Monthly Archives: August 2012

Writing How to eBooks – The Difference Between Writing Books & Writing eBooks

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In the last few weeks, I’ve run into an issue three times. Now writing isn’t a big subject, so I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was. You see writing also isn’t a subject that evokes passion in people — especially professionals. Or maybe I should say excessive emotions rather than passion. You see writers tend to put their emotions onto the paper, not into their real lives. Maybe that’s one reason writers are such a laid back bunch — we expend the noisy emotions on paper and keep the quiet ones for real life.

In any case, two of these cases involved people claiming that eBooks weren’t real books. And that only printed books were worthy of serious consideration. I must be honest; one of them admitted that digital books — meaning real printed books copied to a digital format — were still valid.

At the same time, I was predicting the effect of the arrival of traditional publishers on the eBook scene.

This got me to thinking since I write both types of books. What is the difference between writing an eBook and writing a traditional book?

It didn’t take me long to realize that I needed to determine what I meant by a book and an eBook. You see eBooks have developed a bad reputation. One that’s deserved. That of being poor quality and being typically a tempest in a teapot. A very tiny teapot.

So I had to put some limits around the terms.

Far too often eBooks are actually just reports with an over-inflated sense of self-importance. They’re really just white papers and extended report length pieces. They’re far too short to be honestly considered as a book or eBook. At most they might fit the definition of monograph. An essay or thesis to be more precise.

And second they are often poorly written and poorly edited. But that’s not a factor of the medium. That’s a factor of the expense and recognition of quality.

But both of these are a vanishing breed. They may last for a short time but the market is going to kill them soon.

On the other hand I also looked at books. And realized that books ran from novelty and executive length all the way up to tomes. So comparing writing different length books was going to be a problem.

The only way to be fair was to compare the same fruit of the writing tree… equal length books of the same type.

So what’s the difference between writing a very long eBook of a hundred pages and an executive length book of a hundred pages?

Does an eBook take less time? Nope.

Does an eBook take less effort? Nope.

Does an eBook take fewer steps? Nope.

Does an eBook take different steps? Not for the writing parts.

So what is the difference?

The publishing step. When writing an eBook you need to format the book in the form it will be sold in. When publishing using a traditional process the publisher does that.

But arguably that’s a publisher’s problem not the writer. And it’s really a function of the use of traditional publishers versus self publishing.

So the answer is… there is no difference. Writing an eBook is exactly the same as writing a traditional book.

Do you want to learn how to write a book in 24 hours? Take my brand new free course here: http://www.learningcreators.com

Do you want to read more free information like this? Go to my blog: http://www.learningcreators.com/blog/

Glen Ford is an accomplished consultant, trainer and writer. He has far too many years experience as a trainer and facilitator to willingly admit.

Author: Glen Ford
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Choosing the Most Effective Book Marketing Services

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Ninety percent of all book sales are from less than ten percent of all books published in a year. Of the hundreds of thousands of books published annually, how do you make sure your book is one of those received by the market as certified hits? The answer is a well-planned and brilliantly executed marketing plan.

In light of this fact, many book marketing services have mushroomed over the years, all promising the best marketing schemes to take your book on top of that bestseller list. But how do you choose which book marketing service is most effective? Read further to find out.

The top book marketing service employ the most effective book-selling strategies known traditionally and innovate new marketing schemes that go with the tide of change the world has seen over the years. They offer a broad array of marketing services ranging from the writing of press releases announcing your book to creating customized flyers to setting up book signing events. Some book marketing services even have specialized teams to take care of public relations to further publicize your book. Others provide a list of popular book contests you can enter your book in, to earn more recognition and boost the good reputation of your book. Some have links with groups organizing book shows where you can exhibit your work and still others arrange for speaking engagements so you can personally promote your book.

In choosing the most effective book marketing service, take note that they include not only the above mentioned options but also take advantage of the flourishing technology your potential readers frequently access. You must have noticed how pages in social networking sites such as Facebook can spread information like wildfire; or how websites that feature your book can infinitely multiply the number of people who are informed about it. This is the age when people first turn to their computers for the answers to their needs before taking on the streets to scour for them. Therefore, look for a book marketing service that include optimizing your book’s website for better visibility online, posting articles or parts of your book on relevant webpages for more audience, or assisting you in creating e-book or audiobook versions if you wish.

Amidst all these options, you as the author are the best decision-maker as to which strategies will most catch the attention of your target readers. Therefore, the best book marketing service is those that offer a wide variety of marketing strategies, teach you the basics of each, offer professional consultation services, and allow you to tailor your own marketing plan according to your budget and needs. No two books are absolutely the same but getting readers to buy your book instead of another with the same topic can be tricky. The content of your book is only half of what can take it to the top. For it to be massively influencing, you need the best book marketing services by your side.

Are you looking for more information regarding book marketing services? Visit http://www.trinitylivingtoday.com/Book-Publishing-Home-Study-Course.html today!

Author: Anthony Obey
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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The Ebook Evolution: I Was an Indie Publisher in the 1980’s

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Self publishing started for me back in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

I am published both traditionally and as an indie author and publisher of both paperback and ebooks.

I began offering my own books on my website in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, way before it was popular. Way before there was Smashwords or Kindle or any of the current popular places for eBooks for sale. Here’s my story.

The eBook revolution. You have to love it! I’ve been self publishing long before it became fashionable or so explosively growing. There was a little bit of being ostracized in the early years, and eBooks and self publishing in general was frowned upon by authors who were traditionally published. It was almost (and sometimes still is) kind of a snobbish, looking down your nose attitude. It really didn’t bother me very much, as I was having fun doing my own thing with ePublishing.

I used to belong to Romance Writers of America and in fact I was traditionally published with Harlequin/Silhouette in 2001. As often happens in the publishing industry, the editor who bought my romance and loved my writing, received a promotion and while she moved up the corporate ladder to work in another department, I was assigned a new editor. The new editor didn’t seem to care for my writing. The fact that I had a less than proficient agent also did not help matters along.

My writing experiences began with poetry, then I graduated to essays, and finally to romances, the books I just love to read and write. I’ve also written under various pen names. A non-fiction memoir about grief and loss, a workbook about handling grief, children’s EZ reader picture books when my youngest was in Kindergarten, an internet dating guide when I reentered the dating market after the loss of my husband of twenty years. Nonfiction about buying a pony, and a book about a guardian angel. So much work and love went into all these efforts, but they were all due to life experiences I felt I needed to share.

So now there’s the excitement of the new eBook revolution. I intend to track my progress through a series of articles. I hope you’ll follow along.

I did a big push with the grief book, blogging every day, sending out press releases, writing about 45 articles on grief and loss, visiting other blogs and forums. I ended up doing about 30 radio interviews. I was ultimately interviewed by US News and World Report and appeared on their website and in their paper edition regarding research on widows and how lifestyle and incomes can change drastically with the loss of a spouse.

Readers began to email and call asking me to write articles on grief and loss. I maintained a WordPress blog and I got quite a good amount of hits. I used Google AdWords for a short while to boost visibility and my books were selling slowly but steadily on Amazon and also through my website. I made some sales, not a great deal, but I got a lot of exposure. I received a lot of mail from other widows and widowers who had also lost loved ones.

I’ve recently placed this niche book on Kindle. When I placed it in KDP Select free, it hit # 1 in Family Relationships category and the Grief category and stayed there throughout the promotion. It maintained good visibility for about two weeks after the free promotion, and I began playing with the price. I didn’t want to price it too high, or too low. Although it has since steadily moved upwards toward the 100,000’s, it is still slowly selling at $4.99.

The latest phase of my indie publishing career began in January of 2012. I decided it was time to do something with my backlist of romance stories. I probably have about 20 stories since I’ve been writing romance, but we won’t talk about the other 13.

I had 7 stories languishing on my computer. 4 contemporary romances, 3 time travels. They had all been rejected by every place imaginable, traditional publishers, ePublishers, small houses and large.

An author friend suggested I send one of my romance ebooks to her eBook romance publisher. They were interested in publishing contemporary romance Echoes from the Past, however I would only receive 17% of Kindle sales. I did my homework, researched Kindle and other eBook places and wondered why only 17%. A lot of their ebooks they price at $.99. So they would be splitting the 35% from Amazon sales with me. Was my book worth more than 17% of $.99? I thought so.

Additionally, if I signed a contract with this publisher, they would not publish it for a year to 16 months from contract signing. I would also be tied to them for at least a few years. Did I want to give away that control? Could I do it myself? I knew I wanted something more than 17%.

I found a wonderful illustrator in Australia, Julie McClen of Oak Grove Graphics through my website software forum. I liked her playful but professionally designed websites and hired hire her to revamp my site. She also created my book covers for both series, the Women of Character and Women of Strength time travels.

During this time I continued to research eBook publishing. I found Jakonrath.blogspot.com, thebookdesigner.com, Joel Friedlander, thecreativepenn.com, Joanna Penn, davidgaughran.wordpress.com to name just a few. I’ve learned so much from their informative posts!

I also discovered Smashwords and read about their distribution channels and how an author could launch their books not only from the popular Kindle platform, but Smashwords also.

In researching eBook formats, I was amazed at the wide diversity available, from the time that I had made my first foray into this field to now. There was not only PDF format, but Mobi, ePub, RTF, PDB, LRF and many other formats and devices to read ebooks on.

My next question became, do I hire someone to format each of my 7 books or do I learn to do it myself? I found out about a program called Calibre. It creates several types of eBook formats. Ultimately, I used Calibre to create my mobi file for Kindle. There’s even a forum Mobileread.com with lots of threads and friendly people to help you out if you get stuck trying to convert your files to eBooks.

I personally think there should be one universal format for all reading devices, but that’s just me. I played around with Calibre, a free download, for a few days and at first I got a bit frustrated because I had some formatting squiggles in there that I had to delete. I had used the long dash in places and when you convert to mobi, the long dashes came out as fractions. Trust me, that doesn’t look great in your manuscript. I had to manually delete each one and replace with a short dash.

I also had an issue with trying to get a Table of Contents to show up on the finished mobi file for Kindle. Apparently, based on the amount of forum posts about TOC, others have had the same issue.

I read posts about inserting HTML into your document so the table of contents would appear. I had played with HTML years ago when I first began creating my websites and I really didn’t want to try to learn it again. So I kept looking at my Word document HTML file trying to figure out why the first three chapters showed up in the Table of Contents and nothing after that.

Those three chapters were “Heading” style in my word document. The rest of the document, unless it was italics, was “Normal” Style. So I went and changed all my Chapters to the Heading style and lo and behold, I had a TOC.

Next I saved my document as a HTML document, web page filtered. Then I opened the HTML file in Calibre. I now had a full TOC, but I had way too big paragraph indents. I went through the entire document and made the indents.25 and it looked much better.

Anyone who has been published by traditional publishing houses knows that anywhere you have italics, you underline when submitting your manuscript. So I had to once again go through my manuscript and remove all the underline sections and use italics instead. Italics, the real thing. No more underlining to indicate italics. Way cool.

When I was pretty certain I had cleaned up my formatting I again saved the file as a HTML, web page filtered. Then I uploaded my book and cover into Calibre, plus all the publisher, author, ISBN, tags info etc. Then I converted the book to mobi format. I tested on my kindle reader and it opened nicely.

Now Smashwords conversion is another article.

Grace Brannigan is a romance author of contemporary and time travel romances. She’s constantly trying to figure out this book marketing thing. She lives in the Catskill mountains, loves swing dancing, custom painting shoes and barn murals. You can find out about her romances at http://www.GraceBrannigan.com

Author: Grace Brannigan
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Prof. Servan-Schreiber’s Moving Story on Fighting Cancer

Digital Publishing Options Give Aspiring Writers a Chance

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Five years ago, neither Facebook nor YouTube existed. Now Ehow, Squidoo, and other digital publishing sites saturate the Internet world. Digital storytelling, reporting, or teaching is no longer limited to content writing. Article distribution has become its own business. Ghost writing is a growing source of income. Dozens of websites exist for the sole purpose of connecting writers to article vendors. Pennames are an everyday Internet occurrence. But in the process, author accountability sometimes slides to the background. Writers are working cheap. Quality suffers. Facts get jumbled. The sorting out of sound content becomes more difficult. Look for the balanced digital magazine. Find the one that cares about reputation. Otherwise, do not permit your company name to get mixed in with it.

Digital storytelling is about establishing an online profile, about creating a quickened market presentation, about generating a continuous flow of readers and viewers. Digital magazines often provide free information that is readily available and purposed to create a user-friendly link between advertisers and their prospective customers. Vendors want and need premium search engine exposure. Digital publications advance that goal.

Media providers (those who generate the content of digital magazines) are ever seeking improved ways to quicken the pace of digital implementation. Readers are always hungry for new information. The site content completion is endless. Site hits determine advertising profits, customer responses, and the very life cycle of the associated website. A hardcopy slick magazine cannot survive without both new and repeat readers. Neither can a digital magazine. The demand for quality content, new photos, current videos, and exciting audio keeps every media provider hustling.

Yet, speed must be tempered with document accuracy and freedom from plagiarism. Data providers need dependable fact-checkers and watchdogs. Digital publishing requires accurate information resources, access to up-to-date database files, and imaginative but knowledgeable writers. With so much loss of author accountability, it is important to choose a trustworthy digital publishing partner site.

Though it is possible for a writer to hold fast to a strictly textual format, the modern method of digital publishing is such as can be found at sites like Yudu. Here is the next wave of digital publishing technology. By bringing together the written word, easily accessible video imaging, and audio interweaving these products push the standard for multimedia publishing. Conventional desktop publishing, aside from being per-piece costly, is unchangeable and limited in audience scope. Hardcopy brochures, catalogues, flyers, magazines, and newsletters cannot reach the new, digital shopper. This is why online publishers provide free digital conversion. Every company seeks a superior Internet presence. Why not join in? Even while reaping the gains of reduced hardcopy print and distribution costs, your company can reach more customers than ever before.

Martin Alan enjoys writing on subjects such as literature, online publishing, the digital magazine, publishing software, sharing sites and self publishing. He also enjoys keeping up-to-date with the latest developments and innovations in technology and online marketing.

For more information on online publishing click here; http://www.yudu.com

Author: Martin Alan
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Writing How to eBooks – The Difference Between Writing Books & Writing eBooks

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In the last few weeks, I’ve run into an issue three times. Now writing isn’t a big subject, so I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was. You see writing also isn’t a subject that evokes passion in people — especially professionals. Or maybe I should say excessive emotions rather than passion. You see writers tend to put their emotions onto the paper, not into their real lives. Maybe that’s one reason writers are such a laid back bunch — we expend the noisy emotions on paper and keep the quiet ones for real life.

In any case, two of these cases involved people claiming that eBooks weren’t real books. And that only printed books were worthy of serious consideration. I must be honest; one of them admitted that digital books — meaning real printed books copied to a digital format — were still valid.

At the same time, I was predicting the effect of the arrival of traditional publishers on the eBook scene.

This got me to thinking since I write both types of books. What is the difference between writing an eBook and writing a traditional book?

It didn’t take me long to realize that I needed to determine what I meant by a book and an eBook. You see eBooks have developed a bad reputation. One that’s deserved. That of being poor quality and being typically a tempest in a teapot. A very tiny teapot.

So I had to put some limits around the terms.

Far too often eBooks are actually just reports with an over-inflated sense of self-importance. They’re really just white papers and extended report length pieces. They’re far too short to be honestly considered as a book or eBook. At most they might fit the definition of monograph. An essay or thesis to be more precise.

And second they are often poorly written and poorly edited. But that’s not a factor of the medium. That’s a factor of the expense and recognition of quality.

But both of these are a vanishing breed. They may last for a short time but the market is going to kill them soon.

On the other hand I also looked at books. And realized that books ran from novelty and executive length all the way up to tomes. So comparing writing different length books was going to be a problem.

The only way to be fair was to compare the same fruit of the writing tree… equal length books of the same type.

So what’s the difference between writing a very long eBook of a hundred pages and an executive length book of a hundred pages?

Does an eBook take less time? Nope.

Does an eBook take less effort? Nope.

Does an eBook take fewer steps? Nope.

Does an eBook take different steps? Not for the writing parts.

So what is the difference?

The publishing step. When writing an eBook you need to format the book in the form it will be sold in. When publishing using a traditional process the publisher does that.

But arguably that’s a publisher’s problem not the writer. And it’s really a function of the use of traditional publishers versus self publishing.

So the answer is… there is no difference. Writing an eBook is exactly the same as writing a traditional book.

Do you want to learn how to write a book in 24 hours? Take my brand new free course here: http://www.learningcreators.com

Do you want to read more free information like this? Go to my blog: http://www.learningcreators.com/blog/

Glen Ford is an accomplished consultant, trainer and writer. He has far too many years experience as a trainer and facilitator to willingly admit.

Author: Glen Ford
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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