Formatting an ebook: New Amazon tool for self-published authors

If you want to self-publish ebooks, you need to learn some things about ebooks. Ebooks are really just files, and in those files the underlying format is HTML tagging. the same tagging that drives the web. There are two main sets of tagging schemes. Epub (sometimes written as ePub) works for iBooks, Nook, and pretty much all others bookstores. Amazon's Kindle, though, has its own format based on mobi. It still uses HTML tags, remember, but it's a different set of rules on which tags do what and how files are structured.

Amazon's KDP platform for self-publishing actually allows authors to upload a MS Word file. If you have a novel that is all text, and you use Word's formatting styles consistently, KDP does a good job of converting the files. If you want new chapters to start on a new screen, for example, you need to be sure the word style for the chapter name or number creates a new page in print. But of course, you can't really tweak the format easily. If you want to change something, you need to go back to Word, edit the file, reload it to KDP, and look at it again. If you have the kind of book that has fancy formatting or lots of images, this can be tedious.

As first reported by The Digital Reader, Amazon has launched  a beta version of a new tool called Kindle Create.  The Talking New Media blog checked it out, too, and reported on their first impressions.

The new tool is different because you download it and run it locally, o your PC or Mac, and then preview the results from within the app itself. It takes over 500 MB of disc space, but hard drives are pretty big these days. 

Although the Amazon page only mentions Word files, the program will accept PDFs, but there was some discussion in the comments on the Talking New Media post that suggetsed it wasn't really converting the PDF but just wrapping it in code that made it into a "print replica" not a true ebook. 

I'm not sure this new took will help me that much since I have started putting my books out in paperback, also. I now use Adobe's InDesign which can produce a print-ready PDF and also an epub file from the same input. But if you self-publish books with a tricky format and want to try this new tool,Amazon is actively soliciting feedback.

Doing digital the right way: Open Road

Open Road Integrated Media is a digital-only publisher and because digital is the main event, not merely a sideline, they do it right! A lot of their books are (sometimes quite old) back-list titles, which for other publishers often means they would be scanned from paper and slapped up as ebooks with hardly a second look. Sometimes publishers don't bother getting a cover for the ebook. Again, not Open Road!

I recently bought some Lord Peter books for my Kindle. Dorothy L. Sayers was a British mystery writer who created a wonderful amateur detective named Lord Peter Wimsey. Sayers died in 1957, so none of these books is even close to new, but Open Road not only did a great job in putting them into the proper format, they commissioned a wonderful, imaginative set of new covers! I've included a few here so you can see what I mean.

Lord Peter was a wealthy, well dressed aristocrat, so each cover shows a man's torso in an outfit suited (pardon the pun) to the story. And of course, Lord Peter's signature monocle appears above the title.

When I read on my Kindle, I highlight any formatting problems that I notice. When I finished my first Lord Peter Kindle book from OR, I checked and there was no highlighting—not a single formatting error!

In addition, OR has figured out that one of the strengths of ebooks is you can change the price as often as you like. The Lord Peter books generally sell for $7.00 to $9.99 in the Kindle store, but OR put three of them on sale for $2.99 or less. Now, I have actually read all these books. I used to own them in paperback, but I gave them away to a good home. But at that price, I bought those three books so I can read them again whenever I feel like it without having them take any space in my downsized bookshelves.

There you go! Quality books, quality formatting, quality covers, and flexible pricing. That is the way to do ebooks right!

eBook production update

The fantasy novella Where Magic Rules is done, and Shades of Empire is back from the copyeditor. I'm making final edits on the novel now.  Everything should be ready to go to 52 Novels, the conversion house, in about two weeks. I use them because they don't just convert the files, they impose a distinct design on the books, applying a style for scene breaks and chapter headings. If I just wanted to convert the text, I could use Calibre or Scrivener, but I don't know ebook formats well enough to be able to impose that style myself.

The one drawback to using a conversion house is that unless you know what you're doing, you can't edit the files easily once you get them back. Ergo, careful proofing before you submit the m.s. is essential. I use Calibre to convert my MS Word file so that I can proof on my Kindle, which I find very helpful. Them, when I get the files back from 52 Novels, I send the Kindle version to my Kindle and proof yet again to be sure that everything came through okay. This is especially important for things like blocks of indented text or places where you rely on italics to convey something other than ordinary narrative and dialog.  52 Novels will do minor corrections and certainly fix anything that didn't convert well, but you don't want to ask for substantive edits at this point because it would cost you.

This stage is exciting and tedious at the same time. Inserting commas and rewording awkward or unclear phrasing  is much less fun than writing. On the other hand, it means the book is near to being out there in the world, which is what every writer wants!
 
In some ways, it's a lot like those last few weeks of pregnancy. I'm about to have a bouncing baby ebook, and in this case it's twins!

Another excellent post about ebook production!

Book production expert Emma Wright has done it again! The FutureBook blog has a post by her that gives some specific tips for designing an ebook. This is nice to have because Wright knows a lot about print book design, and she has noted those things that need to be different in an ebook.

For example, in a print book, with a (potentially) larger page, the design can rely on white space more than in an ebook where the screen is often very limited in size. The scene break style in a print book might include several lines of white space, but only one or two lines in en ebook. That means you need something—a rule or a different font size—to distinguish the new scene from the old.

It isn't enough to produce an ebook with no typos. If you want your book to be readable, you have make sure it's easy to navigate as well as an engrossing read.

p.s.  Smashwords seems to be stable for now, but they haven't had an update of other retailer info in quite a while. Apple, Diesel, and Kobo are still showing sales data only through December 31, and Sony though January 28.  Barnes & Noble is still in the lead with data from February 2.