eBook Publishing World

Robin Good: If you are writing or preparing to complete your first ebook, you have certainly been wondering what would be the best pricing strategy adopt, as the alternatives and options only seem to abund.

Catherine Howard writes on her blog: "How much should I charge for my book? is one of the biggest questions facing the soon-to-be-self-published author.

But I think self-published authors a year, two or three years in should also be asking themselves how much should I be charging for my books now?

The answer is as much as you can, i.e. the highest price at which your books continue to sell consistently well.

Lower than that, and you’re doing yourself—and possibly your work—a disservice. You might also be sending out subconscious messages about your book that are turning off prospective readers.

Higher than that, and your sales might slow to a trickle. Yes, it’s nice to earn seven or eight dollars off each sale (!!), but not if you’re only making two or three sales a month.

So how do we decide how much to charge for our e-books?"

To find out read the full story of how she went about it and what she learned from it.

Useful. 7/10

Full article: http://catherineryanhoward.com/2012/06/04/how-much-should-i-charge-for-my-e-book/ 

Robin Good: If you are looking for a basic guide on how to prepare, edit and format your eBook inside Microsoft Word, here is a good introductory guide.

These below are the sections you will find in it:

• Understanding Ebook Formats
• Design Your Ebook in Word
• Add the Title Page
• Configure the Table of Contents
• Set Up the Ebook's Chapters
• Add Page Headers and Footers
• Save the Design as a Reusable Template
• Save in Other Formats
• Test as You Go

Useful. 7/10

Full article: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/small-business/3352016/how-use-microsoft-word-create-ebook/ 

Robin Good: BookTango is an online eBook publishing service which allows you to prepare, format, edit, publish and distribute your eBook to all major online ebookstores including:

• Amazon Kindle
• iBookStore
• Google Play
• Sony
• Kobo
• Barnes & Nobles
• Scribd

Authors keep 100% royalties (until July 4th 2012).

The basic service is free. Avanced pro services include also: 

- Formatting & Corrections Services
- Interior Images
- Free Copy of E-book

- US Copyright registration

Pricing info: http://www.booktango.com/Services/ 

How it works: http://www.booktango.com/HowItWorks/ 

More info:  http://www.booktango.com/  

Robin Good: If you are about to decide which company/service to use to publish the paperback edition of your ebook you may have landed on at least one of the two companies in this sector: CreateSpace and Lightning Source.

"If you’re looking for a low cost, high royalty option, the two major competitors are Createspace and Lightning Source. While both are reputable companies that produce library-quality books, there are major benefits, drawbacks and differences to each that every author should be aware of before making an educated choice."

This article provides a good and informative overview of the key differences, pros and cons of these two services depending on the specific needs you may have.

Useful. Informative. 8/10

Full article: http://www.molly-greene.com/the-great-debate-createspace-or-lightening-source-for-self-published-print-books/

Robin Good: Leanpub is a free web service that allows you to create, edit and publish your own book in PDF, .epub (iPad) and .mobi (Kindle) formats, and to sell it online at your own set price.

With Leanpub you get 90% of the selling price, minus a fixed .50cents per copy sold which goes to Leanpub. Check this table for more details: http://i.imgur.com/ziqV5.jpg

Leanpub it's simple to use, but, in my opinion, it's not for everyone, as its setup is not as simple and straightforward (yet) as that of other web apps. But if you are a bit familiar with Dropbox, if you can easily edit text files, and don't mind tagging your book text with a few asterisks here and there, then you should be more than fine with this tool.

Basically Leanpub hooks up to your Dropbox account where it drops a set of simple text files that control the contents, sequence, formatting and images for your book.

So to work with Leanpub, you actually open a text file in your Dropbox account, and start editing it. The Leanpub account is used only to initially create the files needed in Dropbox, to generate previews and to provide you with the means to provide marketing info for your book landing page (auto-created by Leanpub).

It is possible to start a book by importing content from your blog RSS feed or from a Word document saved in HTML format.

One other cool feature of Leanpub is its ability to allow you, as an author, to publish and start selling your book at any time, giving you the option to actually get paid from the moment you publish your first edition.

People can sign-up to your book updates via the landing page, and Leanpub collects for you their emails so that you can keep in touch with them, and alert them everytime you have a new edition out.

The final cherry on the pie at Leanpub is the "bundling" feature which allows authors to bundle together either multiple books of their own, or their books together with other authors'(and their approval) ones and to offer them at a special discounted price.

This option by itself allows book authors both to use a very powerful marketing approach juxtaposing their titles to other relevant ones, as well as to cultivate their own competence in a specific area to curate relevant book sets for their audience. Check the bundling feature in this video here: http://youtu.be/BGJoDImqSqU

Video intro: http://youtu.be/Hl3IZ6I0wLs

Manifesto: https://leanpub.com/manifesto

Full intro tutorial: http://youtu.be/mEpfreY-3Aw 

FAQ: https://leanpub.com/help 

More info / sign-up: https://leanpub.com/ 

Robin Good: If you are looking for new places where to go and promote your bran new ebook, here is a good collection.

From the original article: "...a long list of places where self-published authors can promote their eBook for free.

We’ve collected more information about the sites in a simple directory below, linking to the submission pages for these eBook sites.

If you are an avid eBook reader, these sites are great for finding new books to read as well…."

Useful. 7/10

Full list: http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/free-ebook-promotion_b52130 

From the article intro: "Inspiration hits. The light bulb goes on. You’ve got a passion, and you pursue it.

You see a need, and you fill it. There’s a question, and you answer it. You have a purpose, and you fulfill it.

These are all great reasons to begin writing a nonfiction book. And most writers, when struck by a good idea and the desire to write, simply begin writing.

However, an even better reason exists to take a bit of time before you beginning writing to evaluate your idea—at least if you want your book to be successful.

Evaluate? I can hear you groaning. No one wants to evaluate anything, especially that book idea you are so psyched about.

If you simply want to write the book of your heart and you don’t care how many copies you sell, great. Go for it.

If you want to write a successful book, meaning one that sells to lots of readers or to a traditional publisher and to lots of readers, however, it behooves you to take the time to consider if your idea is a good one by industry standards.

To do this, I suggest you discover nine things about your book idea. Once you have this information, you’ll know if your book has a chance of success."

Useful for beginners. 7/10

Full article: http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2012/06/05/write-a-non-fiction-book/