Posts tagged - ebooks

Review: The Self-Publisher’s Ultimate Resource Guide

Posted on: January 26, 2015, in: ,

A relative handed me a book manuscript one time, written by a friend of hers, and asked me to look it over. The cover looked like it was drawn by hand, the pages were three-hole punched, it had typos and errors galore. The whole thing screamed “amateur.” I didn’t want to have to slog through a poorly written book and then spend more time trying to be diplomatic as to what I thought. But since it was a relative, I started reading and to my surprise I got caught up in the story! I read the whole thing and enjoyed it in spite of all the glaring mistakes.

The good thing about self-publishing is that anyone can write and publish anything. The bad thing about self-publishing is that anyone can write and publish anything. So even the most fascinating story needs all the help it can get in order to, first, be noticed among thousands of other stories, and second, avoid disappointing those readers who decide to buy it and invest what may amount to quite a few hours reading. And potential readers will drop a book with poorly designed cover, boring title, misspellings etc. like a dead rat.

Enter the Self-Publisher’s Ultimate Resource Guide, by Joel Friedlander and Betty Kelly Sargent, a curated list of resources for self-publishers with a brief introduction and short explanations of each type of resource. The assumption behind the list is, as the authors say to help a self-publisher: “find top freelance professionals to help them write, produce and sell their book…”

The Guide is divided into three sections: Prepare, Publish and Promote with resources appropriate to each activity. “Prepare” for example, includes content and developmental editors, indexers, copy editors, cover designers, where to find images, etc. In the “Publish” section are listed such resources as eBook conversion, publish-on demand-websites, subsidy publishers and more. The “Promote” section offers website designers, social media consultants, press release resources, self-publishing blogs, eBook aggregators and distributors, etc.

I am familiar with a few resources listed in The Self-Publisher’s Ultimate Resource Guide, but most of the listings I’ve never heard of, and I have begun checking them out, looking for a good fit for my self-publishing efforts. Eight bucks Kindle edition, should save you a lot of time sorting through search engine suggestions.

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E-Book Publishing

Posted on: November 20, 2014, in: , , ,

Writer meeting Nov. 14, 2014

Writer meeting Nov. 14, 2014

On Nov 14, I held an e-book publishing seminar at the River Park Mission on Marconi, going through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) step by step. We also looked at the Kindle Scout program, in which a writer can submit an unpublished novel. If it’s accepted, then Amazon gives it a page, and opens it for voting. The books with the most votes are offered a publishing contract. Obviously helps a writer get some exposure. You need an Amazon account to vote, (free) so that’s the business end of the program.

Mary Tinat explained some of the technical requirements of putting photos/artwork into an e-book. She’s doing a vegetarian cookbook which will include photos, so she’s been researching the subject. A number of people couldn’t attend on the 19th, so I’ll schedule another one to be held on a weekend. Any questions, email me at wehanson@aol.com

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Basic Terminology for Publish-on-Demand Sites

Posted on: September 03, 2014, in: , ,

Book publishing is a long-established technology with its own set of terms. To help you understand some of the requirements of publish on demand sites, here is a mini-glossary that should assist you.

AMAZON.COM: World’s largest online retailer, began as an online bookstore. Createspace is a subsidiary of Amazon, and books produced on Createspace can be sold on Amazon.

BINDING: For most paperbacks, the pages are glued into a paper binding called “perfect bound.” Hardbound books are assembled from sets of pages (signatures) stitched together into a binding.

DROP CAP: In desktop publishing, the first letter of a paragraph that is enlarged to “drop” down two or more lines. Drop caps are often seen at the beginning of chapters, where the top of the first letter of the first word lines up with the top of the first sentence and drops down to the four or fifth sentence. (Ref: Webopedia) Example from Messengers by Wayne E. Hanson:

drop cap example

EBOOKS: Books produced for electronic readers. In April 2011, Amazon.com announced that it sold more electronic copies of books than hard-copy. Kindle is Amazon.com’s electronic reader, also the document format compatible with the Kindle reader. Other types of readers include Barnes & Noble’s Nook. You can use the same manuscript for both hard-copy and eBook production, but there may be different formatting requirements.

FONT: You have a choice as to how your text looks, and font selection is one of the most important. A font is a design or a set of characters, the combination of typeface and other qualities, such as size, pitch, and spacing. For example, Times Roman is a typeface that defines the shape of each character. Within Times Roman, however, there are many fonts to choose from — different sizes, italic, bold, and so on. Times New Roman. The height of characters in a font is measured in points, each point being approximately 1/72 inch, most books are 8-12 points in size. Large-print books are 16 point or larger. Font width is measured by pitch, which refers to how many characters can fit in an inch. Common pitch values are 10 and 12. A font is said to be fixed pitch if every character has the same width. If the widths vary depending on the shape of the character, it is called a proportional font. Most applications that support text enable you to choose from among many fonts. Laser, ink-jet, and dot-matrix printers offer the widest selection of fonts. These printers support a certain set of resident fonts, but you can expand this set by loading different fonts from software (soft fonts) or from font cartridges. Some fonts are selected because they are “easy to read” (Arial, Courier) and some surveys indicate that Times New Roman and Georgia are the most “attractive” fonts. .Aesthetics, the type of story, and personal preference all figure font selection. (Ref: Webopedia) Some  publish-on-demand sites provide book templates with fonts already selected for clarity and eye appeal. When you flow your text into the template, it takes on the font resident in the template. Examples of fonts:

font examples

FOOTER: Information such as page number, chapter name, etc., at the bottom of the page.

GUTTER: white space between left and right pages where the binding sometimes pinches the pages together and makes it hard to read. As a result, most books have a slightly wider margin on the inside edge of the page.

HEADER: Margin at the top of a page, which may contain information such as page number, chapter name, author name, etc., at the top of the page. In most word processors, these are entered into a separate field, not added to the main text.

PAGINATION: Dividing an electronic text file into separate pages as they will be displayed in a book. Includes numbering the pages, usually done through a header or footer. If you want chapters to begin on a right-hand page, for example, you will need to put spacing into your text, to make it look right.

TRIM:  Book pages are usually produced slightly larger than needed, and are then cut to final size based on trim marks. So trim refers to the final page measurements. Common sizes for a paperback book, for example,are 5,25 inches by 8 inche or 6 inches by 9 inches. Your text layout will need to be to those dimensions, with margins, gutter, headers and footers within those measurements. Createspace has some text templates you can download to make it easier. You download the template, then paste your text into it.

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