Intro to Ebook Publishing
Case Talbot
What will we learn today?
How easy it is to publish an ebook!
Who is this for?
Aspiring and published authors, publishers, and library staff.
How important are ebooks?
- 40% of sales in 2014!
- Indies scaling the bestseller lists regularly
- Online retailers giving major marketing space to indie books
Advantages of Indie Publishing
- Faster time to market
- Total creative control
- Ebooks never go out of print
- Lower prices for consumers
- Earn more per book
How can I get my books to retailers?
- Use a distributor like Smashwords, which provides integrated sales reports and book report
- Distribute directly to each retailer, and handle yourself the intricacies at each platform and sales report integration
Where should I distribute my books?
- Everywhere!
- Consumers want the book on their device and reading platform of choice.
- You want your book to be in front of as many readers as possible.
- You want your revenue to be independent of a particular retailer's crazy
The Smashwords Story
- Free Printing Press
- Distributed to all retailers and libraries
- Free educational resources
How Smashwords Works
- Upload your book
- Distribute your book to all retailers
- Get paid: author gets 85% of net!
Checklist for Ebook Publishing
- Write your awesome book! *Mostly
- Format the book
- Prepare a cover image
- Prepare the metadata
- Convert to multiple formats
- Price your book
- ISBNs
- Distribute
- Marketing
Writing Your Awesome Book
- Indie doesn't mean unprofessional
- Edit, revise, and revise again
- Get beta readers and revise again
- Hire a professional editor (if you can)
Formatting
- Paper formatting isn't like ebook formatting.
- Content needs to flow.
- Your readers will be reading on everything from small Android phones to PCs or iPads.
- Don't assume you know what will be the most comfortable from a color perspective.
- Less is more -- unless you are writing a picture book your focus should be on writing great text, not on manually tweaking margins or spacing.
- Consistency is key.
Cover Images
- This is your first shot to grab your reader!
- Match to target audience
- Your cover should look good at multiple different sizes and in greyscale
- Remember, your cover is competing against NYT authors. Hire a professional (if you can).
- Mark has a list of cover designers that have done good work at reasonable prices for other smashwords authors: https://www.smashwords.com/list
Metadata
- Publication date
- Title
- Categories
- Language
- ISBN
- Author name(s)
- Descriptions
- Series
- Tags
Backmatter
What happens at the end of your book? Is this the end of your relationship with the reader?
Conversion
Taking your text in a word document...
And turning it into different packages...
Like PDF, ePub, PDB, HTML, or plain text
How should I price my ebook?
- Non-fiction supports higher prices than fiction
- Free downloads and 99 cents sells a lot of units
- but 2.99 and 3.99 garner better revenue!
- Learn more about pricing on the Smashwords blog.
it's not over yet...
love your books
learn from and respond to reader feedback
Q&A
Intro to Ebook Publishing
By Case Talbot
