Category Archives: Publishing Books

Content is King but the web pages are still littered with writing that does scant justice to the word content, least of all creative, useful and valuable content.

The first wave in the internet is finally over when we saw the design and technical elements of a website were the focus areas. Content was merely a catalog of products, a directory, displayed in all its designer glory and the only content were the verbosity of a corporate introduction which talked in high jargon and least understood. The websites were designed as a corporate showpiece, to create awe without serving much of a purpose – that is providing consumers with information and value.

Technology still has major role in automating processes, creating interactivity and making the human presence felt rather than being a vault of lifeless, cold knowledge. Thankfully technology is recognizing the existence of customers who are human beings. Technology is now recognized as an adjunct to content and not as a replacement for good content.

The second wave in the information technology is very visible and truly begun to dispense rich ‘Information’ a prerequisite for a successful web presence. When we talk of content I take it to mean information which adds value to every aspect of human endeavor whether it is selling to him or providing a service or just plain entertainment.

So what are the emerging trends on the internet?

Online publishing has become an acceptable medium and here to stay and evolve further. We already see over 100 000 ezines catering to every imaginable niche. E-books are a fact of life with every book having its digital equivalent along with the traditional paper based counterpart. You have to look at websites like Barnes and Noble or Amazon to realize what huge market digital publications have created with its convenience of instant downloads once the payments are made online and minimizing hassles of printing shipping and cost of paper. Digital publishing has no recurring cost unlike traditional publishing.

Digital publishing will make consumers truly a king. You can buy books after reading a couple of chapters to check on the quality of content or just buy the required article which you are interested in instead of paying for the entire magazine as in a traditional magazine which you may never read fully. This has already been implemented by Amazon where you can read a few pages of the book before ordering them.

Websites are becoming a storehouse of good quality content thanks to an innovation called search engines. The better and more focused the content better the searchability and rankings of web sites. So now more information is available for decision making and consumers are reaping the rewards of competition. Every website is clamoring for customer attention by offering him the best of information about the products and services. Businesses which do not offer better quality information about products and services and its benefits will get destroyed.

Blogs another innovation on the www has made it easy for any average next door guy with no technical knowledge to set up his own web pages and dispense information on what he knows best.

A major trend that would emerge in the coming years is the quality of products advertised. Not all the person who can pay will be able to advertise due to the high selectivity levels by a consumer on the web.

With attention spans lasting only a few seconds and consumers demanding highest levels of quality, poor products if advertised in a search page or by a website may make the consumers shy away from such sites. To cut the clutter website owners have to become choosy about what they advertise and how they do it. Banners are already out and text is in.

Some have already implemented contextual advertising where you see only related ads of the subject you are browsing. The trend will accelerate and only the best products will be advertised.

Even search engines are listing sites with good content. No amount of optimization can put you on top of the page for long unless you have rich content .

Increasing connectivity, broadband and interactivity will create larger global markets for products and services especially for services with high levels of localization, bringing down costs dramatically further fueling demand for services which are now considered niche markets.

All this will be achieved by high quality content. So if you do not know how to write the best content for a successful web presence start learning because you may have to pay big when the demand far exceeds supply.

Srinivasan Gopal is full time management professional and part time author, syndicated writer and aspiring internet entrepreneur. Get a glimpse of his wide ranging interests at [http://www.learnhowto-ebooks.com]

Author: Srinivasan Gopal
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Indie Books are not a new concept per se but having indie books accepted by book readers and even the authors themselves is a new and exploding trend in the world of book publishing.

What are indie books? They are books that have been published outside of traditional publishing channels. Authors generally pay for all the production and printing costs of the books. These authors retain copyright ownership of their books and therefore keep more of the money from the sale of their books. Industry elitists believe that books published outside of the traditional publishing channels are inferior and as much as I hate to admit it, they are very often justified in that belief. The cause for this is that many authors cut corners in editing and book production in an attempt to keep costs to a minimum. These short cuts will generally result in inferior quality books.

However, that does not mean all indie books are inferior! In fact, there are thousands of excellent indie books in the marketplace just waiting to be read. Many authors take their writing careers very seriously and “sign” themselves to a traditional publishing deal. This means taking the book through all the production steps a traditional publisher would (editing, proofing, cover design, etc.). The only difference is that the author is footing the bill.

It is time for more authors to embrace indie books. Treat your writing career as a business and invest in yourself and your new writing business. Follow the path that many musicians choose to take. The indie music movement has been around for over 25 years. At first there was some resistance but now music fans everywhere embrace the independent musician. Thousands of fans around the world specifically look for music produced by independent musicians. One day the same will be true for books published by independent authors.

Today’s technology has made it possible for anyone to publish and distribute his/her book. The cost of publishing and printing a book is very reasonable in today’s world. The internet has created a distribution system that allows the author to connect with his/her fan anywhere in the world regardless of geography. Take control of your writing career and embrace indie books today!

Bill Walker – Independent Publishing Coach & Book Production Specialist. Visit my website at http://billwalker.com

Author: Bill P Walker
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Publishing in the “What You See Is What You Get” format has long been a primary personal computer sales feature. Whether used by a specialist publisher or by a home money-saver, publishing software has redefined the way people create printed materials.

In application of the term “printed”, this article includes all current modes of information display: newspapers and eBooks, hardcopy text and HTML displays, cards, brochures, posters, flyers, and even email messages. The family of WYSIWYG publishing software can rightly be applied to any aspect of the work at hand. Some programs may be more custom featured than others, perhaps geared directly to the private authors and small to medium enterprises. Some may be extended to meet the detail orientated needs of the professional book publishing industry. But all versions of publisher software share a certain basic feature. They are designed to help the user create and control the placement of computer generated text, symbols, graphics, and photos.

When relaying any form of printed information, visual imagery can play a major role. For this reason, most email providers have long included basic word processing features in their compilation software. Though powerful in themselves, word processors are not full-featured publishing software. They well fit a limited need, and the average home user may find complete satisfaction through the graphic control features of a word processor, or a greeting card creator, or a basic photo editor.

Employment of publishing professionals is on the rise. The current growth rate exceeds the average for all current occupations, and is expected to remain so through to 2016. Serious page layout and design work has become an in-house project. High performance computers matched to sophisticated publishing software are being pared to top-level professional desktop publishing specialists. The costly, time consuming pre-press work of old that was once handled by compositors and typesetters, is now being detailed by qualified desktop publishing professionals.

Publisher software reduces costs and speeds printed material production. The more common desktop publishing software becomes, the cheaper and easier it is to use. Yet in all things, training is pre-eminent. New jobs for digital publishers are emerging in Internet web design, commercial printing, and other publishing establishments. With a median annual earning figure of $34,000, and the increased growth in work-at-home opportunities, a position in publishing may be a premium career goal.

But as we earlier wrote, training is pre-eminent. Accurate knowledge of a given publishing software package is no certainty of employment. One needs to know and understand the basic terms of the business, the scope of which is far greater than this article can cover.

Martin Alan enjoys writing on subjects such as literature, digital publishing, digital magazine, publisher software 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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A couple definitions I use here:

Print — Either hard-copy, electronic, or both. You, the author, do almost all the marketing and and some of the distribution.

Publish — Either hard-copy, electronic, or both. You, the author, sell certain rights (such as USA hard-copy print) to a publisher who creates the books and sells them to retail stores. The stores could be Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or whoever.

Self-Publish — Either hard-copy, electronic, or both. Instead of the large publishing houses, you can have an independent (indie) publisher do the hard-copy production. You will still have to do most, if not all, of the marketing. You can consider Amazon’s Create Space to be of this variety, since the work is available to the public but not necessarily well-marketed.

Print on Demand (POD) — A service prints and ships your hard-copy only on demand. You upload a specifically-formatted file, such as a.pdf, and cover art, and then define the rest of the publishing data. Usually there’s no cost to you, the author, to make it available. Frequently the service will also offer editorial and publicity/distribution services for an additional cost. Lulu.com is one example, there are lots more.

Vanity Press — A service which will print a minimum run of your books (usually several hundred at least) at your expense so you can store them in your garage until the bugs eat them. While the service might offer editorial and other services, it’s usually up to you to market and distribute what you’ve bought.

As little as a couple months ago, the Publish option was the measure of your success as an author; you’ve actually got your book on a bookstore shelf available to the public. You have “access” to the New York Times bestseller lists (other lists for other regions such as Canada).

No matter what method you use, you’ll have to start following the publishing industry. More and more authors are going the self-publish route in one form or another, quite often with ebooks. Especially if you have some non-fiction, you could even put them up on ClickBank.com and have others promote them as affiliates. I know Larry Brooks goes this route, although he’s got a hard-copy work scheduled for 2011.

With the proliferation of dedicated eBook reader devices, the eBook specially formatted for various devices is an author’s choice. You can work through Amazon’s CreateSpace and get your book available both as hard-copy and as a Kindle-formatted ebook.

The route I chose is Self-Publish and Print. The Sorcerer novels are on Lulu.com if someone wants hard-copy, while I promote and immediately deliver the electronic versions from this site. So far, several people have gotten hard-copies from Lulu (they’re not cheap since they are a one-off POD) but many more readers have gotten the electronic versions from here.

I’m as vain as the rest; there’s 5.5 inches of the four Sorcerer novels on my bookshelf. That’s tangible proof to me of what I did. Eventually I may put them up on Amazon. Perhaps if they sell a couple thousand copies there, a “conventional” publishing house will pick them up. I’m not holding my breath.

The publishing world is really shaking out. Keep an eye on it, keep your source files flexible so you can produce just about any needed format (including the various reader formats) and decide what route you want to go.

Bruce H. Johnson has been a knowledge worker, analyst and programmer for over thirty years. He started making the transition to fiction writer in 2005 and has the four popular Sorcerer novels available. Get started on your adventure – go to his blog series on Technical Writer to Fiction Writer at http://www.freespirituniverse.org/series/.

Author: Bruce H Johnson
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Consumers the world over are shifting their preferences to electronic content. Companies of every kind see their customers going online to find product information, prices, reviews, comparisons, and make purchases. That’s why forward-looking organizations are moving to get ahead of this ePublishing trend by moving all of their publications, from annual reports, product catalogs and company brochures, to training manuals and partner agreements, online.

Online publishing for most people means a print document converted to a portable document format (PDF) file, but today’s online readers want a more engaging experience. The good news is that an innovative new wave of technology has emerged that makes reading digital content as easy and enjoyable as turning a page, but even more compelling, by incorporating feature-rich multi-media components.

A new and impressive generation of “flipping page” digital publishing technology is revolutionizing how people read online material, combining the familiarity of the traditional printed page with a dazzling array of electronic capabilities. Readers can actually flip the pages of the document with a swipe of their finger on a touch screen, or the click of a cursor.

Of course, not all flipping page solutions are alike. While some technologies use simple images and flash animation to mimic a digital turning page, the best of these new solutions utilize a more sophisticated approach that incorporates vector-graphics high-resolution images; supports zooming, audio, video, and hot links; and also allows readers to highlight, bookmark and make page notes on the electronic document.

Digital publishing vastly simplifies the job of building and managing any business in a number of ways. Once a document is digitized, the material can easily be customized with the company’s brand identity. Changes to technical documents, brochures and other materials can quickly and easily be made. A highly-secure Digital Publishing Platform can be configured to allow authorized managers, customers and partners to view key business documents, while preventing those materials from being printed, downloaded or changed in any way. The tremendous power of email lists and alerts, electronic newsletters, multimedia presentations and social media can be leveraged through digital publishing. Businesses can also creatively deploy online content to add value, open new revenue streams and attract lucrative new demographics.

Consumers are embracing the world of digital content. By understanding the trends and opportunities unique to ePublishing, businesses can position themselves to survive and profit in the era of digital content.

Monte Hamilton is the co-founder and Chief Development Officer of Perpetual Publishers and president of Hamilton Associates. He spent more than 20 years as an executive recruiter to Fortune 100 companies, recruiting mid-level and executive level financial and information technology specialists. Since 1994, he has been actively involved with Internet consulting. His previous experience also includes serving as director of franchise development for Las Vegas Discount Golf and Tennis, a 65-store chain, and as marketing development consultant for American Leak Detection.

He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management from the University of Montana at Missoula.

http://www.perpetualpublishers.com

Author: Monte Hamilton
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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