Is it just me, or is the internet overflowing with get rich quick schemes involving writing your own e-book? I seem to be getting about a dozen emails, blog postings and outright spams a day telling me how to make a million dollars with an e-book. Now, the fact that I am currently writing 2 of them may have caused this to happen, but...
Here's the thing that blows me away - obviously people are paying good money to get information on e-book marketing programs, webinars and so on. At the heart of this process is the fact that they actually need to sit down and write one. If they are serious about looking at an e-book to improve their profile or create actual wealth, then I would not so humbly suggest that they write a good book. Write a book that people will get value from and one that shows the writer in the best possible light. Showing themselves in the best possible light - because you only get one chance at this - means a well constructed, organized and edited book. It doesn't matter how long it is, if it has grammar, spelling and other mistakes, the buyer will not buy a second offering from them.
So here's the deal, if you are interested in entering into the e-book marketing push that is going on, begin by learning how to write a book. Of course, I have written a book that helps you do that: if you glance to the left hand side of the screen, you will see a picture of the One Hour Author: Non-Fiction Book Writing For Busy People - clicking on the image will take you to the Amazon site to buy it.
Before you begin marketing a book, you need to have one and this will be the fastest way to get there easily with the most professional results. By all means, if you are talking to others who are thinking about the e-book program to move themselves forward, send this to them and get them off on the right foot.
Showing posts with label E-BOOK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label E-BOOK. Show all posts
Thursday
Saturday
SELLING YOUR BOOK ONLINE
Selling a book online can be a mysterious task for those authors who have not done it before. Many still wish to hand the manuscript over to a publisher and have them do all the legwork for them. That's great but you will pay for the privilege forever as they take their large portion of the proceeds regardless of the fact that they have absolutely no additional costs between book number 2 and book number 2,000.
I'm currently working with a client who has written a wonderful children's book targeted at military families (I'll put up a link when we have everything ready). She is launching the book soon with a first edition of hard copies to a local audience and has asked me to make it available online. I have done this with other books and so, I thought that I should make you aware of some of the changes and differences that you should expect if you decide to do the same.
When you create a hard copy book, you can use any of thousands of font styles, include illustrations in any way you like, and can format your pages just exactly the way you want. This is not the case with e-books. I think this is changing as the devices and software change and evolve but at the moment, there are some restrictions and the best way to understand these is to use an e-reader yourself. For those of you who create books that are reliant upon design and formatting rather than plain text, this will be a challenge. Children's books are a good example of needing to alter your expectations for e-readers. Once again, I am pretty sure that will change drastically as you will be able to embed videos, audio and everything else into your books but for now...for the conventional e-reader, here's some differences:
Fonts: probably best to stick with one font, including chapter titles and headings. Preferable to stay with something like, Times - New Roman, for the time being but you can use a couple of different sizes ( but make the normal text size 12 point) and bold the chapter headings. The eventual reader can change both the font style and the font size on their machine, which is why you need to be consistent in your source document.
Illustrations: At this time, most conventional e-readers are black and white based, but this is changing rapidly so color should be OK. Illustrations don't load particularly easily yet but this is getting better all the time. Quite often the e-reader screen size is rather limiting and can make clarity and readability of the pictures, maps and so on, difficult. Once again, devices like the I-Pad and other tablets have this in control and are much better than the conventional e-reader.
Right-hand justification: forget it! Because the reader controls sizing, right hand justification simply does not translate for e-readers. You still might like it for hard copy books but your source document for electronic books needs to have it removed. The same is true for things like centering and a lot of other formatting - best to keep it as clean as possible.
Page numbers: this process has improved immensely. Initially, e-readers couldn't handle page numbers and used a combination of percentage of book read and some convoluted system of determining book locations. Now, you can use page numbers and the various upload software that is available will guide you through the actual handling for each one.
Table of Contents: don't miss the opportunity to provide an active table of contents for non-fiction books. Most are not read "front to back" and the reader wants to read them out of order or maybe some parts, not at all. I'm thinking cookbooks, travel books and the like. You will normally add the "active table of contents " formatting in your source document - Word, for instance, has a process available for this and it can be found in their help section. Frankly, if you don't include that in most non-fiction books that have many chapters and sub-chapters/headings, you will succeed in ticking off your audience, royally.
ISBN's: I just think that it is best to acquire your own ISBN's from Bowker, or from the source in your own country, however, that is no longer always true. In some instances, you can obtain a free one through CreateSpace, for instance, or Smashwords that will then give you better access to their expanded distribution channels. Read the instructions and guidelines provided by the various outlets carefully BEFORE you make a decision that you cannot reverse. Do what's best, not necessarily most expedient, for you as the author. Remember that you will need a new ISBN for each book format that you create.
Design: For most fiction writers who create straight forward text based books, the whole process is reasonably simple but for those people who imagine the possibility of adding additional features to their book that will enhance the reader's enjoyment ( and perhaps their sales), it might be an idea to hook up with a good designer. When I say designer, I am thinking of someone who has an excellent understanding of new media and how to create it. Someone who can create graphics, video, photographs and sound that can be embedded in a document for publishing to the Apple, Kindle, Nook, Android and other stores or retail outlets. The non-fiction market is about to explode as these kinds of books become available. Imagine writing a house renovation book that shows in color and graphic detail exactly how to instal that new hardwood flooring with a combination of sound, video and print instructions. Imagine what this technology is going to do to the textbook market and how it will revolutionize education.
Selling Your Book Online: A few final thoughts about what's possible for you in the future. As the formats and technology change, your opportunity to create a revised edition for your book changes, too. Unlike the traditional bookstore, an electronic bookstore can accept and list an unlimited number of titles so that you can update the text, create videos ( how-to's, travel, cooking, etc.), release an audio version and lots of other things to publish a new edition of your book and still keep the original available for those people who continue to use the older style e-readers. Your costs don't substantially change and you don't need to pay for additional printing, shipping, etc.
If you have added some of this exciting new technology to any of your books, or are thinking about it, please leave a comment and a link so that we can all see how you are doing.
I'm currently working with a client who has written a wonderful children's book targeted at military families (I'll put up a link when we have everything ready). She is launching the book soon with a first edition of hard copies to a local audience and has asked me to make it available online. I have done this with other books and so, I thought that I should make you aware of some of the changes and differences that you should expect if you decide to do the same.
When you create a hard copy book, you can use any of thousands of font styles, include illustrations in any way you like, and can format your pages just exactly the way you want. This is not the case with e-books. I think this is changing as the devices and software change and evolve but at the moment, there are some restrictions and the best way to understand these is to use an e-reader yourself. For those of you who create books that are reliant upon design and formatting rather than plain text, this will be a challenge. Children's books are a good example of needing to alter your expectations for e-readers. Once again, I am pretty sure that will change drastically as you will be able to embed videos, audio and everything else into your books but for now...for the conventional e-reader, here's some differences:
Fonts: probably best to stick with one font, including chapter titles and headings. Preferable to stay with something like, Times - New Roman, for the time being but you can use a couple of different sizes ( but make the normal text size 12 point) and bold the chapter headings. The eventual reader can change both the font style and the font size on their machine, which is why you need to be consistent in your source document.
Illustrations: At this time, most conventional e-readers are black and white based, but this is changing rapidly so color should be OK. Illustrations don't load particularly easily yet but this is getting better all the time. Quite often the e-reader screen size is rather limiting and can make clarity and readability of the pictures, maps and so on, difficult. Once again, devices like the I-Pad and other tablets have this in control and are much better than the conventional e-reader.
Right-hand justification: forget it! Because the reader controls sizing, right hand justification simply does not translate for e-readers. You still might like it for hard copy books but your source document for electronic books needs to have it removed. The same is true for things like centering and a lot of other formatting - best to keep it as clean as possible.
Page numbers: this process has improved immensely. Initially, e-readers couldn't handle page numbers and used a combination of percentage of book read and some convoluted system of determining book locations. Now, you can use page numbers and the various upload software that is available will guide you through the actual handling for each one.
Table of Contents: don't miss the opportunity to provide an active table of contents for non-fiction books. Most are not read "front to back" and the reader wants to read them out of order or maybe some parts, not at all. I'm thinking cookbooks, travel books and the like. You will normally add the "active table of contents " formatting in your source document - Word, for instance, has a process available for this and it can be found in their help section. Frankly, if you don't include that in most non-fiction books that have many chapters and sub-chapters/headings, you will succeed in ticking off your audience, royally.
ISBN's: I just think that it is best to acquire your own ISBN's from Bowker, or from the source in your own country, however, that is no longer always true. In some instances, you can obtain a free one through CreateSpace, for instance, or Smashwords that will then give you better access to their expanded distribution channels. Read the instructions and guidelines provided by the various outlets carefully BEFORE you make a decision that you cannot reverse. Do what's best, not necessarily most expedient, for you as the author. Remember that you will need a new ISBN for each book format that you create.
Design: For most fiction writers who create straight forward text based books, the whole process is reasonably simple but for those people who imagine the possibility of adding additional features to their book that will enhance the reader's enjoyment ( and perhaps their sales), it might be an idea to hook up with a good designer. When I say designer, I am thinking of someone who has an excellent understanding of new media and how to create it. Someone who can create graphics, video, photographs and sound that can be embedded in a document for publishing to the Apple, Kindle, Nook, Android and other stores or retail outlets. The non-fiction market is about to explode as these kinds of books become available. Imagine writing a house renovation book that shows in color and graphic detail exactly how to instal that new hardwood flooring with a combination of sound, video and print instructions. Imagine what this technology is going to do to the textbook market and how it will revolutionize education.
Selling Your Book Online: A few final thoughts about what's possible for you in the future. As the formats and technology change, your opportunity to create a revised edition for your book changes, too. Unlike the traditional bookstore, an electronic bookstore can accept and list an unlimited number of titles so that you can update the text, create videos ( how-to's, travel, cooking, etc.), release an audio version and lots of other things to publish a new edition of your book and still keep the original available for those people who continue to use the older style e-readers. Your costs don't substantially change and you don't need to pay for additional printing, shipping, etc.
If you have added some of this exciting new technology to any of your books, or are thinking about it, please leave a comment and a link so that we can all see how you are doing.
Sunday
WORLDREADER.ORG
I have long held that the cure for most of the world's ills lies in literacy and access to information. If we teach the disenfranchised to read and then provide them with the opportunity to access books and ideas, they will throw off the yoke of oppression, poverty, hunger, addiction and violence. We have seen the results of some of this in recent months in many places around the world. I suspect that we will see much more in years to come thanks to a project that I am privileged to be participating in.
THE STORY
As many of you might know, I am a big fan of Seth Godin and especially his commitment to making ideas available on a large scale basis and his willingness to share his own. He recently offered some thoughts on an organization called Worldreaders.org that you can read here. The ideas and efforts of this organization make so much sense in my mind that I just had to contact them and offer my own humble writing attempts for their program. I have just signed the agreement and sent it off to them. I don't know how many kids in Africa, Asia and South America will be interested in my books but that is not the point. The point is to give them the opportunity to read about the world and its possibilities. This project truly is about "teaching them to fish" rather than giving them a loaf of bread.
THE IDEA
In a nutshell, Worldreader is providing Kindles to students in developing countries, where paper based books are almost non-existent, and they are asking authors and publishers to make their books - the ones that are already part of the Kindle program - available at no charge. They will pre-load any books onto the devices before giving them to the students. They have made an agreement with Amazon and it really is possible for anyone who has written a book to make a difference in the world, in a very real sense. Simple, easy and brilliant - ideas, information and access, all in one package.
IF YOU ARE A READER
As a reader, there are three ways that I can suggest for you to participate:
Assuming your book is already listed on Kindle, it is a very simple process to contact Elizabeth Wood, Director of Digital Publishing for Worldreader and request their information package. There is a simple one page contract wherein you can direct Amazon to make your book available to this program. Yes, you will give up any income from potential sales to this group of potential readers. Kids learning to read in third world countries may not be that big a potential market for you, so, perhaps you will be willing to give up the royalties from sales in Ghana - think about it.
If your publisher holds the worldwide digital rights to your books, please consider talking to them about this program. Some are participating but others are requiring that the charity pay for the e-books. As you know, there is NO cost involved in making e-books available.
Send this post to your editors, designers, author-friends, distributors, and anyone else connected to making books available so that they can learn about this possibility for creating real change in the world.
AND FINALLY
A big thanks, once again, to Seth Godin for bringing this to our attention and big, big props to Worldreader.org for creating a project in which readers and authors can combine our talents, expertise, and need to make a difference into a program that will create so much good for so many people. Education will change the world and you can be a part of it.
Once again, please pass this message on to your social networks like Twitter and Facebook and let's get more people involved in this life-changing, world-building project.
THE STORY
As many of you might know, I am a big fan of Seth Godin and especially his commitment to making ideas available on a large scale basis and his willingness to share his own. He recently offered some thoughts on an organization called Worldreaders.org that you can read here. The ideas and efforts of this organization make so much sense in my mind that I just had to contact them and offer my own humble writing attempts for their program. I have just signed the agreement and sent it off to them. I don't know how many kids in Africa, Asia and South America will be interested in my books but that is not the point. The point is to give them the opportunity to read about the world and its possibilities. This project truly is about "teaching them to fish" rather than giving them a loaf of bread.
THE IDEA
In a nutshell, Worldreader is providing Kindles to students in developing countries, where paper based books are almost non-existent, and they are asking authors and publishers to make their books - the ones that are already part of the Kindle program - available at no charge. They will pre-load any books onto the devices before giving them to the students. They have made an agreement with Amazon and it really is possible for anyone who has written a book to make a difference in the world, in a very real sense. Simple, easy and brilliant - ideas, information and access, all in one package.
IF YOU ARE A READER
As a reader, there are three ways that I can suggest for you to participate:
- send an email to your favorite authors asking them to make their books available to this program - you can send the link to this blog if that makes it easier.
- send a message of support to info@worldreader.org and tell them how important their work is in transforming the world - I'm sure they would accept any donations, too!
- forward this blog post to your friends on Twitter and Facebook and encourage them to do the same - let's make this a movement for change.
Assuming your book is already listed on Kindle, it is a very simple process to contact Elizabeth Wood, Director of Digital Publishing for Worldreader and request their information package. There is a simple one page contract wherein you can direct Amazon to make your book available to this program. Yes, you will give up any income from potential sales to this group of potential readers. Kids learning to read in third world countries may not be that big a potential market for you, so, perhaps you will be willing to give up the royalties from sales in Ghana - think about it.
If your publisher holds the worldwide digital rights to your books, please consider talking to them about this program. Some are participating but others are requiring that the charity pay for the e-books. As you know, there is NO cost involved in making e-books available.
Send this post to your editors, designers, author-friends, distributors, and anyone else connected to making books available so that they can learn about this possibility for creating real change in the world.
AND FINALLY
A big thanks, once again, to Seth Godin for bringing this to our attention and big, big props to Worldreader.org for creating a project in which readers and authors can combine our talents, expertise, and need to make a difference into a program that will create so much good for so many people. Education will change the world and you can be a part of it.
Once again, please pass this message on to your social networks like Twitter and Facebook and let's get more people involved in this life-changing, world-building project.
Monday
YOU DON'T NEED A KINDLE!
With apologies to my friends and partners at Amazon/Kindle, I needed a headline that would get your attention.
When you click on any book in the Kindle store, you have the option of downloading an app for your PC, Mac, Blackberry, I-Pad or Android device that allows you to see and read any book, at the same low Kindle price, on the same machine that you are reading this.
If you can find and read a blog, email, search engine, etc. you can have access to anything in the Kindle store - the apps are free and you get to enjoy a huge selection of books at a fraction of the instore cost.
On the other hand, you could just buy a Kindle - I paid for mine in cost savings in the first month and would never switch back. And, that's from a lifelong reader who slept with books when nothing else was available.
You don't need a Kindle to buy and read a book from Kindle.
When you click on any book in the Kindle store, you have the option of downloading an app for your PC, Mac, Blackberry, I-Pad or Android device that allows you to see and read any book, at the same low Kindle price, on the same machine that you are reading this.
If you can find and read a blog, email, search engine, etc. you can have access to anything in the Kindle store - the apps are free and you get to enjoy a huge selection of books at a fraction of the instore cost.
On the other hand, you could just buy a Kindle - I paid for mine in cost savings in the first month and would never switch back. And, that's from a lifelong reader who slept with books when nothing else was available.
Sunday
AMAZON AND KINDLE
Perhaps you already knew this, but I just realized it today when I opened my "Create Space" account that shows the recent sales, etc. of my book through Amazon. Amazon will now convert your print-on-demand book into Kindle format for 69.00. They send you the files, including your cover properly formatted and then you upload it yourself to Kindle's site.
I do not think this service has been available very long since I looked for it a few month's ago. Anyway, good news if you already have a book ot two listed with Amazon. I sent a request inquiring about whether or not this format will work for Smashwords and the other e - book compilers. I will let you know when I hear back.
I do not think this service has been available very long since I looked for it a few month's ago. Anyway, good news if you already have a book ot two listed with Amazon. I sent a request inquiring about whether or not this format will work for Smashwords and the other e - book compilers. I will let you know when I hear back.
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