E Books- A Small Intro
Electronic Book, E book or Digital book are the common nomenclatures as it is published in digital form.
Commercially sold online for dedicated e readers, however they can also be read in any other sophisticated devices such as computers & smart phones with controllable features.
Ecommerce websites have e-books in higher demand than the printed versions.
Scholars predict e- books to soon overtake the traditional publishing.
In USA 50% of the readers have dedicated e- reader devices.
Let Me Explain About Their Different & Most Popular Formats in Details
The most popular e-readers and their native supported formats are shown below:
Most Popular Ebook Format- EPUB:
The EPUB format is the most widely supported vendor-independent XML-based (as opposed to PDF) e-book format; that is, it is supported by the largest number of e-Readers, including Amazon Kindle Fire (but not standard Kindle).
It is also widely used on many software readers such as iBooks on iOS and Google Books on Android. iBooks also support the proprietary iBook format, which is based on the EPUB format but depends upon code from the iBooks app to function.
It is a free and open standard published by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF).
Benefits of EPUB:
The format we’re probably
most familiar with is PDF (Portable Document Format) since that’s the file
format used with Adobe Reader, which is installed on most computers. So it
might seem that it would be the best bet, being that almost anyone with a computer can
open a PDF file but it will create problems when viewed in smaller
devices or smart phones.
Text in ePub books is
not static. Instead, it flows, ePub eBooks display as much text as will fit on the screen,
depending on the text size the user has chosen. So all the user has to do is
read and flip pages.
MOBI Format:
As far as the
differences between EPUB and MOBI are concerned, they are very
different, technically-speaking, but not so different for the reader.
EPUB tends to
format books in a way that looks closer to what the author initially sets up
than MOBI does, especially with spacing. And MOBI files of same books tend to
be quite a bit fatter, sometimes double in size. However, if we want to
sell our book on Amazon, then it needs to be in MOBI format.
Fixed Layout:
The EPUB 3.0
Specification says that “content presentation should adapt to the user rather
than the user having to adapt to a particular representation of content.”
But this principle
doesn’t work for all types of documents. Sometimes content and design are so
intertwined they cannot be separated. Any change in appearance risks changing
the meaning, or losing all meaning. Fixed-layout documents give
content creators greater control over presentation, when a reflowable EPUB is not suitable for the content.
Tools for Creating & Formatting
E-Book
Formatting an ebook on your own can be challenging. Most authors seek an external third party to do the job. But here are a few tools which you could use to do the formatting yourself:
- Scrivener: this writing software is not free, but it can export EPUB files
- Calibre: free formatting and conversion software for ebooks
- StreetLib: free web-based tool that can also handle distribution and sales if we want
- Jutoh: free software for creating e-books, paid version available with more functionality
- Press Books: free formatting tool (up until a point), Wordpress- based
- Apple Pages: (can export EPUB files)
- Vellum: easy-to-use software for Mac users only to produce EPUB files
Publishing Your Ebook Online
There are a few important things you might want to consider before choosing one or more publishing partners. It is important that you know if your publishing partner is a retailer or a distributor, like Amazon & Apple ibookstore are the retailers where as smashwords & bookbaby are the aggregators which help you promote or sell your books on various platforms.
Online Retailers:
I am listing the top 4 online ebook retailers in the world. E retailers will sell your ebooks exclusively on their platform and provide you a dashboard which would help you in managing your books, accounts, analytics reports etc.
The Amazon Kindle is
a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon.com. Amazon Kindle
devices enable users to browse, buy, download and read e-books, newspapers,
magazines and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store.
Total
Number of e- books available- 4.3 million
The Barnes &
Noble Nook (styled nook or NOOK) is a brand of e-readers developed by American
book retailer Barnes & Noble, based on the Android platform.
Nook users may read nearly any Nook
Store e-book for one hour once per day while connected to the store's Wi-Fi.
This is to encourage them to visit B&N stores.
List
Price -- Royalty Rate
USD
$0.99 -
$2.98 -- 40%
$2.99 - $9.99 -- 65%
$10.00 - $199.99 --
40%
The iBooks Store is
an EPUB content sales and delivery system that delivers e-books to any iOS device
such as the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch).
It does not currently
support either the downloading or reading of iBooks directly on Windows or
Linux distributions, but it does support the downloading and reading of iBooks
on OS X V10.9 and later.
E-book
Market Share- 11%
Format
Supported- EPUB majorly and PDF
Total
no of books on ibookstore in 2014- 1.6 million recorded in2014.
Royalty-
70% of list price with no fees
To begin, authors
must fill out a Paid Books Account application, which is reviewed in
approximately two business days. Once authors receive a confirmation email, they must
download a “delivery application” in order to deliver the book. Authors must
have an Apple ID along with a valid credit card on file to sell books.
Kobo claims to
offer one of the world’s largest e-bookstores, with nearly four million titles
available across 68 languages and 190 countries.
Kobo Writing Life offers a
user-friendly, five-step process for uploading e-books, and the company will convert your manuscript into an e-pub file
for free with no additional cost to the author.
A Few Online Distributors:
Smashwords is one of the largest distributors of indie ebooks and is absolutely free of cost platform i.e. you don't pay anything as long as you don't sell anything.
They give a royalty rate of up to 85%.
Smashwords offers multiple author marketing tools, for use by the author, to promote their book to potential readers.
These tools include author pages with bios and listings of published works, individual book pages for each work, support for embedded YouTube videos so the author can promote the book in their own words, member contributed reviews, author favoriting, and integration with social bookmarking and social networking sites.
To learn go to smashwords marketing guide.
Bookbaby offers one of
the the largest eBook distribution network, including
Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and many other popular retailers in
over 170 countries around the globe.
BookShop a feature of BookBaby which offers a webpage
and an ecommerce option so one can sell direct to the readers, delivering the
book in three different formats.
Dradts2difital is similar
to smashwords but
small and have excellent customer service. They allow publishers to talk to
their support executives to clear any doubts.
The eBook Partnership
eBook distribution service offers one of the most comprehensive
worldwide eBook distribution networks available. They work with
authors, publishers and many organizations from around the world.
All of their
distribution partners accept standard (reflowable) file
formats (mobi for Amazon and ePub for all
others). Fixed Layout files are supported by Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Google,
Barnes & Noble, Overdrive, eSentral and StoryTel.
Annual
cost- 35$
No
royalty- Distribution Details- https://ebookpartnership.com/services/ebook-distribution/
Pronoun was known as vook and
rebranded and re launched itself in 2015 with rich features and a more user
friendly interface.
Pronoun sells to almost
all the major retailers and let the authors keep 100% royalty.
CreateSpace is
Amazon’s online book publishing service. That alone is enough to make it a
company worth looking into for an author who wants to self-publish. Like its
parent company, CreateSpace has earned a
reputation of providing a continually high standard of service. One can
customize how they want to utilize the service, paying only for what one will
use.
Standard distribution
is free but charged for other services in case of hard copy is required.
Royalty Calculator- https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/#content6:royaltyCalculator
AuthorHouse is the
leading provider of supported self-publishing services for authors
around the globe, with over 70,000 titles released. Allows you to distribute
your book to a worldwide audience in classic black & white, vibrant
full-color, paperback, hardback, plus all digital formats.
Paperback List Price-
10% Royalty through retailers and 25% in
case directly sold through authorhouse book store
Ebook- 50%
Royalty.
Features:
-Paid Marketing &
Promotion- http://www.authorhouse.com/ServiceStore/ServiceList.aspx?Service=CAST-1582
-Bookselling services
which involves providing incentives to book sellers and book stores- http://www.authorhouse.com/ServiceStore/ServiceList.aspx?Service=CAST-1582
There are several other aggregators and the list is long. Refer this link to know more:
Self Promotion Strategy
Aggregators will play their role but you must make sure that you are doing your part if you don't want to shed too much of money on marketing via third party sites.
- Create a landing page or a website for your ebooks portfolio. Even if you have one book start with a small blog or a wordpress site. Do the SEO for your website. Learn the on page SEO techniques here.
- Use the strength of social media to spread the word of your book launch and create anticipation for the people. Tweet, Post & Engage with people on the social media. Find out where do your target audience spend most of the time on social media and target them directly.
- Learn to create a Youtube channel for the promotions of your books and make sure you explain in details what your book is all about and share it on GFacebook, twitter, LinkedIn and social media platforms you are using.
- Email Marketing: If you have a list of email IDs of your potential readers or readers who have already purchased your books then capitalize on that. There are several email marketing service providers available out there which you could use to create your own campaigns, share, optimize and measure. You can also use email marketing to sell your books directly.
There are a few service providers which have a free trial version like Mailchimp which is my personal favorite provides 2000 mails for free. Use beefree.io to create awesome responsive campaigns for your ebooks.
- Blog and provide an excerpt of your ebook to your targeted audience for free of cost after asking them to sign up. You can create sign up forms using instapage or unbounce for free of cost as part of their trial period program. You can later use these mail IDs for email marketing and remind them to purchase the book and take their reviews.
With the use of proper marketing mix and content strategy you should be able to achieve some soild leads. Make sure you start promoting your book even if you haven't yet completed it or have almost completed the book, this will create anticipation among your target audience and work in parallel with all your marketing strategies along with writing your book.
If you think it's a bit hectic to do marketing and write your book at the same time then you could always outsource.
Mail me at my mail ID or connect with me on LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/yiftekhar to know more.
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