Digital Pubbing

Exploring the ins and outs of the publishing industry

ebooks

Indie Authors and Libraries

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Libraries are wonderful for indie authors. They open up a whole new audience of readers, but unfortunately the route to getting an indie book into a library is not always very clear. The American Library Association (ALA) has a great fact sheet that goes over what libraries buy, when they look to buy books, what the library market looks like, and marketing opportunities. The … [Read more...] about Indie Authors and Libraries

Guest Post: Piracy on the High Ether

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By Valley Brown - author of Speeding Tickets Piracy can be a serious issue for indie authors of ebooks. Valley Brown explains her personal experiences with digital piracy, and what she did to fight it. The Internet is a vast ocean swarming with pirates. So I had been warned by any number of publishing professionals and experienced authors. Being a newbie author with an … [Read more...] about Guest Post: Piracy on the High Ether

Indie Authors and Kindle Unlimited

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Amazon's Kindle Unlimited (KU) service, where readers pay $9.99 per month and authors are paid out of a monthly fund, seems to be very polarizing. Kindle Unlimited History When KU first launched, many authors complained about it, citing its unfair payment system or how it encourages people to upload short, and often not well written, books (since originally authors were only … [Read more...] about Indie Authors and Kindle Unlimited

Ebook Distribution: Google Play

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There's a lot going on with Google Play lately, at least when it comes to ebooks. About a month ago, Google Play shut down its book publisher program, at least temporarily, to new users while they sort out all the accusations about pirated ebooks on the platform, according to GoodeReader. It's a shame, and hopefully Google will reopen again to new authors soon. For … [Read more...] about Ebook Distribution: Google Play

Smashwords: An Indie Author Guide

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Smashwords is a retailer and an ebook distributor, and a great choice for indie authors. Why? Because the platform lets you upload once and sell on multiple outlets, saving authors a lot of time, and it offers a number of marketing options. If you want a step by step on how to upload and distribute ebooks via Smashwords, read my EPUBZone article, "Ebook Distribution for the … [Read more...] about Smashwords: An Indie Author Guide

New Ebook Fonts Make Ereading More Like Print

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The average reader probably doesn't think a lot about fonts, but they are important contributors to the reading experience. A few weeks ago, Google announced a new typeface for Google Books, called Literata. The Next Web goes into more detail, but the gist is Google ebooks now have a font that distinguishes it from ebooks read on a Nook or Kindle, and it was created to give … [Read more...] about New Ebook Fonts Make Ereading More Like Print

Indie Authors: Digital Comics

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Novels, children picture books, and even cookbooks are often discussed in the digital publishing realm, but another type of book is gaining more prominence: comic books. Comics are generally fixed format, because they are so image heavy and where the text is place matters (or else it doesn't make sense). So, to make an EPUB comic book, you will have to manually code and … [Read more...] about Indie Authors: Digital Comics

What Indie Book Publishing and Indie Game Development Have In Common, Part 3

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A while back, I watched Indie Game: The Movie and was struck by how much indie game development and indie book publishing had in common. I had the pleasure of interviewing the talented and inspiring indie game developer, Jonathan Blow. Below is the second in a three-part series that discusses the similarities between developing games and publishing books as an indie. Read Part … [Read more...] about What Indie Book Publishing and Indie Game Development Have In Common, Part 3

What Indie Book Publishing and Indie Game Development Have In Common, Part 2

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A while back, I watched Indie Game: The Movie and was struck by how much indie game development and indie book publishing had in common. I had the pleasure of interviewing the talented and inspiring indie game developer, Jonathan Blow. Below is the second in a three-part series that discusses the similarities between developing games and publishing books as an indie. Read Part … [Read more...] about What Indie Book Publishing and Indie Game Development Have In Common, Part 2

What Indie Book Publishing and Indie Game Development Have In Common, Part 1

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A while back, I watched Indie Game: The Movie and was struck by how much indie game development and indie book publishing had in common. I had the pleasure of interviewing the talented and inspiring indie game developer, Jonathan Blow. Below is the first in a three-part series that discusses the similarities between developing games and publishing books as an indie. What do … [Read more...] about What Indie Book Publishing and Indie Game Development Have In Common, Part 1

Enriching Ebooks with Semantic Vocabulary

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Metadata is very important when it comes to categorizing and even marketing and finding readers for a book. Now that EPUB3 is around, authors/publishers can add really granular data to ebooks, which can help define target audiences, among other things. The concept of structuring data using markup is not new. Schema.org “ provides a collection of schemas that webmasters can … [Read more...] about Enriching Ebooks with Semantic Vocabulary

Startups in Publishing

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We live in exciting times. Ebooks are evolving, the way people consume content is changing, and the barriers to entry for digital publishing are low enough that many creative people are able to test out their ideas. In the spirit of supporting those brave enough to go out and follow their passions, I've compiled a list of some of the publishing startups out there, in no … [Read more...] about Startups in Publishing

Comparing the Ebook Submission Process: Self-Publishers v. Publishers

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I recently wrapped up a freelance project with a small publisher, where I uploaded/submitted ebook files and metadata to Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google. In the process, I thought about the similarities and differences between how a self-publisher would go about distributing an ebook versus a publishing company that is submitting files themselves instead of … [Read more...] about Comparing the Ebook Submission Process: Self-Publishers v. Publishers

How to Create a Fixed Format Ebook (Part 2): Adding Images

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In my last post on creating fixed format ebooks, I covered how to set up your files in Sigil so that ereaders and tablets know to treat your ebook like a fixed format ebook. This post I'll talk about how to treat images in picture ebooks. First, you'll want to make sure that your images are each 800 x 800 px wide. If you have a spread, make sure the width is 1600 px, and … [Read more...] about How to Create a Fixed Format Ebook (Part 2): Adding Images