Robin Good: Hyperink is a new publishing service which picks new blog authors and builds great story-books out of their already published content.
From FastCompany: "If you're a blogger who'd like to add the line "book author" to your resume but are too busy, well, blogging to get that far, e-book publisher Hyperink has a new solution for you.
The e-publisher today launched its "blog to book” service, with the goal of make the publishing process a whole lot easier, accessible, and profitable for bloggers who wouldn’t typically have access to a book deal.
...
Hyperink’s demand-first philosophy flips the way books are selected on its head.
Instead of starting with the writer, which is often the case with traditional publishers, they look at Google search trends, what people are talking about on social platforms, and what areas are selling well on Kindle. Once they analyze the data to identify areas where people want books, they then look for a writer (or blogger in this case) for that particular area.
With their blog to book service, eBooks are created using existing published content which means there’s no new writing on the blogger’s part.
...Hyperink identifies your most popular posts based on comments, views, shares, etc. and then assigns an editor to layout the content with a narrative flow.
...the typical amount of time required is just about 5-10 hours total.
Once the eBook is complete, Hyperink publishes it to its marketplace, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Kobo (iBooks coming soon). They then provide the blogger with copy, widgets, and tools to promote the title via his/her own blog.
Proceeds on books sold are split between both parties, giving bloggers the chance to turn their content into a passive income stream and enabling Hyperink to recoup their costs and generate revenue."
Robin Good: Albeit, almost a year old, here is a great resource for tools and services you can use if you have an Amazon Kindle Reader of some kind. Whether physical, web-based or software, the Kindle Reader is now a very popular tool for accessing ebook-based content.
To convert, send, format and prepare files, web pages and other types of content for your Kindle Reader this article offers a treasure trove of useful tools and services.
From the official press release: "The action was taken to better serve advertisers while attempting to create consistency among digital magazine publishers.
...
The five initial voluntary recommended metrics include:
1) Total consumer paid digital issues
2) The total number of tablet readers per issue
3) The total number of sessions per issue
4) The total time spent per reader per issue
5) The average number of sessions per reader per issue
Excerpted from the article intro: "The average reader of e-books says she has read 24 books (the mean number) in the past 12 months, compared with an average of 15 books by a non-e-book consumer."
"21% of Americans have read an e-book. The increasing availability of e-content is prompting some to read more than in the past and to prefer buying books to borrowing them."
"Most of the findings in this report come from a survey of 2,986 Americans ages 16 and older, conducted on November 16-December 21, 2011, that extensively focused on the new terrain of e-reading and people’s habits and preferences.
One-fifth of American adults (21%) report that they have read an e-book in the past year, ..."
"Those who have taken the plunge into reading e-books stand out in almost every way from other kinds of readers.
Foremost, they are relatively avid readers of books in all formats: 88% of those who read e-books in the past 12 months also read printed books. Compared with other book readers, they read more books.
They read more frequently for a host of reasons: for pleasure, for research, for current events, and for work or school."
Robin Good: Fastpencil is a design, printing, publishing and distribution service which self-published authors can use to create books/eBooks and publish and distribute them to the major online and physical book distribution outlets available.
FastPencil provides all of the tools needed to write, edit and format your book and allows authors and companies to choose among three levels of imprinting and publishing services: PREMIERE, Wavecrest and FastPencil.com.
Distribution options:
1) Color Books: to Amazon.com, Alibris.com and the FastPencil Marketplace.
2) Black and White Books: to Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Baker and Taylor and the FastPencil Marketplace (excluding 8.5x11 page size, which is only available on the FastPencil Marketplace).
3) eBooks in Epub format: Apple iBookStore, Amazon Kindle Store, Barnes&Noble.com, Borders.com, Kobobooks.com, Powells.com, Ebookmall.com, Diesel-ebooks.com, Booksonboard.com, Lulu.com, Lybrary.com, and the FastPencil Marketplace.
4) eBooks in PDF format: Powells.com, Ebookmall.com, Diesel-ebooks.com, Booksonboard.com, Lulu.com, Lybrary.com, and the FastPencil Marketplace.
Pricing: All of the FastPencil writing tools are free.
When you’ve finished writing and are ready to publish you can choose from the following Distribution options:
1. Private - FREE
2. FastPencil Marketplace Only - FREE
3. Wide Distribution - $149 one format ($199 for both print and eBook)
Robin Good: Joy Farrington at Wordpreneur has an interesting article on how to effectively price your next ebook. He writes:
"In my mind, how can an ebook cost nearly the same as the printed version of the book?! It doesn’t make sense to me and it’s a complete turnoff.
...Since I’m an avid reader and author I always weighed the pros and cons of different pricing from both points-of-view...
a) Free — If you offer your book for free, I’m assuming it’s because it’s part of your sales funnel. Meaning, you’re using the ebook as a lead generator and as a way to generate interest for your other books or services. So, if you’re giving away your book for free and it’s not a part of your marketing strategy, why bother.
b) 99 cents — Oh the dreaded 99 cents! Amazon (I’m guessing, since again this was un-researched) made this price point popular but how can you become a successful author by selling your book for less than a buck? Well, John Locke and Amanda Hocking did just that. They sold over a million copies of their books at this price tag. But one of the secrets to their success was having a book series. When a buyer read and loved one book, they were eager to purchase another. So this pricing is especially great for new, self published authors who have a series of books.
c) $2.99 — As a reader, this is the price tag that makes me buy a book on a whim. The low cost is right up my alley while the $2.99 price tag tells me the ebook potentially has some substance and value to it."
From the article intro: "If you are anything like other ebook authors I know, then you probably spend a fair amount of time checking your ebooks’ sales figures and rankings.
The reports offered at some major ebook stores, however, tend to be quite basic. Fortunately there are a number of alternative tracking services available.
Some of the following services also attempt to estimate sales but remember these are only estimates. Unless the source is directly from the ebook store, e.g. Amazon, then this will probably only a “best guess” of expected sales based on a particular rank.
With tools like these you can also keep track of how your competitors’ ebooks are doing and even get some ideas for your next book by researching the performance of particular titles."
Robin Good: Kemari at Easilymused.com has a good selection of five books that can help anyone who is interested in breaking into the ebook publishing world.
The Indie Author Guide: Self-Publishing Strategies Anyone Can Use by April L. Hamilton. I have this one also, and I have to say it’s one of my favorites. April spells out the entire process in a very simple but helpful way. There is even a section on book covers (definitely helpful for the indie author).
Smart Self-Publishing: Becoming an Indie Author by Zoe Winters. If Hocking is the queen of self-publishing, Zoe is the princess (though I doubt she’d use that term). She’s a self-published author with experience, so she knows what she’s talking about here.
Robin Good: Moglue is a cross-platform (Mac & PC) downloadable software designed to author animated interactive stories that can be published to iPhones and iPads devices.
Moglue has been designed for non technical users and requires no coding experience.
The user can easily import images and graphics into the app and then apply visual animations and interactive features to each.
Moglue can also connect via WiFi to any nearby iOs device and provide you with an immediate preview of the final results.
From Digital Inspiration: This chart compares the size of all the popular online ebook stores from Amazon (Kindle), Barnes and Noble (Nook), Apple iBooks and Sony. (2010)
It is interesting to see the relative size of online bookstores compared side by side.
From the article intro: "Thanks to the e-reader revolution, there are a lot of perks to self-publishing these days, but one of the downsides is that you’re on your own for funding some of the basic necessities, such as cover art, editing (this alone can be $1,000 and up for a novel-length manuscript), and formatting.
Once you start making money, and have reserves from previous sales to draw upon, it gets easier, but lots of independent authors struggle to come up with the initial funds.
I’ve run into some authors who have used a site called KickStarter to help with start-up costs.
...
Last year, I interviewed Miranda MeiLin, an indie fantasy author who successfully funded her first ebook and paperback using KickStarter.
You can read the whole interview if you’re interested, but here’s a quote related to her KickStarter success:
"Forty-eight people bought pre-sale packages to the tune of $2500.
That paid for my editor, artist and typographer, and then the purchase and shipping of the paperback for those that bought the print package.
The $50 presale bought them an autographed paperback, the finished formatted ebook and a thank-you in the acknowledgments, but the real attraction was that they got the raw manuscript as soon as my editor and I decided it was done (the $25 package was everything but the paperback). I finished on August 31st, 2010 at 9:30 pm; the raw manuscript was in their hands 24 hours later."
Robin Good: If you are curious to find out what may be awaiting indipendent ebook publishers in the coming months, this good article cum video interview should fill some of your expectations.
Key highlights:
”2012 is the year things get bad for traditional publishing industry”.
...for publishers going digital the problem is pricing and customers think the price has to be low. 99c – $4.99 which in some cases still doesn’t cover the costs of all the editing, design etc.
Penguin opening up to ‘self-publishing’ is actually more like vanity publishing.
Kindle Select. It’s basically a way for self-publishers to put their book into the Kindle Prime lending program where members can borrow books.
Amazon moving into international markets. I specifically want India to come online as a huge English speaking market.
Advertising in ebooks. Authors will do it and Amazon is also putting ads on the Kindle.
Seth Godin with the Domino Project did get companies to sponsor the book and give it away for free.
Authors will also be able to advertise in each others books.
As indies getting on everything other than Amazon KDP, our options are Smashwords and BookBaby, that’s about it.
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:
Robin Good: Hamster Free Converter is a free Windows-only downloadable software that makes it extremely easy to convert to just about any eBook format.
Hamster utilizes the same conversion engine utilized by Calibre but without the many options and advanced features.
It supports more than 200+ devices including Amazon Kindle, iPad, iPhone 3, iPhone 4, iPod, FR Book, iRiver, Sony, Digma, Nook, BenQ, Kobo, Explay,CrossElec, boeye, PAGEone, WexLer.
Hamster Free Converter converts any eBooks to run on Amazon, Sony, Asus, iPod, iPad, iPhone, PSP, Blackberry, Zune, iRiver, etc.
Robin Good: Vook, the revolutionary and much-awaited eBook publishing platform is finally available and it looks like expectations are not going to be disappointed.
With Vook you can upload, edit, format and style your eBook, all online, while being ablr to add and integrate text, images and video clips.
Set meta-data, marketing information and pricing and then distribute directly to the Amazon Kindle, the Apple iBookstore / iPad and to the Barnes and Nobles Nook.
Robin Good: Here is a good basic introductory guide prepared by Cristopher Null. The tutorial for novice ebook publishers contains valuable information and many useful links to relevant tools, articles and services.
Robin Good: Volpen is a new jakarta-based Indonesian startup offering an online service which helps authors and writers create collaborative ebooks.
...There are four steps to publishing a Volpen book:
1) writing,
2) voting,
3) royalty sharing, and then
4) publishing.
"Upon completion of the book, revenue and royalties are calculated and displayed to each contributing writer. Percentages are shared based on the number of words contributed to the story.
It is then be automatically formatted and then submitted to e-book publishing platforms such as Amazon and Kobo."
From the article intro by Sarah Marshall: "This guide explains how you can submit an RSS feed of your blog to Amazon in less than 10 minutes for it to be available in the Kindle store a day or two later.
Not only will you see your blog on a much-used device, bloggers can also hope to earn a little money.
Amazon sets the £0.99 or £1.99 monthly subscription price it charges Kindle owners, of which the blogger gets 30 per cent.
Okay, so you are unlikely to become rich, but you are offering readers the ability to access your content on another platform for very little time and effort.
This guide explains everything you need to know."
N.B.: Non-US bank account holders get paid by cheque, US bloggers are asked to submit their bank account details.
Robin Good: Paul Jun has an excellent itroductory article on self-publishing your first ebook on the Amazon Kindle, laid out in seven clear steps.
1) Define your target audience Without a target audience, an eBook is useless. Without a target audience, you will not see an increase in subscribers, traffic, or any building of trust whatsoever.
2) Have a place online (a website) where people can find you and ask you questions
3) Go for the writing.
4) Tools you need before formatting
5) Formatting issues
6) KDP Select or not?
7) Upload the eBook - cover, royalties, ISBN number
N.B.: Paul has truly some great tips and recommendations on how to leverage best the different routes offered by Amazon to ebook publishers (KDP Select or not?)
Robin Good: If you are a non-technical person and you are not a graphic designer, but you are looking for a great tool to layout and format your next eBook, guide or report, and you have a Mac, look no further than SwiftPublisher, now available in a new more powerful version (v. 3.0).
Key features include a truly simple and easy to use interface, unlimited layers, more than 180 ready-made templates, clipart, vector drawing tools, image cropping, object grouping and a lot more.
Having personally used and selected Swift Publisher as our newsroom tool of choice for producing PDF guides and manuals, I am only sorry not to be able to recommend a tool that is so effective also to anyone working on a Windows PC.
The price is so low, that I there is no reason not to have such a great layout, formatting and publishing tool at your disposal.
Robin Good: Here is an interesting little book (Kindle) that may be quite useful to those that are looking for innovative ways to finance their own book, without falling in the hands of a traditional publisher.
Robin Good: Choosing an eBook publishing service is not easy. There are many important variables at play, and taking them all into account, if you are doing this for the first time, is not easy.
Jane Friedman, has written a valuable article, analizyng and trying to answer each one of the key question any independent small publisher should ask before diving into publishing his next eBook.
Here the ten key questions you should be asking:
"1. Is the service exclusive or nonexclusive?
2. If it’s exclusive, what’s the term of the contract?
3. Do you control the price?
4. What’s the upfront fee and/or how is the royalty calculated?
5. Are there hidden fees or charges?
6. What file formats do they accept?
7. Who owns the e-book files after they are created?
8. Are DRM protections or proprietary formats involved?
9. Where is your e-book distributed?
10. Can you make changes to your e-book after it goes on sale?"
If you are looking to get specific advice and tips on each one of these questions, this article is for you.
Robin Good: Great tips and advice from Curtis Hox, English professor by day and a science fiction writer by night, on how to prepare your first .mobi file as he has learned them while producing and formatting his own sci-fi fantasy novel, Bleedover.
Many good suggestions on tools and services to use, as well as on the precise workflow step to get everything to work flawlessly.
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