprietary format) files.
Although a reader can purchase books directly from the NOOK Simple Touch, the device must be connected to a Wi-Fi network in order to do so.
Kobo eReader
Like the NOOK, the Kobo e-reader (produced by Kobo Books, an e-book-only retailer) uses the EPUB file format. The Kobo comes in these flavors:
Kobo Wi-Fi: A black-and-white e-reader with Wi-Fi but no 3G
Kobo Touch: A touchscreen Kobo, also in black-and-white and also Wi-Fi only
Kobo Vox: A tablet Kobo
Kobo e-books have no digital rights protection, so you can read them on any compatible e-reader (any device that can view EPUB files). Kobo focuses on the social experience of reading, and Reading Life (which integrates with Facebook and lets readers achieve “awards” in a gamelike fashion) keeps its customers engaged, with free reading apps for computers, smartphones, and tablets.
Sony Reader
The Sony Reader comes in one of three colors (red, black, or white), and it claims to be the world’s lightest e-reader. It has a touchscreen and Wi-Fi but no 3G. Like the other major e-readers, it has a black-and-white e-ink display.
Sony doesn’t produce a tablet version of its Reader device. Like the Kobo and the NOOK, the Sony Reader uses EPUB files.
Chapter 2
Joining the E-Book Revolution
In This Chapter
Taking stock of your publishing options
Getting inspiration from successful independent authors
Increasing your e-book’s chance of becoming a bestseller
The increase in the number of e-book publications — and in e-book sales — has been incredibly rapid. It isn’t much of a stretch to say that the e-book is the biggest shake-up in the publishing world since the Gutenberg press.
In the 1990s, if you wanted to publish a novel, you had to find and work with agents and publishers or pay to print thousands of copies. Around the turn of the century, you could publish electronically, but readers would almost certainly have had to read your novels on their computer screens — and many people saw the e-book as part of the geeky realm, not as an everyday reading experience.
Plenty of regular people (and book lovers) now own e-reader devices, and many of them have bought e-books by self-published authors, perhaps without even realizing it. These independent authors are taking control of their writing careers by publishing their own novels, nonfiction books, short story collections, poetry, and more. E-books have opened the publishing world to anyone who has a computer and an Internet connection.
In this chapter, I describe the choice you have to make between traditional publishing and self-publishing, present case studies of successful self- publishing authors, and finish with tips for making your own e-book a true success.
I hope that you’re feeling excited about e-publishing. You have many different possibilities, and whatever your goals and dreams as a writer, you’re fully in control of reaching them. I know that this task can be daunting as well as exciting (the thought of self-promotion can still make me want to hide under my duvet), but throughout the rest of this book, I help you work toward your goals. Believe me: It’s well worth the journey.
Choosing Between Traditional Publishing and Self-Publishing
You can take one of two broad routes to publication: traditional publishing or self-publishing:
Traditional, or legacy: You write a proposal (or an entire book, if you’re writing a novel) and find an agent or a publisher to represent you. You maintain the copyright over your work but sign over certain other rights. In return, you (usually) receive an advance and, eventually, royalties.
Self, or indie:
