I have returned from the fiery abyss of writing my first eBook and uploading it on Kindle, and I bring you this message: It’s not that bad. But why write and publish an eBook? If you’re, entrepreneur, writer, blogger, or maybe a chef, what’s the point? Here’s what I’ve found: • It’s time to prove your authority. You have an incredible, life-changing idea? You won’t find a better time for your words to spread like wildfire to inspire and empower, if executed correctly. • eReaders nearly doubled from December 2011 to January 2012. 1 in 4 Americans are now using some kind of tablet (iPad, Nook, Kindle) that is capable of reading eBooks (The Kindle reading app is also available on nearly every smartphone, more on this below). • If you already have an established platform — or want to build one — this eBook will fortify all your other online marketing efforts. The opportunities to grow and expand your business or ideas through publishing an eBook are limitless. With a insightful, compelling eBook, your words can instill valuable wisdom, actions, stories and ideas that can build trust and relationships with your audience. If you follow the seven steps below, you’ll never have to read another article on publishing to Amazon’s Kindle platform ever again. Let’s get started Step 1: Define your target audience This is, baby. Without a target audience, an eBook is useless. Without a target audience, you will not see an increase in subscribers, traffic, or any building of trust whatsoever. Ask yourself: • Who is my target audience? • What do they like? • What will they learn? • What am I offering them for their time? • How can I make this eBook build a relationship with my readers? Is it a character they fall in love with? Are you motivating or inspiring them with ideas and examples? What is the main purpose? When Stephen King wrote, he wrote to his wife. When Steven Pressfield wrote The War of Art, he wrote to writers and creatives alike. When John Locke wrote How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months, he wrote to most of the people reading this article right now. Before you even think about putting a letter on that blank page, stop and ask yourself: Who am I writing to? Step 2: Do you have a platform? Jul 31, 2013 Kindle changed the game for authors by allowing them to self-publish. Problem was, they still had to pay a 30% tax to Amazon and. How One Author Earns $450,000 a Year Self-Publishing on Amazon. Success self-publishing eBooks will. To self-publish it in Amazon that’s why I. Mar 24, 2014 How To Self Publish a Kindle E-book on Amazon's KDP Select -- Join the Self-Publishing Revolution. Writers have an obligation to their audience — to respond and listen to their feedback, to build a relationship, to keep them as readers forever. Why would anyone want to miss that opportunity? That’s why we have blogs and Twitter. Let me fix that: That’s why you should be and using Twitter. Your blog can benefit you and your eBook in many ways: • Your readers can find you, support you, and give feedback. • You can build and build and build, to the point where you have thousands of subscribers waiting to read your next eBook. • You can continue the conversation. Say your eBook was motivational and inspiring; you could provide blog posts on that topic and have your readers coming back for more. This can get big it might even get fun. • A blog is your portfolio: it has your work, your info, credibility — almost all of you. Coming from someone who used to be on the other side of the fence, it’s really wonderful how reader can now connect with author; it makes the entire experience feel special. • Now that your blog has a face and examples of your work, you can meet like-minded individuals; networking is fruitful and the lifeblood of growth. • Guest posting for other blogs allows more visibility to your eBook, or at least, your blog. From there, your newfound readers may be interested in your writing. Twitter is a great platform for your eBook and yourself: • Your readers can follow you; and you can respond to them. • Find people with similar passions and interests. • Hashtags help brand your eBooks; then, when fans click on the hashtag, they will see other people giving feedback about your eBook and that may spark interest. • Promote your eBook amidst sending relevant, valuable tweets. You’re ultimately shorting yourself by not having either platform. It doesn’t matter what genre you write for, your audience needs a place to find you, get to know you, and stay updated. Just remember. Step 3: Write your eBook You have your target audience in mind, and you have a blog and/or social media platform of some kind. Do you want to know how I started my eBook after I delayed it for a few months? I woke up one morning, opened Pages for Mac, typed the title that I had in mind, and wrote. That’s what you need to do. Whatever time you read this, just know that if you don’t start tomorrow morning (or whenever you are comfortable writing), then you will never write an eBook. The easiest way to do this is either use Microsoft Word or Pages for Mac. (Kindle suggests you write it in Word because if you decide to format this yourself, you must save your file to a filtered.html or.htm format, which translates on the Kindle very well.) A few things you will have to keep in mind when writing: •. • Insert a page break when you’re finished with your chapter to eliminate unnecessary white space so your reader can immediately scroll to the next page. Finished with your TOC? Finished with your copyright page? (To insert a page break go to “Insert” at the top menu bar, then find “Page Break”). • Do not use headers, footers, or any sexy font because it will not translate on the Kindle; they have standard fonts. • Bold, italicize, and headings translate well. • Images are allowed and should be inserted as.JPGs (more on formatting your eBook below). Once you have finished writing the eBook, start the formatting process. Step 4: Tools to download before formatting You will need to download a few things to preview and format your eBook. You will see four options: KindleGen, Kindle Previewer, Kindle Plugin for Adobe InDesign, and the Kindle PC/MAC application. If you haven’t downloaded the app already — and you don’t have InDesign — you will need both KindleGen and Previewer. KindleGen is a program that will convert your saved file into a format used for the Previewer (.mobi); when you have that file in place, just drag it into the Previewer. With the Previewer, you get to preview your eBook to ensure it’s formatted to your desire. When on the Previewer, you can go up to the top menu, and click the option to view your eBook on the actual Kindle App (make sure it’s downloaded). Step 5: Formatting your eBook You have two ways to format: • Do it yourself • Pay someone to do it In order to format your own eBook, you need a good understanding of HTML. Most people I spoke to about formatting their own eBook said it was tedious, so to think over if you wish to save yourself the hassle. (I used 52Novels, paid $100 for both Kindle formatting and an ePub format. The price will vary depending on service and the amount of words.) The final format of the eBook should be a PRC. If you wish to format it yourself, use. Step 6: Before you upload, think this over By this step, you should have your eBook finished, formatted, and ready to go. All you need to do is upload it, but before you do, you have two ways of uploading: • Go the KDP Select route • Or don’t What is KDP Select? (Kindle Direct Publishing) When you enroll in this program, your eBook is locked in for 90 days. During these 90 days, you have 5 free promotional days to give your eBook out for free. After those 5 free days, your eBook will be back on the market for a price. During this 90-day period, your eBook will be available in the Kindle Owners’ Library. What is Kindle Owners’ Library? This option is exclusive to those who are Amazon Prime Members. Borrowing eBooks is only available on Kindle devices, not Kindle reading apps. Members of Amazon Prime can borrow a eBook for free for a whole month with no due dates. When someone borrows your eBook, you earn money. (Note: Only eBooks enrolled in KDP Select will be available to Kindle Owners’ Library.) How is it calculated? For example, if the is $500,000, the total qualified borrows of all participating KDP titles is 300,000, and if your eBook was borrowed 1,500 times, you will earn 0.5% (1,500/300,000 = 0.5%), or $2,500 for that month.” If you don’t enroll to KDP Select You can still upload your eBook to Kindle, but it will not be in the Kindle Owners’ Library. If you enroll in KDP Select First, lets get this out of the way: Your eBook cannot be free on Kindle. (Note: You may have heard or seen a few titles that were free for a long time. Those publishers may have worked with a company that works with Amazon. For example: Seth Godin’s ). It will be available for free for 5 days of your choosing when you enroll in their KDP Select program. Even if you do not enroll, you must have a price tag on it for a minimum of 99 cents. But there’s more. If you decide to enroll in the KDP Select program, these are the restrictions Amazon places on your eBook: • It cannot be on your blog as a subscription or email newsletter opt-in bonus • No iBooks • No Nook • No PDF version with your specific formatting and sexy fonts • It cannot be distributed anywhere else for 90 days. You may, however, opt out of the KDP Select program before your 90 days are over. When you do opt out, and the 90 days are over, you can distribute your eBook anywhere you like. Your eBook will still be up on the Kindle market — you just won’t have all the promotional tools. If you do enroll, and stay opted-in, your 90 days will renew and you will be given 5 more days of free promotion. So you have a few things to think over Not everyone has a Kindle. But the is free to download and is available on the following systems: • Windows PC • Mac • iPhone • iPad • Blackberry • Android • Windows 7 Phones And, they have the, which acts as an app but enables you to read eBooks on your browser: Safari, Mozilla, and Google Chrome. So is it possible to mix this pervasive and free app into your strategy for marketing your eBook? Step 7: Upload your eBook You made your choice. You have your eBook. It’s time to upload.. After hitting Save & Publish, it will take about 24 hours for it to be on the Kindle store. Within 48-72 hours, the remaining details will be visible on the detail page, such as product description and links related to the physical edition. Your eBook cover Your cover is everything. If the cover is gross and lacks a clear message, the readers’ eyes will scroll right over it, and your opportunity may be lost forever. Think of it as a blog design: you go to a blog and have — in my personal opinion — less than 10 seconds to attract the reader. After that 10 seconds and they still don’t know what you’re about — they’ll X out and be gone forever. As your personal guide through this process, I highly recommend you hire a designer. As an avid reader of Kindle eBooks, I’d say 85% of the covers out there are garbage — this is an opportunity, it’s your time to shine. Can I un-publish at any time? Yes, you may withdraw your eBook at any time, but remember this: Once enrolled in KDP Select, that “exclusive” rule still applies for 90 days — so even if you un-publish, you will not be able to publish your eBook on any other platform. Royalties As the publisher, you determine the price. KDP offers two: 70% and 35%. In order to receive 70% royalties for your eBook, you must meet the following criteria: • The price of your eBook must be between $2.99 and $9.99. • This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book. You can read more about it on the. Do I need an ISBN number? An ISBN number is not required when publishing through Kindle Direct Publishing; what you will receive is a 10-digit AISN (Amazon Standard Identification Number), which is unique to your eBook and found on Kindle Amazon. If you have an ISBN number, you may enter it in the publishing process. Congratulations, you’re finished! You defined your target audience and have an idea of how to market it. You wrote the eBook, formatted, and uploaded. You have a great cover, detailed product description of what your eBook is about, and now it’s on the market. Congratulations, you self-published your eBook; you should be ecstatic. Just because your eBook is up doesn’t mean the journey ends now — it’s time to write your next eBook. Don’t stop your momentum. Keep it going. Promote your eBook, keep up with your readers and blog, and begin your next project., self-publishing, eBooks — this is our future. There really hasn’t been a better time for people who want to spread his or her ideas. Enjoy, I hope you found this insightful. Let me know about your questions and experiences regarding publishing to Amazon’s Kindle platform in the comments below. Paul, I have begun writing my first e-book. I have so many ideas for other books, but I know getting started and publishing the first is the most difficult. I have to admit that I am a little overwhelmed, lacking in confidence and intimidated by the formatting process, uploading the book, etc, etc. Formatting the TOC alone made my head spin! Also, trying to figure out how to promote it, which way is best with Amazonmy gosh, it is a daunting endeavorbut I know worth it! A couple of questions: 1. How much would it cost to have someone publish it on Amazon for me? I honestly don’t know if I can do it myselfI feel so dumb. How much does a cover designer costs? Do you know any reasonable designers? Like everyone, I am short of cash and cannot afford to pay an arm and a leg to have a cover designed, although I agree with you that it is what catches the reader/buyer Oh boy, so much to think about! I would love anyone’s help and input! Hey Rachel, Try and take it all one step at a time. My first time doing all of this was daunting as well. I’ll help you as best as I can — and don’t worry, you aren’t dumb. Once you complete this first process, I’m sure you’ll be able to teach it to others. I don’t know how much it would exactly cost. I paid roughly $100 to the company that I mentioned, 52novels, and they formatted the eBook for me in both Amazon format and ePub. With that, you can publish very easily. You fill in all the data about your book, the keywords, title, etc., and then you simply upload the file you were given. Then you set the pricing. Then you’re finished. Maybe try the website smashwords; I’m not too familiar with them but I know they have a service that helps you upload your eBook to various places. Designer’s cost varies depending on what you want. You don’t have to pay an extravagant price. Also note, the cover doesn’t have to be extravagant. It has to be clear. Sends the right message about what your book is going to be about. I would recommend a dear friend of mine who is both fair in pricing and excellent in her work. Her website is I hope that helps. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. If I don’t answer soon enough, try the Amazon forums. I actually received a lot of help through there. • Nadeem says. Well done Paul! While many people are bemoaning the fact that it is now much harder to charge double digits for an ebook as we could just a few years ago, others are seeing opportunity. Just a few short years ago, the people who were most familiar with the ebook format were either internet marketers or their regular customers. It was a limited audience in many respects. Now, the general public knows what an ebook is and may be interested in having/buying it. Pricing is a lot lower because they’re now usually compared to print minus printing costs, but the audience is much much bigger I think. The steps you lay out here are right on target. There are so many businesses that can benefit from ebooks. I hope people will be inspired to open up their Pages or Word and get going! Calibre will allow you to convert a an epub file to Mobi or other formats and to also set a cover, and meta data – it will generate a complete ebook file you can upload to Amazon in a few moments – you can generate an epub file from Word using Aspose.WordsEXPRESS. You must know what settings to use in Calibre to generate an ebook from the resulting epub file. I will send you a free copy of my ebook about this called “Word to Kindle and Nook: How to Publish eBooks using Word” which details the settings and shows screenshots of the entire process. It takes just minutes to get a Word document ready for Kindle or Nook publishing using the two free programs. My ebook is not in Kindle Select now, so it has fallen greatly in sales on Amazon – in fact, I don’t do much writing, anymore. I am focusing on my abstract paintings since moving permanently to Hawaii – so anybody who wants a free copy of my book just let me know where to send it and I will give you a copy. You can use Fiverr.com to have someone design an ebook cover for you, too! I have formatted a word based ebook with 77,000 plus words in it and tons of images using these two programs and my special settings with perfect results. For the curious, this book is “Aliens in Egypt”, by Xaviant Haze. • Victoria Gray says. Great post, Paul! I wish I’d had some of these resourced prior to publishing. I published my novel (“Never Smile at Strangers”) in November 2011 and two weeks ago it hits the bestsellers list in the Kindle Store. The sales have been wonderful (& I’m selling MANY more ebooks than paperbacks). What’s extra great though is Kindle’s lending library. I believe the fund for March (as was February) is $600,000. I find that a lot of people get it under loan, then end up either buying the ebook or paperback for their libraries. These last few months of publishing digitally has taught me a lot and I’ve reaped much more fulfillment, satisfaction & money than ever before from my “fiction” writing career. This is book #1 of many. Best, Jennifer • says. Paul, Yes, the topic and details are great. And I’m glad you’ve had success with your e-publishing venture. However, I have to comment about the book you used for art at the top of this post. Paula McLain’s critically acclaimed novel, The Paris Wife, a New York Times best seller and winner of many awards, is NOT a self-published e-book. Nor, is it your book. Yes, Paula’s novel — still selling well in hardcover — is available on a Kindle. But it is misleading to include it next to a declaration that you’ve just finished writing your first e-book. As artists, we all need to guard against even the appearance of appropriating others’ creative work as our own. Or, of using others’ art without credit. The post didn’t explain why you used her book as an example. And neither she, nor her novel, were identified, despite being featured prominently. -Becky Gaylord see my entire social presence here: • says. Venus, I use BookBaby for my own eBooks and those that I don’t care to have in the Kindle Direct Library. Though I love the library, fiction are the most lended genre and if I’m expecting my eBook to sell more than 50 copies, listing with BookBaby is worth it due to the massive amount of distribution they offer. They currently charge $99 per title and $19 per year to keep it in distribution. I’ve also had several clients choose to go with their distribution service and they’ve been very pleased with the increase in sales. One thing, though, I’m not sure how good their formatting service is and it doesn’t look like you can proof read your eBook on a reader device (I proof all my eBooks on my Kindle prior to sending them to BookBaby), so it’s kind of a shot in the dark if you don’t have a level of quality control there. I’ve seen people hire professional eBook programmers and due to a lack of quality control they ended up with a whole section of their book poorly formatted and nearly unreadable. But for distribution, if you expect to sell a lot of copies, BookBaby is worth it! Definitely an essential step. Shame on me for not adding that. If you can’t hire an editor, use your resources (friends, mentors, coworkers, blogger/writer friends, etc). A lot of my editing in my last book was a lot of teamwork and open brainstorming/openly editing. I was also fortunate to have a friend with great editorial skills, but mainly it helps to have a fresh pair of eyes read over your work (and usually being right next to them to hear what they read). Thank you for adding this tip, much needed. I literally surfaced from a 60 minute writing burst on my ebook to see this post, Copyblogger needs to stop reading my mind! Thank you that’s very flattering. Yes, I agree people do have different preferences, but I do believe that Amazon is dominating in their market. People buy iPads and don’t even really use iBooks — they use Kindle reading app. It does depend on the audience and what not, but overall, with the right marketing, the right target audience in mind, as well as a strong platform, your eBook should get into the hands of your audience. One thing that really has helped me was guest posting for other sites; it still is the most highly effective way of marketing, building relationships, attracting new readers, and spreading the word of your eBook. As a recent ebook author, I appreciate your post. Let me just add a couple points. In addition to knowing their audience, writers need to have a clear idea of their expertise and how it relates to their market. I’m amazed at how much advice I’ve read about finding a topic. You should have a topic, and a working title, before you begin. And you’d better have enough passion to carry you through all the hard work. Let me also suggest that writers also publish in paperback, which Amazon also lets you do through Createspace. There will always be people who prefer reading this way. Plus you can sell them at speaking events. It’s all about giving readers choice. I published my ebook. Write Like You Talk–Only Better, through both Kindle and Smashwords, because I wanted to make sure it was easy to download for all e-readers. They convert to all formats and distribute at no charge, though they do take a slice of the revenues, like Amazon does. I was also be offer free downloads, which are resulting in more reviews. As e-publishing pioneers, we should support each through advice like you did in this post..Check out my blog if you want to hear more about my experience. I’ve downloaded your book and look forward to reading it this week. Let me know if you’d like one of mine. Thanks, Paul. I’ve only published short documents (crochet patterns) on the Kindle Platform, but really want to write and publish an ebook. This article will help get me started. I also need to look into the Kindle Select program more deeply. I remember when it was announced, but didn’t pay too much attention to it because I didn’t want to give my patterns away for free. But 5 free days over a 90-day period isn’t bad at all, and the potential to earn via the lending library has really got me interested. Thanks for sharing. Good to hear, Patrice. Definitely weigh your options and see what is best for you. It’ll sound strange for me to say to not listen to anyone when picking a price or enrolling in KDP because what I really want people to do is experiment and learn on their own. It’s not like you’re only going to be writing one eBook for the rest of your life, so I find it important to test, experiment, and measure your results and play to your strengths. I enrolled and used 3/5 free days. My eBook has been up for 21 days and I have a total of downloads and purchase: 650. 0 borrows though, which is a bit strange. Good timing, thanks. Three thoughts: 1) How does Amazon define book? Is it a word count? A page count? Some combination of both? 2) The “Define your target audience” section is helpful. However, I would like to suggest someone devote a full post on vetting an idea for a book. 3) Finally, how about more on the process of pulling those loose ends into focus? Perhaps it’s just me but the publishing part seems to be the easy part. Worst case, as you noted, it can be outsourced. However, the process of shifting from blogger to book author is probably underestimated more often than not, yes? 1) it can be any length. A kindle eBook is an eBook, period. It can be poetry, short story, how to’s, a long list of blog posts consolidated. Anything, really, in my opinion. 2) That’s a great point, and maybe I’ll do one in the future. Good food for thought. ? 3) I don’t know if its underestimated — I personally felt that as a blogger going the eBook route was just expanding and being more diverse with my writing, as well as adapting to the change in the online world. Also, many people have different motives to write. But, it is still very fairly new. I realized that PDF and newsletter subscription was a great way to sponsor and to attract subscribers, but for some reason I feel strongly about Kindle eBooks and reading apps readily available on multiple platforms (cellphone, tablet, etc.). I’m thinking we’re going to be seeing a lot of bloggers self-publishing their eBooks; however, the increase in the number of published eBooks has been consistently rising, so the power of free and the power of $0.99 cents will eventually have a new meaning (in my opinion). This is probably the most comprehensive Kindle article I’ve ever read. As someone who’s been in publishing for many years and seen eBooks grow from internet marketers to the general public, and therefore being abused by authors who don’t know any better, I thank you for posting the importance of audience, a decent cover, and especially proper formatting. I’ve done a lot of eBooks that started out as nice print books with “sexy fonts” and my eBook programmer has been able to make those eBooks look just as nice as their print counterparts. Pretty fonts stay intact by embedding them as images within the code and complex graphics, bullets, bolds, italics and other formatting issues that come up with anything besides straight plain text look fabulous when a proper eBook programmer converts it. I personally use an eBook programmer for all my own books and all my client’s books. Outsourcing isn’t that expensive when it means you can avoid negative reviews on Amazon from people who can’t read a poorly formatted Kindle book. Negative reviews and a soiled reputation as an author are much harder to pay for in the long run than a proper eBook programmer, so if you have bullets, italics, bolds, headings, graphics or other complex formatting I’d recommend not skipping that crucial step. Thanks for the fabulous post, Paul! I’m working on my second ebook and have recently started using Jutoh as the means of auto-creating ebooks for multiple formats. It has a learning curve, but is really good for moving chapters and sections around (which requires a different TOC, which is automatic in Jutoh), automating cover creation, internal and external links, fixing formatting issues, and auto-compiling and producing books for multiple formats – Kindle, Nook, iPad, others. Worth a look. A bargain at $38. There is a free trial copy. You can find it at Jutoh.com • says. Well, seeing as how it was my first book, my objective was to promote it as much as possible, to spread my writing, get people to like me, and to see where I stand with my audience, as well as inspire and enrich one’s life. I could have stuck with PDF format (because it looked simply amazing) and used it as a blog subscription, but I wanted to try something else. So I enrolled in KDP. The few free days I’ve used up has resulted in great numbers, but only because I used guest posting and my relationship with other writers and bloggers to promote my work. If I didn’t do either of those two, then I don’t know what the results would have looked like. As for writing your eBook, I recommend you take it a day at a time, even if it’s for 1 hour. Get something down. Create the outline. Brainstorm and write down notes. It’s important to start, no matter when, where, or how. I hope this helps, Ali. Great, informative, and straight-to-the-point article Paul. I’m gathering a lot of information about e-publishing on the Kindle platform on our ‘Write2Profit’ Writer’s Website, and this is really helpful. As a Kindle ‘newbie’ I’m also hoping to publish some e-Books on Kindle shortly, so again – thanks for a really useful and informative article. I’m off to get your free e-Book now, so thanks for that, too! The subject of how to publish on Kindle is also a great e-Book subject in itself, as you probably know, and we promote some of the current ‘How To’ publish on Kindle e-Books on our ‘Write2Profit’ site. As someone who helps self-publishing on a daily basis, my advice is simple — pay for someone to convert your book. It is a service that we offer our writers, but only on their insistence. We resisted offering it for months, but after many conversations it was clear that many writers were making mistakes they could have avoided. I also feel that since self-publishers ‘have something to prove’ it is their duty to make their book the best it can be. Self-publishers face immediate suspicion and extra attention from writers, they must, therefore, be amazing. This means a great cover, professional editing and, if you can afford it, professional ebook conversion. We are now regularly seeing writers selling between 500-1000 books a month. This might not be a huge number but it is a great base line number from which you can work out how much you can afford to spend on pre-production (editing etc.). Gary Smailes • says. “ Write it in Word because if you decide to format this yourself, you must save your file to a filtered.html or.htm format, which translates on the Kindle very well.” This is not true. My ebooks looked like TOTAL CRAP after converting from Word. I cannot sell books looking like that so I pulled them from the program. I will probably have them professionally formatted at a later time. Question: When I previewed my ebooks on the KDP select site, they only looked halfway indecent. But when I then viewed them on the Buy page at Amazon.com, they looked totally different, and much worse. Any idea what’s up with that? Molly, you can have perfectly formatted ebooks from Word using two free programs: Aspose.wordsEXPRESS to turn your properly formatted Word document into an epub file, then Calibre to set the meta data and add an ebook cover. Calibre will convert your epub file to Mobi (and many other formats) and give you a file that can be uploaded to Amazon very easily. The process takes minutes. No Htlm fussing around – you can download Kindle for PC or Mac to preview your book. If you see errors, just edit your original Word document and run it through the process again! I will send you a free copy of my short guide about this (it has screenshots) if you tell me where to send it? • Victoria Gray says. Thanks for sharing, this is a great post! But I would add, there’s more to finding a target market than just “finding” it. Once you find it, you then have to figure out what angle you need to come from to make them interested in what you are writing and in some instances that can be tricky. You have to understand what is selling in the marketplace and then what about that HASN’T been tapped into yet. Also, actually writing an ebook can be difficult for some people. You need to create an outline to stay on track. And you need to get really clear about what is going to be in the ebook and what is left for other ebooks down the road. And, if you find that you want to judge while writing, talk it instead! One of the ways we have built our blog up to reaching 111 countries and 60,000 hits between our 2 sites is to leave the article hanging when we write it. They read the article and get the gist but we leave it open on the end. The rest will be in the upcoming book. I don’t know if we have enough to publish yet in interest what do you think? I found it interesting that men don’t come into our tipsforlove.net site but they will come in and read the same articles on my projecttroops.org site. It’s macho and means it ok to read.but tipsforlove? I think they think it’s to female oriented to read. This is important to know if starting a blog. Will you get the readers in with your title? Thanks Tamra Lynn Smith and best of luck to you all. • Victoria Gray says. Thank you for this very helpful website. We are trying to get all our ducks in a row to publish our new book by May 2012. This process is a bit confusing and you have helped me a lot on this. I was dissapointed to see how much droid and apple apps are to create. This was going to be a critical step in jumping ahead. We have our blog and hitting 60,000 hits a month since Jan 2012 so I think we have a good base for our new book on relationships. Professor Thomas Nagle has been trying to get this book together for 15 years lol. Visit us on tipsforlove.net Thank you so much for writing this. What do you think? Is 60,000 hits a month on a blog good enough to publish? I have not paid for advertising but instead used facebook and twitter to market this idea? Thank you kindly:From Tamra Lynn Smith • says. Hey Paul, I gather from what I read that you are charging 99 cents for your ebook. The most likely reason that people are not borrowing the book is the price. Customers who are involved in the lending program get to choose the book they borrow each month. They usually choose a higher priced book to get for free. If you were going to get 2 books in one month and one was 99 cents and one was $9.99 you would likely choose to get the $9.99 book for free and buy the 99 cent book. This is what KDP members are doing – choosing the books they borrow by looking at the books they want and choosing the more expensive book as their borrowed book and buying the less expensive books. My partner and I have been successful with our Kindle books, the latest being. Good luck with your book! I believe building a platform first and then using it to launch your book is an excellent and well-thoughtout idea. It all depends on what you’re knowledgable in. If you’re writing about a specific craft that you’re well-versed in, your blog is used to educate your audience on useful tips and insights that you learned and used through your own experiences. For example, Copyblogger provides insight on publishing, writing, blogging, marketing, and so forth. Their product varies from WordPress themes and tools used within. Paul, so much great information here like others said. I find out that even though I have paid WSOs and diff paid ebooks on amazon kindle publishing, I find out that this free guest post is enough for anyone to get started in the kindle publishing system. While many things has changed, there are still many things working in making high sales on Amazon. If you have a long term plan for your book (like I have for my upcoming trilogy) using the KDP select will be a good thing – if you need your money so fast then you use the normal way, sell and make money. If one has a platform as well, it is going to be a good avenue to always make good sales like Armanda and Jeff has done with their blogs. So Paul, do you have any new figure as to how your ebook went? I will like to read your latest experience. Sheyi • Nancy says. If you want to sell an ebook seamlessly on your website you can use eJunkie.com which will handle all of your payment processing and digital delivery very cheaply! They also have a marketplace where your ebook is featured. If you don’t want to pay the small monthly fee, you can create a Paypal button that will deliver the ebook on a landing (Thank You) page you create before the sale. After a successful sale on your blog or website, Paypal will send the purchaser to your landing page where the download link is located – you can upsell the purchaser on this page or use it get get them onto your mailing list – show them videos, or give them free bonuses, ask them to follow you on Twitter or Facebook, etc. Hope this helps! Thank you for he wonderful step-by-step, Paul! I’ll certainly be using this in the future. First, I have a question, and a problem. My question is regarding the section where you say you can’t publish on nook as well. Does that mean you can’t publish via nook the first ninety days, or not at all? My plan was to publish on KDP, wait out the ninety days, and publish other places. I now wonder if that will be an issue? And as for the problem, I’m a fourteen year old (aspiring) author and I’m looking to self-publish my novel through KDP. But I really feel like it’s a sort of cop-out– just slapping it up on the internet and advertising. Like giving up without trying. I really want to share my work with others, but I don’t want just a few people to see it, I want it to be more than that. I’m not saying I will be disappointed with anything less than J.K. Rowling-worthy sales, but it would be comforting to know that it isn’t just uselessly floating around on the internet. Does any of that make sense? Furthermore, my current plan is to be a novelist for a living, and I feel like I might as well get myself out there sooner than later, right? Get started while my parents will still support me, build up my own little army of people wanting another book, and be set for a while? If you actually end up reading this long-winded nonsense, thank you. Sorry for the late reply Faye. You can publish it on Nook AFTER your 90 days are over. During the KDP promotion that you sign up for, no, you cannot publish it elsewhere. As for the second part of your comment, it’s a process. Build your platform and audience. My first self-published book sold, to date, about 3500. To many that’s not much, but for someone who picked up writing only a few years ago, I’d say that’s a big first win. Seth Godin said something awesome to me, and I’ll say it to you: “Think journey, not destination.” • David says. As a new author, you will not receive much in the way of promotion for your traditionally published book. In fact, they will ask YOU how you intend to promote it. You will have a small press run and you book will be tied up contractually with the publisher for years. With Amazon, or simply publishing for Kindle on you own – you will still have to face the giant hurdle of promotion but with the Select Program you will at least have Amazon’s huge promotional system giving away your ebook to a wide audience and they hope is that this will build an audience and sales. What happens is people download tons of free ebooks and don’t read them! You have to stand out in some way, ask for reviews, and promote your book via social mediums, blogs and in any other way you can think of – you are not just a writer when you become an author, you are a self-promoter, too! But as young as you are – you will master all of these things over time and have every chance of becoming a working published novelist and writer. Nothing is stopping you but your own willingness to jump and work at it every day. My friend Steve Hayes is a professional writer in his 80’s who writes every day at 4:00 am when his house is quiet and has done this for decades. He was a young actor in Hollywood turned screenwriter in the 40’and 50’s and beyond and now is retired but is a writer ever really retired? His books are published every year in all sorts of genres, including ebooks versions. Nothing is stopping your from becoming another Steve Hayes! Thank you for a well-written and well-formatted post. I’ve tried to scan all 182 comments and answers (!) but forgive me if this has already been addressed I’m going to publish with KDP then opt-out @ 90 days so I can sell via my own site. I believe Word play better than Pages with KDP due to conversion issues to.mobi. My content will consist of stories, photographs and recipes – so I anticipate formatting nightmares. Do you recommend any recipe formatting templates or rules of thumb? If I can find a service for $100 that may well be a bargain, but I’d like to take the material to the first level – edit, format as much as possible to reduce risk of typos and such. Doesn’t seem to be much out there (save for iBooks – incompatible/compeitor, and some subpar templates.) Any help is much appreciated. I have most of the content done, have the platform, and am eager to put it all together! Cheers, Jacqueline • says. Jacqueline, I’m not well versed in this because I didn’t include any recipes or photographs in my book. What I would recommend to you is that you see how other authors have successfully done it, take certain elements that you like, and tell the designer, “Here, this is how I want this page and this page to look.” There really is no right or wrong answer here, I don’t think. As long as it’s easy to read, navigate, and see, then it shouldn’t be a problem. So if it’s a cookbook, I’d say maybe have a picture on one page, then when someone hits next on their Kindle or slides their finger, the recipe is on the following. Something like that. Or have it so the picture fits on the far left or right, and the recipe in say, bullet form, on the opposite side. Great Article! Forgive me if this was already asked, but I’ve been searching online for hours for an answer How do you set up business licensing for selling ebooks online through amazon/kindle, et al AND your own personal website? Are we sales tax exempt since we are selling a digital product to an international market? My business revenue will be primarily digital products but also “consulting” and “public speaking/training”. I am based in California, USA. Setting up my business as a sole proprietor to start out with an EIN, DBA and business bank account linked to a merchant Paypal account. BUT what sort of licensing do I need to sell digital info products and ebooks? Thank you for clarifying how to best funnel the dough into my bank account and help me set this up right from the get go! Xo ~Scarlet • Linda says. Apple A while back I wrote a column titled ',' which was mostly about how to create and sell your own paper book. After folks asked me to do something similar for e-books, I created this article, which has now been updated a few times. I begin with one caveat: The whole e-book market is rapidly evolving, and a lot of self-publishing companies are offering e-book deals bundled into their print book publishing packages, which makes them harder to break out and evaluate. It's all quite complicated, and in an effort to sort through the confusion, I've decided to offer a few basic tips and present what I think are some of the best options out there for creating an e-book quickly and easily. As things change -- and they will -- I'll do my best to keep this column up to date. Tips: • It's gotta be good: The same rule applies to self-published e-books as it does to print books. You have to start with a good product if you have any hope of selling it. • Create an arresting cover: When it comes to e-books, everything starts with the cover image. Creating an eye-catching, professional-looking cover that also looks good small (it has to stand out as a thumbnail image, since it's being sold online) is easier said than done, but it can really make a difference in terms of sales. Ideally, you should hire a graphic designer who has some experience creating book covers. From a production standpoint, an e-book cover is easier to create than a cover for a print book (you just need a JPEG with decent resolution), but it shouldn't look out of place among traditionally published e-books. I can't tell you how many bad self-published covers are out there. • Price your e-book cheaply: You should sell your e-book for $5.99 or less. According to research done by, an online e-book publishing and distribution platform for authors, publishers, agents, and readers, $2.99 to $5.99 yields the most profit for self-published authors, and although 99 cents will get you more downloads, it's a poor price point for earning income (see Smashwords' presentation on pricing ). On the other hand,, one of the bigger online self-publishing operations, says that authors who price their e-books in the 99-cent to $2.99 range 'sell more units and earn more revenue than those in any other price range.' It's important to note that Amazon's 70 percent royalty for authors only applies to Kindle books priced between $2.99 and $9.99; otherwise, the rate kicks down to 35 percent). As for going free, well, Smashword data indicates that free e-books get about 100 times more downloads than priced e-books. • Avoid any outfits that don't let you set the price: This is one of the cardinal rules of self-publishing an e-book. You must be able to control the pricing of your e-book. If you want to sell it for 99 cents, then you should be able to sell it for 99 cents. • Marketing is all about creating awareness for your e-book: I don't have any secret marketing tips to offer, but what I can say is that you can't sell a book if no one knows it exists. Most of book marketing is simply about creating awareness and you need to do that however you can, whether it's through social media or blogging or passing out fliers on a street corner. (I made a business card for my book, which I pass out if someone seems interested in hearing more about it.) E-book publishing options. Here are the three big questions to bear in mind with e-book creation: first, what is the easiest and most cost-efficient way to produce an e-book? Second, where will it be distributed? And third, how much of a cut do you get? With those in mind, let's take a look at some of the more high-profile options available currently. I'm limiting it to these options because I want to keep this as simple as possible. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) This is Amazon's, and if you think you're going to sell a lot of e-books, you should figure out a way to upload your file (book) directly to and avoid using any sort of middleman or e-book 'aggregator' that takes a cut of the profits. If you're a true DIY person, you can create your own cover (though if you're not a professional designer, it's better to hire a pro) and format your e-book from a Word file using free software tools such as. Mobipocket Creator allows you to create an e-book with a table of contents and convert it into Amazon's proprietary e-book format, AZW (MOBI, the file output by the program, is the same as AZW). You can start with a Word file, which then gets converted to HTML, then MOBI. (Check out the Mobipocket eBook Creator guide ). Amazon If you don't want to go the total DIY route, you can pay someone a few hundred dollars (or less) to format your e-book for you, but you'll still need to come up with a cover. Konrath, who's had a lot of success in the self-published e-book space and has written an excellent primer called,' recommended Rob Siders. You can also try Ray Fowler. And Smashwords' founder Mark Coker maintains 'Mark's List,' which is a list of low-cost e-book formatters and cover designers with pricing starting at about $50. You can get the list via instant autoresponder by e-mailing [email protected]. Amazon offers a 70 percent royalty rate for authors, but some rules apply (see the ). This is the same royalty that Apple offers iPhone/iPad app developers and authors who sell e-books via its iBookstore store. You can upload your e-book directly to the iBookstore, but you have to and it's a bit of a process. That's why authors tend to use an 'aggregator' like Smashwords or Lulu to get into the iBookstore (see complete list of Apple-approved aggregators ). Even though the supports most of the leading e-book stores (Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook, Kobo), getting into the iBookstore is becoming more important as Apple continues to sell millions of iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches. That said, Amazon is offering incentives to authors to offer their works exclusively on Amazon. This program is called and it comes with some key perks. Here's what Amazon has to say: KDP Select is a new option that features a to independent authors and publishers. If you choose to make a book exclusive to the Kindle Store for at least 90 days, the book is eligible to be included in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library and you can earn a share of the fund based on how frequently the book is borrowed (click here to see how payments are calculated). In addition, by choosing KDP Select, you will have access to a new set of promotional tools, starting with the option to offer enrolled books free to readers for up to 5 days every 90 days. Authors and publishers can enroll a single title, their whole catalog or anything in between within KDP Select. The allows Amazon Prime members to 'check out' your e-book for free (members can only check out one eligible title per month). Obviously, being able to offer your book for free to thousands -- or potentially million of customers -- increases the odds you'll 'sell' more books. And what's nice is that even though people may not being paying to download your book, you're still getting paid -- and pretty well, according to Amazon. 'Every time a customer borrowed an independently published book in March [2012], the author earned $2.18,' said Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle Content, in a. 'That's more than many authors earn when their books are sold.' I can't tell you how long Amazon will continue offering this deal -- and what future payout rates will be -- but I do know plenty of indie authors who are choosing the KDP Select option and not publishing on other platforms because they think it makes the most sense both in terms of number of sales (or downloads) and earnings. Kindle still has the largest market share with about 60 percent of the e-book pie (Nook is at around 25 percent, Apple 15 percent, and others are left to pick up the crumbs). Of course, not everybody feels KDP Select is the way to go. Smashwords' Coker, who's also the author of the free e-book (it's worth checking out), thinks authors should shy away from KDP Select and has. Needless to say, Coker has a vested interest in you not going exclusive with Amazon. But he's also well-regarded in the indie book world. Smashwords, one of the e-book pioneers and largest distributors of self-published e-books, with more than 125,000 titles from over 40,000 authors, is very much a DIY operation. You bring your Word file and cover image, upload it into the company's 'Meatgrinder' tool, and in a matter of minutes, you create your e-book in just about every format you'd want. You can then sell that e-book on Smashwords.com or have the company distribute it to most of the, including Barnes & Noble's eBookstore, Apple's iBooks, Sony, Kobo, and Baker & Taylor's Blio and others. Smashwords also has deals in place for having its authors' e-books distributed to libraries. As for the Kindle, well, Smashwords says it's still waiting for Amazon to update its KDP intake systems so it automatically can ingest Smashwords titles as other retailers do (the 200 or so titles that Smashwords has loaded into KDP have been loaded manually). Amazon encourages authors to upload directly through KDP, so I wouldn't count on this happening anytime soon. Smashwords is an Apple-approved aggregator. Smashwords Smashwords offers a for formatting your e-book. Although Smashwords encourages authors to keep things simple, you can still create a professional-quality e-book with Smashwords that includes a linked table of contents, NCX navigation, and custom paragraph styling. A couple of years ago, I created an acceptable-looking e-book in about 30 minutes after making some tweaks (usually they involve spacing between chapter breaks) and reprocessing my file three times. If you follow Smashwords' guidelines, you can end up with a professional-quality 'reflowable' e-book that looks as good as what many of the big publishers are putting out and reads well on any screen size. Smashwords prides itself on not charging you for creating your e-book and taking only a small cut of author's royalties (see Smashwords' ). Though the cut is small, it's still a cut, but that's the price you're paying for the convenience of having your book distributed on a wide array of platforms and having Smashwords track your sales. Coker has chided me a bit for disparaging the middleman. He's quick to point out that a good middleman partner (distributor) saves you time, helps you reach retailers you can't reach, and helps you centrally and efficiently manage distribution and metadata updates (change your price or book cover and the change propagates out to all retailers). Lastly, it's worth noting that Smashwords provides free ISBNs. I'm not going to get into a full on discussion of ISBN, which is 'a unique identifier' associated with your e-book, but most companies provide a free ISBN for your e-book or roll the price up into a package. Smashwords has a good to e-book ISBNs that you should take a look. Authors should think globally from day one. -- Mark Coker, Smashwords founder. Some distributors are more transparent than others about disclosing exactly what cut they take from your sales. Smashwords considers itself especially transparent. As soon as you upload your book, you get a dynamic pie chart that estimates how the pie is split at each price point across the different sales channels. Smashwords operates its own e-book store, where authors earn 85 percent of the net sale (what's left after credit card fees are deducted). That works out to between 60 and 80 percent of the list price, depending on the book's price (for more info on author earnings and payment schedules, see ). For books distributed by Smashwords to its retail network of the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel and Baker & Taylor's Blio, the author earns 60 percent of the list price, the retailer takes 30 percent and Smashwords earns 10 percent. The cuts work essentially the same for overseas sales, though in countries that impose VAT taxes, the VAT often comes out of the purchase price before the percentages are applied. As far as international sales go, Coker says they're growing rapidly. Apple's in 32 countries already and Amazon, Kobo, B&N and Sony are all expanding their global operations. Coker says that 45 percent of its Apple iBookstore sales are from outside the U.S. 'Authors should think globally from day one,' Coker says. He predicts that the market outside the U.S. For indie English-language e-books will soon be larger than the U.S. Indie book growth is slowing in the U.S., he says, but fledgling international e-book markets are on the cusp of entering their exponential growth phases. BookBaby, the sibling of (Brian Felsen is the president of both operations), has a slightly different business model from some of its competitors. Instead of taking a cut of your royalties, it makes you, then charges you a yearly fee of $19 per title you have in its system. It also offers print publishing services. BookBaby has upfront costs but doesn't take a royalty cut. BookBaby I haven't used BookBaby but I spoke to a customer service representative at length and was impressed with her responses. When I asked about what advantages BookBaby had over Smashwords, she didn't knock her competitor. 'Smashwords is great,' she said. 'But BookBaby is for someone who wants a little more hand-holding through the process.' Smashwords' Coker concurs and told me that he's sent people who wanted more hand-holding to BookBaby. Of course, you'll have to pay a bit more to get that hand-holding. There's a that runs $199, as well as (the customer service rep recommended going with the $279 Deluxe option). BookBaby offers distribution with all the major e-book sellers (see list ) and offers an to track and analyze sales data. In all, BookBaby seems like one of the better indie e-book operations out there. If you only sell a few books, that $99 entry fee (or $199 if you go with the premium package) may not seem like such a great deal. But if you sell a lot, you'll quickly recoup your investment. PubIt is B&N's self-publishing offering. Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble's PubIt self-publishing operation offers similar features to Amazon's KDP, but the two platforms do have their differences. Barnes & Noble has set the PubIt royalty rate for authors at 65 percent of the sale price for titles priced $2.99 and higher. The rate falls to 40 percent if you choose to go lower than $2.99 or higher than $9.99, with B&N setting 99 cents as the lowest allowable price and $199.99 as the highest. (For books priced under $2.99 or over $9.99, you actually earn more by distributing your book to B&N through Smashwords, which pays 60 percent list for all prices 99 cents and up. B&N's 65 percent is close to Amazon's 70 percent royalty, but not quite as high (Amazon also has pricing restriction to get its highest rate). PubIt includes a free conversion tool that takes your Microsoft Word, TXT, HTML, or RTF files and automatically converts it to an EPUB file, which you then upload to Barnes & Noble's eBookstore (alternatively, of course, if your e-book is already an EPUB file, you can just upload it directly through PubIt). Barnes & Noble allows you to preview how your content will look on one of Barnes & Noble's e-reading devices using the Nook emulator. Barnes & Noble says that going forward it will offer some unique features and is looking for ways to tie-in the Nook's in-store Wi-Fi streaming features and feature local self-published authors in stores specific to each location. For reference, here's a look at the PubIt. Lulu When you publish a print book at Lulu -- and a lot of people do -- you also have the option of just publishing an e-book. Lulu e-books are distributed to Apple's iBookstore, Lulu.com, and Barnes & Noble (Nook). Lulu is also an approved Apple aggregator. The main benefit Lulu offers in the e-book realm is that it's one of the designated aggregators for Apple's iBookstore. It appears that Lulu doesn't charge you anything to create an e-book (it offers an EPUB conversion tool and), but like some competitors it offers fee-based premium services. Lulu has greatly improved its royalty terms in last 18 months. As far as I can tell from its, Lulu takes a 10 percent cut of your net earnings from Apple's iBookstore and B&N's Nook Book Store. It's hard to say what advantages Lulu has over competitors like Smashwords but at least the royalty rates appear to be the same. Weirdly, I found the Lulu Web site to be straightforward yet convoluted at the same time. For instance, I couldn't figure out whether Lulu distributes your e-book to any retailers beyond Lulu.com, Apple, and Barnes & Noble. From what I saw on the site, it appears they don't. Click to check out Lulu's e-book creation options. Booktango, one of the largest self-publishers in the U.S., has entered the DIY e-book market with. Whether Booktango should be called an 'e-book generating app' or 'self-publishing platform' is hard to say, but it basically provides a free and simple way to upload your manuscript, edit it for proper formatting, then automatically serve it up to various e-book stores, including Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and iBooks. Author Solutions recently launched Booktango, a new DIY e-book publishing platform. Booktango On the surface, Booktango, which bears the 'beta' tag, looks fairly slick and should improve as the company adds more features. The ability to have WYSIWYG formatting capabilities is nice (even on the iPad) and you can either upload a cover image of your own choosing or design one using some provided templates. All in all, it looks like a perfectly decent way to get your e-book formatted and distributed to all the major e-book stores quickly. Like its competitors, Booktango also manages your e-book sales -- it rolls them all up into one account -- and you can have your royalties sent directly to your checking account. Booktango is free to use, but the company is working off a freemium model and provides additional, such as copy editing, custom cover design, and marketing packages. Booktango's Web site advertises a '100 percent royalty,' which is misleading considering you get that rate only from the e-books you sell on the Booktango Web site and Booktango charges a fee for each book you sell (30 percent of the list price -- the same as Amazon). For other outlets, Booktango takes 10 percent of your net profits, resulting in a '90 percent royalty,' which is also misleading because the net profit in its seems smaller than it should be. Honestly, Booktango's royalty rates don't look too good and can't match its competitors' rates. However, in an effort to attract authors Booktango is offering a until July 4. And the Web site says that if you publish an e-book with Booktango by July 4, you'll retain that 100 percent rate for the life of that book. That means if you make a sale through Booktango's e-book store, you'll get the full amount of the sale (I'm not sure if credit card fees are deducted or not). You'll also get the full 100 percent net of the sale when selling through other e-booksellers (Apple, Amazon, and others will take their 30 percent cut, of course). Since the service is so new I can't vouch for it, but Booktango's limited-time 100 percent royalty offer certainly has some appeal. IBooks Author A lot of people ask me about creating children's books or other types of graphically rich books and e-books. I can't say I'm an expert in this area, but when you're dealing with graphics and images, the self-publishing equation becomes more difficult and expensive (formatting costs tend to go up as you add more images). However, Apple's trying to change all that with, which allows you to build multitouch interactive e-books that you can upload and sell in the iBookstore and view in the iBooks2 app on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. IBooks Author is a free download for Macs. Apple The software program is a free download for Mac owners and using it is not so different from creating a PowerPoint presentation. It's not perfect, but overall it's pretty impressive, and Apple will undoubtedly continue improving it with updates. You work from a selection of templates and can add multitouch widgets to include interactive photo galleries, movies, 3D objects, and more. When you're done, you then have to to create an account before you can upload your creations to the iBookstore or iTunes U (Apple has billed iBooks Author as a multifaceted tool for creating everything from textbooks to cookbooks to picture books, and anything else you can think of). If you can't find a template you like, there are already third-party vendors, including, selling additional templates. (Yes, Apple's spurred another cottage industry). When iBooks Author launched, some people were upset by the fact that your project can only live in Apple's e-book ecosystem and nowhere else. At the moment, the iPad is far and away the best-selling tablet and represents arguably the biggest market for graphically rich color e-books, not to mention the best way to view them (particularly on the new iPad's Retina display). Yes, Amazon has sold a lot of Kindle Fires and the Barnes & Noble's Nook Color and Nook Tablet have found their way into a lot of homes. But the iPad's still king, and Apple's calling the shots here. I don't have a problem with that and think it's great that Apple offers iBooks Author for free. But the one thing that does bother me is Apple's failure to provide a free ISBN for your e-book. Instead, it tells you to get your own and provides a link to Bowker's. Bowker's charges $125 for a single ISBN or 10 for $250. The price drops to single digits when you buy thousands of ISBNs as other self-publishing outfits do. (You can buy a single ISBN for less than $125, but I'd prefer not get into all that). In short, it's patently absurd that Apple's making its authors pay $125 for ISBN number, and I think it's deterring a lot of people from publishing an iBook directly with Apple. Apple's the exclusive publisher here. It needs to provide free ISBNs to its authors. If Smashwords can afford to do it, so can Apple. CreateSpace, iUniverse, Xlibris, AuthorHouse, and other POD self-publishing outfits Most of the large print-on-demand self-publishing operations offer some sort of e-book conversion service and distribution -- and sometimes it gets bundled into a print-publishing package (these companies usually charge a few hundred dollars for converting your e-book). In some cases, this can work out OK for authors who don't care about extracting as much money as they can from each sale and don't want to work with a separate company to create an e-book once they've uploaded their PDF file for their print book. For those who don't think they'll end up selling a lot of copies of their e-book, this can be a fine arrangement, but just beware that in many cases you can't set your own price and more money is being taken out of your net profits than should be. Again, you should strongly consider avoiding companies that don't let you set your own price. Scribd offers one of the fastest and easiest ways to get an e-book or even a short story up on the Internet, though Scribd isn't a serious player yet as far as e-book sales go. After you create an account, you simply create a PDF of your book with the cover image embedded in the first page of the PDF and upload the PDF to Scribd. Scribd is trying to become the YouTube for documents. Scribd Its online software quickly converts your document into a file that can be viewed on a PC, iPad, or other portable devices. You can also choose to allow people to download your file for viewing. Scribd has added HTML5 coding, so your document can easily be read on the iPad via the Safari browser (this allows you to use Apple's finger-based, pinch-and-spread touch zoom controls). Currently, the majority of documents posted to Scribd are free to view or download (it's a great way to post samples of your work), but you can sell your work on Scribd as well. (If you want to see an example, I posted a of my own book to Scribd. Alas, I should have made my cover larger so it didn't have a white border, but so it goes). In sum To be clear, there are other ways to go about self-publishing your e-book. For example, I haven't talked about such outfits as,, or, because they're geared toward larger publishing or self-publishing operations rather than individuals. To help focus your decision-making process, I've tried to stick to what I consider the important players right now. I should also say that everybody comes to the self-publishing process with a different agenda -- and a different book --and some e-book self-publishing options will appeal to you based on the type of book you have (aside from the iBooks Author reference, this article is slanted to publishing more text-based e-books rather than books with lots of illustrations or graphic images, such as children's books). For those who are publishing an e-book as an experiment or 'just to get it out there' and who are less concerned with making money and extracting every last dime out of a sale, aggregators offer a convenient solution to get your book in a variety of e-book stores and roll up your sales into one single record that you can easily track (most companies pay out earnings from e-books within 60 to 90 days; Amazon is 60). It's also worth noting that you can mix and match and go direct with Amazon (KDP), uploading your own file and managing your account, and then use an aggregator such as Smashwords for additional distribution to other e-book stores. At this point there are no hard and set rules and, as I said in the beginning, the e-book market is very fluid, seeing significant changes almost every month. As always, please feel free to post your opinion in the comments section, particularly if you've had experience publishing your e-book already and can share your observations with others. And remember, Google is your best friend for the finer parts of self-publishing, such as converting a Word file to a PDF. Editors' note:This story has been updated a few times, most recently on June 1, 2012, since it was originally published on July 27, 2010.
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This work covers principles of Raman theory, analysis, instrumentation, and measurement, specifying up-to-the-minute benefits of Raman spectroscopy in a variety of industrial and academic fields, and how to cultivate growth in new disciplines. It contains case studies that illustrate current techniques in data extraction and analysis, as well as over 500 drawings and photographs that clarify and reinforce critical text material. The authors discuss Raman spectra of gases; Raman spectroscopy applied to crystals, applications to gemology, in vivo Raman spectroscopy, applications in forensic science, and collectivity of vibrational modes, among many other topics. Table of Contents Preface Enhanced spectroscopy; D. Barchiesi SPR-LSPR and applications; M. Canva Modeling of enhanced electromagnetic fields in plasmonic nanostructures; M. Iati Synthesis of metallic nanostructures; E. Di Fabrizio SERS: Fundamentals and biosensing applications; S. Astilean Polarized SERS; B. Fazio Synthesis of SERS-active substrates by pulsed laser ablation; S. Trusso Surface-enhanced multipurpose nanosensing with microneedle-shaped fiber optics; M. Tommasini Isotope dilution SERS: Metrologically traceable reference measurements at the highest precision level and their application in clinical chemistry; B. Guettler SERS applications—Sensors—Pollutants and chemical detection; E. Rinnert TERS: Principle and instrumentation; J. Valmalette TERS: Application to carbon nanomaterials; A. Handbook of Raman Spectroscopy: From the Research Laboratory to the Process Line Edited by Ian R. Lewis (Kaiser Optical Systems) and Howell G. Edwards (University of Bradford). Dekker: New York, Basel. Xiv + 1054 pp. ISBN 0-8247-0557-2. Grosse, Ph.D. Handbook of Raman Spectroscopy: From the Research Laboratory to the Process Line - CRC Press Book. Hartschuh 20 nm-resolved stress profile in SiGe nanostripes obtained by TERS; R. Ossikovski Surface-enhanced infrared spectroscopy; M. Ortolani and O. Limaj Enhanced spectroscopies based on nonmetallic nanoparticles; S. CRC Press eBooks are available through VitalSource. The free VitalSource Bookshelf® application allows you to access to your eBooks whenever and wherever you choose. The Bookshelf application offers access: • Online – Access your eBooks using the links emailed to you on your CRCPress.com invoice or in the 'My Account' area of CRCPress.com. • Mobile/eReaders – Download the Bookshelf mobile app at VitalSource.com or from the iTunes or Android store to access your eBooks from your mobile device or eReader. • Offline Computer – Download Bookshelf software to your desktop so you can view your eBooks with or without Internet access. |
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