I've been busy lately in experimenting with self-publishing. And that's the reason you haven't seen any blog updates for a while (can't think of any better excuse at the moment!) :-)
Since the novel has been eating my head I thought it better to get it published soon; this novel has been running around my mind for a while. And it gets hard when you have another story also fighting for space and time in your mind. And so I decided, enough with the amount of revisions and let's go for it. Is this novel then a half baked product? Well, I hope not - considering the amount of revisions that have been made.
I decided to do the ebook publishing first and later with the help of my friend Prem will try the print edition (if there is any interest in the book!) eBooks are easy to publish and if you haven't read a book on a eReader device like the Kindle or haven't used the eReader apps to read books then do try it out - it is a lot lot better than reading PDFs.
The reason for this blog - just wanted to list some of the things that new authors might find useful so that they don't struggle like I did for a few small things in the ebook space.
1.) Microsoft Word
Seems to be the most popular document format liked by Smashwords (who can help you distribute your ebook to many retailers like Apple's iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Flipkart etc.) Even Amazon likes Word documents.
What if you don't have MS Word - OpenOffice seems to be a good alternative.
I tried the Apple's Pages but since the format accepted was a *.doc file it is easier to use Word/OpenOffice.
What Smashwords does is take the doc file, run it through their engine to produce multiple ebook formats like epub (very popular with all ereader apps), mobi (used by Amazon's Kindle device) etc.
2.) Follow the rules
I never knew about using styles in word processors; Smashwords has a comprehensive guide that tells you how to format your book, what styles to use, what font sizes to use etc.
If you confirm to that format, it is very likely that Amazon will also be happy with your file - Amazon has a much shorter guide about what they expect.
3.) Beware page breaks
So after editing on OpenOffice and submitting the file to Smashwords I saw one strange output - there were extra blank pages appearing before every chapter. After a lot of trial and error I discovered that after you give a page break, on the new page just hit an Enter and start content from the next line (like the Chapter title). This ensures that no extra pages appear. I assume you might not need to do this if you are using MS Word.
4.) Beware guides on the Kindle
The Kindle reader for every book will provide guide links (called guide items) on the tool bar; like Go to beginning, Go to end, Table of Contents etc.
The Table of Contents requires a TOC bookmark within your file else it will be disabled when people read your book. This is mentioned in the Amazon guide; I didn't notice it when I first when through the short guide.
Table of contents guide item will just link to the TOC page; it won't list all the chapters under the guide list; to get all chapters listed in the guide list I think we need to edit the metadata of the doc which isn't probably worth the effort.
There is a guide item to go to the 'beginning' of the book; I found that when we provide a bookmark for that, Smashwords doesn't like it and throws a formatting error (tried this from OpenOffice by giving the bookmark named 'Start' because that's what Amazon says they look at).
The same file uploads fine in Amazon. No harm even if this particular bookmark isn't given because by default 'Beginning' will take the reader to the first page of the ebook.
5.) Book sales/downloads/marketing
For people who've never read any of my writings, I felt it would be good to give a free ebook. So that they can read that and if they like it then (hopefully) they would purchase my novel. And so I did that on Smashwords - unless you market, don't expect the download count to fly high even if it is a free book. I just saw my download counter for the free book hit 100! Not bad without any marketing having started yet; but that gives you an idea. After around 10 days it's hit 100 and this was a free book. If it is a paid book, the count will surely be at 0! And that was confirmed because my novel 'The Fake Mask' was available for pre-order in Amazon but not one person had ordered it, even though the price was a modest $1.5
6.) Free ebooks on Amazon
Amazon doesn't let you price a ebook at $0. What you need to do is get it published on other sites like iBooks, Barnes & Noble and then inform Amazon saying that it is available for $0 elsewhere. Just drop them a mail from your author account; their customer service is extremely helpful - I never expected quick replies from such a large firm to my queries.
7.) Pre-orders and region differences
Pre-order mechanism is not available in all ebook stores and even within the store it may not be available across countries. Ex: As of now, pre-order is available in Amazon US site but not in Amazon India site.
And from region to region, even your ebook listing might differ; Ex: iBooks India doesn't list any ebook other than literary classics.
Oh yeah; and I obviously should mention about my first couple of ebooks here (marketing!).
- "WakeUp - Food for Thought" - the free ebook
- "The Fake Mask" - my first fiction novel as an ebook
Please look at http://www.sstutor.com/book.aspx for downloading/ordering them.
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