Digital Pubbing

Exploring the ins and outs of the publishing industry

Techy

Useful Productivity Hacks and Tools

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For those of us who are multi-taskers and like to do everything at 1.5-2x speed (I've even started watching TV shows on fast forward), the New York Times has some bad news: "Sorry, you can't speed read." But on the bright side, there are many tools and hacks out there to help you speed up your productivity. I'll get into the writing-specific ones first. Author Specific … [Read more...] about Useful Productivity Hacks and Tools

140 Tools and Resources for Building Your Author Website and/or Blog

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Author websites and blogs are important components to building an author platform. With that in mind, here is a list of resources that can help you set up and optimize your site. Setting Up Your Website Find Available Domain Names on Namestation "+300 Awesome Free Things for Entrepreneurs & Startups" on Growth Supply "11 Essential Elements of an Author Website" … [Read more...] about 140 Tools and Resources for Building Your Author Website and/or Blog

Guest Post: Overcoming Writer’s Block with Automatic Transcription

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By Jason Kincaid If you’re a writer — of books, essays, scripts, blog posts, whatever — you’re familiar with the phenomenon: the blank screen, a looming deadline, and a sinking feeling in your gut that pairs poorly with the jug of coffee you drank earlier. If you know that rumble all too well: this post is for you. Maybe it’ll help you get out of a rut; at the very least, … [Read more...] about Guest Post: Overcoming Writer’s Block with Automatic Transcription

Indie Authors: Writing and Publishing Tools

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It seems that every day I come across a new site or tool that can help with writing, editing, promoting, or pretty much any stage in the publishing process. (The Book Designer has a great article explaining why authors should embrace new technologies.) Here are links to a few of the best ones: Writing Citation Styles: A repository for help with citations and … [Read more...] about Indie Authors: Writing and Publishing Tools

Annotating and Having Fun With Data

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Being able to share data in a number of different ways is one of the perks of living in the digital age. Warning: this post is for the fellow geeks out there. Annotation Online I'll start with sharing some cool annotation tools. According to Library Journal: Web annotations are an attempt to recreate and extend that functionality as a new layer of interactivity and linking … [Read more...] about Annotating and Having Fun With Data

Guest Post: Six Apps Indie Authors Should Take Advantage Of

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By Megan F. Working as an indie author can be quite a challenge. You often don't have the backing of big organizations to keep you on track or to help you out when the going gets rough. Luckily, most everyone today has access to technologies that can easily take the place of those institutions. As the kids say, there's an app for that. This applies to writing even in ways … [Read more...] about Guest Post: Six Apps Indie Authors Should Take Advantage Of

Indie Authors: Using YouTube

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Video can be a very important component of an indie author's marketing strategy. In addition to book trailers, authors can make videos for a myriad of purposes, such as Behind the scenes Showing off research that went into the book Interviews Having actors play characters or scenes Explaining concepts (for nonfiction books) Animating themes or … [Read more...] about Indie Authors: Using YouTube

Planning an Effective Video Strategy with MWP Digital Media

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Sometimes it can be difficult for indie authors to think about video, but having a YouTube channel with book trailers, author interviews, and more can help boost an author’s platform. In order to find out what kind of videos work best, My Web Presenters (MWP) Digital Media has a new video marketing comparison tool, which can help users with their video strategy. Simply copy … [Read more...] about Planning an Effective Video Strategy with MWP Digital Media

Authorly, Turn Your Book Into An App

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Recently I learned about a new tool called Authorly, which can turn books into apps to sell in all the major app stores, including Google Play, iTunes, and the Amazon app store (see my post, "Turning Your Ebook Into An App"). Authorly allows authors to easily create apps for their books, and make them interactive. And although I like the service, I do want to point out that … [Read more...] about Authorly, Turn Your Book Into An App

Udemy: Increasing the Volume of Recorded Videos in 9 Easy Steps

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Publishing a course on Udemy has been a great learning experience. I've already gotten some feedback for my course, How to Create Beautiful E-Books. One of the suggestions was to increase the volume of my video lectures, so I spent some time researching how to do that without having to reshoot all the videos. Turns out it's pretty easy and straight forward, so I wanted to share … [Read more...] about Udemy: Increasing the Volume of Recorded Videos in 9 Easy Steps

EPUB3 Read Aloud Code

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Per request, I'm posting snippets of code to use to enable read aloud functionality on an iPad. You usually do this for children's books in EPUB3. Above is a sample of the SMIL file you will need to include. Remember to make a SMIL file for each "page." And don't forget to add it to your OPF! Below is a sample of the extra code to include in the HTML file. You will also need … [Read more...] about EPUB3 Read Aloud Code

iAuthor

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Three weeks ago, Apple launched an exciting new app: iAuthor. It sounded very promising. Using iAuthor, you can drag and drop to make enhanced ebooks. iAuthor and iBooks2 were released on the same day with the intention of making it easier for students to use interactive textbooks. All textbooks sold on the iBookstore are priced at $14.99 or less. But anyone can use iAuthor to … [Read more...] about iAuthor