Tag Archives: ebooks

Musings

Book Marketing 101: What to do BEFORE you pay for ads

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The first thing you need in order to sell your book(s) is a quality product — well-written, well-edited (not by you), and well-designed (both the ebook, the print edition, and, possible, the audiobook — not to mention the cover). But that’s not enough. If you build it, they probably will not come.

Creating books is only the first half of the job. The other half is actually making sure that you’ve created an audience who want to buy them.

Now, when I say that to new author-publishers, they immediately think I’m talking about paid ads on Facebook, Google, Amazon, BookBub, etc.

But that’s not what I mean. Continue reading Book Marketing 101: What to do BEFORE you pay for ads →

Musings

Elements of Style: CSS for Ebooks

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I originally published this post on Joel Friedlander’s wonderful resource for self-publishers, TheBookDesigner.com

If HTML is the blueprint, showing how an ebook (or a web page) should be laid out, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the interior design, saying how everything should look. While that may sound superficial, in fact learning to use CSS can have a profound impact on your ebook.

This is a somewhat complicated topic, so I am going to take three posts to cover it. This time round, I’m going to show you what CSS is and how to apply it. In the second post, I’m going to look at some of the different properties that you can use to define how your ebook looks. And in the last post, I’m going to talk about how to know which rules take precedence when.

Continue reading Elements of Style: CSS for Ebooks →

Musings, News

Speaking in Code: Ebook HTML basics

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This post originally appeared on Joel Friedlander’s wonderful site, TheBookDesigner.com.

If, as I keep saying, an ebook is just a website a box, then in order to know how to get in and edit your ebook, you’re going to want to know some HTML. However you choose to work on the file, knowing the basic building blocks is essential in creating a finished  product that presents your book to its best advantage.

 

When we talk about HTML, we’re actually talking about two separate things:

Continue reading Speaking in Code: Ebook HTML basics →

Musings

Weekly Roundup: 7 Interesting Articles on eBook Publishing

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As a matter of principal (both personal and professional) I spend quite a bit of my time keeping up to date with what’s new in the eBook publishing world. Having built up a relatively substantial feed to scroll through, it recently occurred to me that I’m not the only one who could benefit from a list of new ePublishing articles  to peruse while I’m going about my day.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to start publishing a weekly list of recent articles I think are important, interesting, innovative, etc. Here are this week’s choices:

Continue reading Weekly Roundup: 7 Interesting Articles on eBook Publishing →

Musings

Inside the Box: The Anatomy of an Ebook

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Over the next few posts, I’ll be showing you how ebooks are coded and formatted. We’ll look at the anatomy of an ebook, and what makes it tick.

You’ve heard me call an ebook a website in a box. This time we’re going to talk about what’s inside the box.

First thing’s first: let me share an ebook with you. It’s the ePub file for a short story of mine called White Robes.

You’re welcome to read it, obviously, but for the purposes of this post (and the next two), we’re going to be opening up the box and dissecting the ebook.

This is the actual production file that I’ve uploaded to Amazon, by the way — it includes all of the coding and formatting that I typically include in creating an ebook. It will be the model that I’ll be using over the next few posts in discussing an ebook’s innards.

Continue reading Inside the Box: The Anatomy of an Ebook →

Musings

The Ebook Retail Universe

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This is the sixth installment in my series of posts about ebook creation. Like the others, it was originally posted on Joel Friedlander’s wonderful resource for indie publishers,TheBookDesigner.com

The Ebook Retail Universe

I realized after my last post (looking at ebook conversion tools) that in my excitement in finally getting to the nuts and bolts of ebook creation that I’d skipped over online conversion tools. Most of those tools either are directly attached to ebook retailer websites or are attached indirectly through distributors/aggregators. So I’m going to have to backtrack.

 

This month I’ll talk about the retailers and distributors that you are going to be interested in, and next month I’m going to talk about the conversion tools that they offer.

 

Continue reading The Ebook Retail Universe →

Musings

Free for all: giving your ebook away on Amazon

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“Selling” for free

I had a client ask me recently why you can’t price an ebook as free on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform. The author wanted to promote her first book by giving it away — she’d been told that was the best way to make a splash.

I told her that you CAN “sell” your ebook for free on Kindle Direct Publishing — they just don’t make it easy. And it often isn’t a good idea.

Why don’t Amazon make it simple to set the price of a KDP ebook to $0.00? Continue reading Free for all: giving your ebook away on Amazon →

Musings

Jump in the Convertible: Ebook Conversion Tools

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This is the fifth installment in my series of posts about ebook creation. Like the others, it was originally posted on Joel Friedlander’s wonderful resource for indie publishers,TheBookDesigner.com

Over the last few months I’ve discussed preparing your manuscript and your images for conversion into ebook form. This month, I’m going to look more closely at a subject that I’ve touched on: choosing an ebook conversion tool. Just to review, I suggested that there were four basic ways to convert your manuscript into ebook format:

  1. From scratch
  2. Saving from a word-processing or page-layout application into ePub format
  3. Using a conversion app or online service
  4. Hiring a designer

We’re going to ignore option #1 — if you’re the kind of person who wants to dig that deep into the guts of ebook creation, I don’t think that you’re going to be patient with this process. I’m not going to dwell on option #4 (or the second half of option #3), since the emphasis of this series is how to create your own ebooks. Using a conversion service or ebook designer is always an option, and I’ll discuss later how to choose one. But for now, we’re going to look at choosing the software that you can use to create a book yourself. Here’s the list of software that I will look through with you: .[1] Continue reading Jump in the Convertible: Ebook Conversion Tools →