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Are you e-experienced? Until a week ago I wasn't. But, in the last three weeks I have made and published my first e-book.
It feels a bit like giving birth to, I don't know, some kind of strange mutant mongrel beast, some hybrid child whose destiny is unknown, who may grow up to mock me, betray me, give me glory (but only by leave of the wayward capriciousness of viral flukeiness) or, even worse, disappear completely without trace in the infinitely absorptive sponginess that is the e-thernet.
Anyway, for what it's worth, I thought I would share my experience. Some of you may be teetering on the edge of this mysterious pool of brave new publishing opportunities, debating whether to take the plunge. I expect many of you already are e-experienced swimmers with Olympian credits. If so, you can poke fun at my ineptitude.
I kindled thoughts of these waters for a long while. Some of my books had been converted into ebooks by my publishers, but they were like the offspring of alcohol-obscured one night stands; unknown and unclaimed. The publishers didn't even tell me they had been born, I only found out by accident, and I don't have a clue about sales figures.
In a tentative way, I had previously offered PDF downloads of one or two stories or chapters for sale through my websites, but they had languished as forlorn and undownloaded as an unfertilised dandelion in a meadow of opium poppies.
I own no e-reader; nothing I cannot read in a bath without fear. Every work of fact or fiction in my library looks dissimilar from every other, and I like it like that.
What persuaded me to dip my sceptical toe in these waters was partly the persistent encouragement of a local publisher, Cambria Books, whose manager, Chris Jones, is passionate about their new business model.
OK, I said. But I wasn't sure what content to offer first. Then, an old colleague and the series editor of some of my non-fiction, suggested that I republish an old novella of mine. (Thank you, Frank.) This seemed a perfect way of testing out the market, since I knew it would have an existing audience, and that there'd be a new one to which I wanted to introduce it. All I would have to do was find those readers. (The expected readership, by the way, is YA, most likely readers interested in humour, politics, science fiction, and comics/graphic novels.)
I still am sceptical, so I'm going to be watching sales with interest.
The whole process of preparing the content from start to finish took two weeks, which itself is very attractive: contrast this with the swimming-through-jelly tempo of traditional publishing - two years start to finish?
Here are the stages it went through:
One of the illustrations, by Rian Hughes
Scanning in the original book using OCR (optical character recognition) software. I used ABBYY. The software is remarkably accurate but does need a bit of an eagle eye for spotting 1s that should be Is and Os that should be 0s.
Scanning in the 12 illustrations, which different comics artists from Dave McKean to Simon Bisley had contributed to the original edition. This was the fun bit.
Designing the cover, which included colourising in Photoshop a black-and-white illustration that had been on the inside. That was fun too.
Adding a short story on the same theme to give extra value, that had been published elsewhere in another collection but not widely seen.
Writing a new afterword. This involved a nostalgic and enjoyable expedition into overgrown verges along the side of my personal memory lane. I took my butterfly net for effect (a butterfly effect) to catch those extra special chaotic moments.
Completing the whole thing in Word. Word, the software, is not my friend, although Word, the archetypal personification of language, is. But sometimes you have to dance with the Devil, since the e-book conversion process requires a Word file. How did Microsoft sew that one up?
Making sure all the prelims were hunky-dory and accurate. That included researching and writing up short biographies of all the artists, updating them from the previous edition, and making sure I thanked everyone.
Then I thought I ought to add some adverts for some of my other books at the back that readers might be interested in. Why not? 70-90 years ago, most books had adverts in the back - and the front, sometimes, just like magazines. Perhaps this is the way to go to finance this new form of publishing? Interactive ads for acne-banishing face creams in the back of YA novels, anyone?
Then I got carried away and added a real ad from the 1940s for a chemistry set for boys that included real uranium! Most people don't believe that I didn't make this up.
I sent the file to the publisher, who checked it over, made more corrections, added the ISBN and converted it into the .mobi format, which Amazon likes.
I chose to go with Cambria Books, but there are many other companies offering similar deals. It may be worth shopping around, but I didn't bother. Some of them offer print-on-demand as another option. This may be worth considering as well. If you want to get reviews you should have a few print copies to send to reviewers. Also, if you don't think you will sell more than 1000 print copies, print-on-demand is generally cheaper than a conventional print run. Over this number, you should go down the conventional printing route.
The publisher then sent the e-book file back to me to check. I was horrified. I had designed it in Gill Sans font, which I love, and it came back in a frankly disgusting, evil, serifed font. All my lovely formatting was strewn about like weatherboard in a hurricane, and my unique work was reduced to the same common denominator as everything else that you see on a Kindle.
I had to resign myself to the fact that there is little you can do about this, except to control where some page breaks go. It's a bit like designing for the web, except you have even less control. That's the nature of this homogenising beast.
Then, holding a stiff drink, I muttered: “Go!" The publisher uploaded the file to Amazon and it was live - for sale - in less than 24 hours! Wow.
However, I didn't just want to sell it through Amazon and merely contribute to their increasing domination of the market. I wanted people to be able to read it on something other than a Kindle.
So the nice publisher also gave me a version in the .epub format, which works with other e-readers.
Cambria Books also made a Facebook page and a webpage on their company website for the title, to promote it alongside all of their other titles. For all of this Cambria charged £200, which includes £50 for the ISBN. The book is for sale at £1.84. So, I need to sell, bearing in mind the cut that Amazon takes, just 125 copies to get my money back.
I could also have chosen to do all of this myself, but I'm lazy, and I figured that it's worth it, especially since this was my first time.
But I wasn't finished yet.
I then chose to make the files available on my own website. I already sell books on my website through PayPal. Selling e-books is slightly different, because there isn't a physical product to ship, and you need to create a place where buyers can download the file, after PayPal has checked that they have paid for it successfully.
This place has to be completely inaccessible to search engines, otherwise people will just grab the files for nothing.
Here's what I did:
I made the webpages holding the downloads, one for each format, which just need to be very simple, and put them together with the files in a folder on the server. At the top of the web pages is this text: <meta name="robots" content="noindex" />.
Just to be safe, I also uploaded a text file to the folder named robots.txt, which simply contains the following:
User-agent: * Disallow: /
Both of these little tricks should prevent search engines from indexing and making public the content of this folder.
The next thing to do is to get an account with PayPal, if you haven't already got one, and, once logged in, go to the Buy Now Button-making page (if you can't find it just type those words into the search function), which allows you to create a button for a single item purchase.
All you need to do here, is to put in the name of the e-book, a product code that you make up, and its price. There is, of course, no shipping cost. You probably want to check the button that says “Track profit and loss".
Then you come to Step 3, subtitled “customise checkout pages". This is the important bit. Answer the questions the following way:
“Do you want to let your customer change order quantities?" No, because they won't order one more than one e-book.
"Can your customer at special instructions in a message to you?" No, there's no need for that.
"Do you need your customer's shipping address?" No, because messages will go to their PayPal e-mail address.
Check the box saying “take customer to a specific page after checkout cancellation" and type or paste in the full website address for your shop page.
Check the box saying “Take customer to a specific page after successful checkout". Here is the really, really important bit: type or paste in the full website address for the page they go to download your e-book. Make sure this is right! This is the complete address for the page that you made earlier and uploaded, the one at the otherwise secret place.
All you have to do now is click “create button" (don't worry, you can go back and change things if you made a mistake, as I did), and, when happy, copy the code and paste it on your page exactly where you want the button to be.
Save your page and upload it to your website.
That's it!
The things writers have to do these days.
But I still hadn't quite finished. I had to write a news item publicising the e-book for the front page of my website, in which I included a link not just to the page where people can buy my books, but to the exact part on the page where they can buy that e-book, to make it super-easy for them.
On that page, I include all the options for them to make the purchase: a link to the Amazon page, because most people will be comfortable doing that; and the two buttons for both formats that I made using PayPal.
You can see the news item on the front page of my website here.
I then wrote a post on my blog promoting the book, which you can read here.
And, I launched the e-book at what was billed as the UK's first festival for e-books, in Kidwelly last weekend. My publisher had a stand there.
Unfortunately, this event was poorly promoted and badly attended (having it in a more accessible place would have helped), but there were many excellent speakers, not to mention, for children, our own Anne Rooney, plus Simon Rees and Mary Hooper, Clive Pearce and Nicholas Allan.
Several speakers told their own experiences of publishing e-books. Notable for me was Polly Courtney, who confessed her lamentable experiences with HarperCollins that made her realise that self-publishing was a far better route than being with one of the big five, and Dougie Brimson, who has sold over one million self-published e-books, because he knows his audience really well.
Listening to the speakers gave me confidence that it really is okay to do it yourself and publish ebooks. It doesn't mean you have to give up working with mainstream publishers. You can do both. But given that we all nowadays have to spend at least 25% of our time marketing ourselves and our books, in practice it is not that much more work.
As one of the speakers said, most readers don't care who the publisher is, as long as the book is good.
Did I leave anything out? Is there a better way of doing this? Perhaps some of you will share your experience. After all, I'm just a beginner, but at least I'm no longer an e-book virgin.
0 Comments on How I made my first e-book as of 1/1/1900
Re that festival, I was there and my events were cancelled with the rest of the Festival at about 11.00 am on Sunday. I saw no children whatsoever. Good luck with all ebooking,though.
Hi Adele - I'm very sorry your event was cancelled. It's a shame it was such a washout - I was there on Saturday, all the traders were up in arms, and many said they weren't coming back the next day. I don't know what possessed them to situate it at that venue.
I just found a very interesting interview with bookbinder Michael Greer. While some folks are quick to suggest that high quality bookbinding is a dying art Greer feels that this doesn't have to be the case. He sees the expansion of print-on-demand publishing as the perfect partner for his luxury craft.
In the US, hand bookbinding as a trade has been nearly dead for many years. A few of us quixotic dreamers hang on. Still, the revolution in the last decade in on-demand publishing could create a space for us. Twenty years ago, self-publishers paid a hefty sum to print maybe 250 copies of their family history. They gave away ten and the rest went into the attic. For about the same amount of money, I can print and bind ten full leather volumes and create others on demand. The difficulty is letting people know that this kind of thing exists. When I do fairs, people often approach my table full of books with a mystified smile and say, “I didn’t know anybody did this stuff anymore.” If bookbinders can get the word out, we might be able to carve out a place for our services in the growing world of digital publishing.
I think this is a fantastic coupling of old and new technologies. Imagine your own family history album, complete with photos, bound beautifully in leather and preserved for your grandchildren.
Helena has been taking such wonderful steps to move things forward with the project, I felt it was time for me to do something on my end to keep the momentum moving forward. I have researched trademarking and believe that I will pursue that soon. But what I really needed to dive into is the world of self publishing. I needed to educate myself more on the process, the services, the types of publishers, and figure out what is really right for me, for Helena and I, and for this project to be successful. Success is not the only key, but to also have the outcome we want, and for us to be in control.
My vision is one I want to make come true and start on this journey having the end product most represent this vision. Not that I could even convince a top end publishing house to be interested in my stories yet, but they will hand the story over to an editor whom has their own vision based on what they read. They may not be versed in the background, and may not convey the original intent with the right style illustrations, colors, sense, feelings, or overall package. So this is part of the reason why I intended to self publish first. To, 1) have control, and 2) Because the odds are against someone who is not yet established in the market. And I have a day job, and young kids, and no time to spend sending thousands of query letters to prospective publishing houses. And 3) Because the market is rapidly changing. E-book sales beat out paperback this last year for the first time ever. More self publishing companies are offering conversions to e-books like Kindle and iPad in their publishing packages or as add-ons.
So, the first night I found a few companies. Some offered free newsletters or publishing guides and asked for some brief information. To my surprise the next day 2 companies were knocking on my door. Now I fully understand that publishers are putting their own money into the production, while self publishers want to sell you their services. But I was still shocked at the immediate response. One company really seemed like they were just trying to sell me something. Wanting me to call them back and wanting to know if I wanted more information or was ready to sign up. But I still needed to know more. The other company's publishing consultant took the time to answer my questions, send me the contract upfront for review, explain to me the packages, the options and learn from me what I was looking for without sounding like a telemarketer. They took the time to build my trust. They offered a great discount and shared much advice with me. I spent the last week searching and researching many more companies, but still really feeling comfortable with this one until I found some complaints about them. The complaints did seem to sound like they came from others whom may not have done their research so well or didn't fully understand the contract they entered. I questioned the company and they calmly and rationally explained the reasons for the complaints and in many cases websites set up by competing companies, and honestly just plain stupidity of some people to not comprehend that your book is not necessarily going to sell. You have to market it. And if they didn't for example take the time to get it professionally edited, that could also be a reason why it was not selling.
Some self-publishing companies are called vanity presses. This one was referred to as such, but is not that way today. This is where you publish and have to pay for a certain amount of books like 1000 to be printed and delivered to you, but they do not get distributed, and you have to sell and store them.
Others are called Print-On-Demand or POD publishers. These publishers print on demand when someone orders the book from a site like Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com. However most of these companies also offer editing, distribution to wholesalers to be printed or ordered, list you in the Library of Congress, and so basically
0 Comments on Author in the House! as of 1/31/2011 9:29:00 PM
Borders Group Inc may find that filing for bankruptcy is the next plot turn in its many-chaptered struggle to survive.
Bankruptcy court could push the second-largest bookstore chain, its lenders and book publishers to make sacrifices and give the company a chance to keep going. As it stands now, book publishing sources see little progress in financial talks with lenders, and the company continues to need cash.
Borders President Mike Edwards said on Thursday in a statement announcing a conditional credit agreement with GE Capital that while refinancing is preferred, restructuring in court — referring to a bankruptcy filing — is a possibility it is considering.
Borders spokeswoman Mary Davis declined to comment beyond that statement.
The standoff comes after a year in which Borders has cut costs, refinanced and brought in new investors to cope with shriveling sales and market share.
Now the company has stopped payment to some vendors and even asked its most important suppliers — the book publishers — essentially to loan it the money due for books shipped months ago.
Only with those concessions by book publishers as well as other new landlord and vendor financing agreements will the company’s bank replace a maturing credit line.
“Bankruptcy is a wonderful tool for taking the majority of interests and implementing a plan that may be over the objections of a minority of interests,” said Michael Epstein, a managing partner at chess restructuring advisory firm CRG Partners who is not involved in the situation.
The company would be able to close unprofitable stores more easily and book publishers would begin getting paid again in most cases for any products shipped in bankruptcy, he said.
On the other hand, he cautioned, the company would need to have a plan for the changes it wants to ensure that it closes the right stores before the clock runs out.
Since 2005, bankruptcy law has allowed only about 9 months for retailers to easily close stores — a deadline many industry players say is one of the reasons why Circuit City ended up quickly liquidating its assets in bankruptcy.
In a bankruptcy restructuring, the company will likely not be obligated to pay christian book publishers for the books it shipped before the bankruptcy filing, according to Ken Simon, a managing director at Loughlin Meghji restructuring advisory firm who is not involved in the matter.
If the restructuring stays out of court, the vendors will have to be paid back in full or agree to a cut.
“The lack of liquidity is the reason why companies have to go into bankruptcy,” Simon said.
For the book publishers and authors perspective, Borders was once a worthy rival to Barnes & Noble. Perhaps even bigger than B&N. The two brick-and-mortar chain bookstores were able to offer better prices than independent bookstores and drove many out of business. But that was before the success of Amazon and other online retailers brought the phrase “brick and mortar” into regular use — and once that happened, everything changed; indeed many UK book publishers watched in horror last year the UK divison of Borders hit the wall.
Barnes & Noble, if buffeted by Amazon’s success, has remained afloat; Borders has been taking on water.
On Dec. 30 Borders announced it would not make payments owed to some publishers, without specifying whom. Hachette confirmed that it was among those who would not be paid by Borders.
Borders has nearly 200 Waldenbooks and Borders Express outlets slated for closure before the month of January is out. Additional Borders stores are also set to close, including Westwood’s.
Borders is also cutting back on staff. On Wednesday, Borders announced that it would close a distribution center in Tennessee, eliminating more than 300 jobs; 15 management positions were eliminated Friday. And the resignation of two top executives — the chief information officer and general counsel — was announced at the beginning of 2011.
Meanwhile, Borders is seeking to restructure its debt like the frantic chess of a brutal endgame. On Thursday, Borders met with publishers and proposed that the payments owed by the bookseller be reclassified as a loan, as part of that refinancing. “But on Friday, publishers remained skeptical of the proposal put forth by Borders,” the New York Times reports. “One publisher said that the proposal was not enough to convince the group that Borders had found a way to revive its business, and that they were less optimistic than ever that publishers could return to doing business with Borders.”
Nevertheless, Borders — which lost money in the first three quarters of 2010 — remains the second-largest bookstore chain by revenue. Its loss would have a significant effect on book publishers across the United States.
Investors, however, seem cheered by the recent news swirling around Borders. Shares rose 12% on Thursday after reports that the bookseller was close to securing financing.
In a move that could signal an expansion of its e-book strategy, Google has purchased the online book publishing company eBook Technologies. Terms of the deal were not announced.
In a note on its web site, eBook said “working together with Google will further our commitment to providing a first-class reading experience on emerging tablets, e-readers and other portable devices.”
eBook Technologies supplies intelligent reading devices and licenses technologies that the company said “enable automated publishing and control over content distribution.” The offerings include an online bookstore, an online “bookshelf,” software that converts content to the format used by the company, and e-reading devices.
The book publishing company is headed by President Garth Conboy, an e-book veteran. In the late 1990s, he was vice president of software engineering for SoftBook Press, which developed one of the first dedicated e-book readers, and he owns several related patents.
The acquisition is the latest public move in Google’s positioning in this new and growing market. In December, Google announced Google eBooks, a service for buying and reading digital children’s book publishers ISBN publications. The service doesn’t require that a user have dedicated hardware, such as Amazon.com’s Kindle, but makes titles available via the cloud.
Google Books, which has developed a large library of public-domain books, has become part of Google eBooks, for a total of more than three million titles available. Of those, some hundreds of thousands are for sale.
As a device-agnostic service, Google eBooks also offers reading apps for Apple’s iOS and the Android operating system, currently the most popular for tablets and among the top OSes for smartphones. Since the titles are cloud-based, syncing between devices is irrelevant — the cloud remembers you.
Ads on Books?
The cloud is also a big bookshelf, so customers can buy titles from Google or its bookseller partners, such as Alibris or a variety of smaller retailers. Titles purchased from any source are stored in a user’s account.
As part of its stated objective to organize the world’s information, Google has also been working with university and public libraries to scan, store and make available their collections. But the effort has run into trouble, first with the Association of American Publishers and the Author’s Guild for copyright infringement, then with the U.S. Department of Justice. A registry backed by a $125 million settlement has been in the works, but there are still legal issues pending.
Laura DiDio, an analyst with Information Technology Intelligence Corp., views Google’s moves in e-books as an “extension of their core market of advertising.” She added that, eventually, Google is likely to offer ads with at least some of the digital reading material, in addition to outright sales.
She also noted that Google is positioning itself to remain a relevant source of reading content via mobile devices, rather than allowing Apple, Amazon and Barnes & Noble to control that access.
Gayle Shanks has fought a sometimes frightening battle against national book chains (mainly in the business to sell and publish a book) for 36 years, so one might expect the independent Tempe bookseller would be overjoyed at news that the goliath Borders is in dire straights.
But that would be like judging a book by its cover.
Sure, Shanks figures the chain’s death would lure its former customers to her Changing Hands store in Tempe.
Yet she sees peril for bookstores, for readers and for the nation’s culture.
Michigan-based Borders is the nation’s second-largest book retailer and its large debts to vendors could take down small book publishers and hurt the surviving ones, Shanks said. That could limit what even the most independent-minded bookseller could offer adventuresome readers.
“I think my biggest concern, really, is what it means for the book publishing world and ultimately what it means for diversity and finding a marketplace that will be diminished,” Shanks said. “We will have fewer authors finding publishers for their books. We’ll find fewer books being published and that might in fact mean that only huge, commercially viable authors will find their books going to market. That worries me.”
Borders has stopped payments to some children’s book publishers, who have in turn cut off shipments of new merchandise. Published reports include speculation that Borders will be forced to reorganize under bankruptcy protection or that its declining sales, market share and stock value will doom it.
Border’s troubles became more apparent after the holiday season, Shanks noted, when it reported disappointing sales even as most retailers and rival Barnes & Noble saw small to large improvements. Amazon.com would likely benefit from a Borders’ failure, but Shanks finds that troubling, too.
“That’s just the best-sellers and one level below,” said Shanks, the store’s co-owner and book buyer. “Unless you know exactly what you want to read, it takes the adventure and the curiosity factor out of what’s involved with finding a new author.”
Borders was the chain that mostly directly challenged Changing Hands, a store Shanks helped found in 1974 in downtown Tempe. Her initial 500-square-foot store expanded multiple times on Mill Avenue, where, roughly a decade ago, Borders opened a 25,000-square-foot store three blocks from Changing Hands.
The independent store opened a second location on McClintock Drive and Guadalupe Road in 1998, closing the downtown one in 2000. Borders later shuttered the downtown store.
Shanks believes Borders’ woes are a typical example of a chain not keeping up with e-book publishing industry trends — especially electronic readers — and not a sign books are obsolete. She’s seen an interest in people reading, whether its books on paper or on e-readers. Even on a weekday afternoon, Shanks said, Changing Hands can be full of customers.
“We really have been doing fine and 2010 was close to a record year for us,” Shanks said.
Borders and Barnes & Noble overbuilt, she said, adding it’s impossible for them to sell the number of books required to pay rent on all the square footage they occupy in the Valley.
A Borders failure would leave three empty stores in the East Valley, at Superstition Springs Mall in Mesa, at a mostly empty shopping center east of Fiesta Mall in Mesa and at the Chandler Pavilions. By comparison, Barnes & Noble operates five East Valley stores.
It’s unclear who would win Borders’ customers – especially from
More than a decade ago at writer's conferences and other venues I talked about the future of publishing progressing more towards electronic delivery and print-on-demand. I was treated like a person from Mars.
Well, guess what! Here we are.
With the launch of the Google Ebook Store there is now strong competition for all things EBook.
Truth be told, I also commented on how it would take younger generations who embrace all the new techonologies and the cost of doing business to swing publishing towards Ebooks and print-on-demand; and indeed, that's what has happened.
My questions now concern how this impacts on small presses who actually embraced the Ebook and print-on-demand format very early on and often were criticized by the larger publishers as being less-than-professional for doing so.
Self-publishing is going to be another interesting arena. I hope someone is collecting data on this because it will be quite revealing.
And if you're curious about all the different EReaders out there go to the following link:
Google Inc., owner of the world’s most popular search engine, is starting an electronic book- selling service today with almost 4,000 publishers, in a challenge to Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc.
The service, called Google eBooks, features about 3 million titles for free and hundreds of thousands for purchase, the company said today in a post on its website. Book Publishers include Random House Group Ltd. and HarperCollins Publishers.
“They’re going to have access to many, many more books than anyone else,” said James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “This is the time to be doing it” because the market is growing so quickly, he said.
Google, looking to improve its search service while expanding beyond traditional online advertising, is adding a revenue source that’s built from its multiyear effort to scan the world’s books. The number of electronic-reading devices sold in the U.S. should jump to 29.4 million in 2015 from 3.7 million by the end of last year, according to Forrester.
“This is a rapidly growing market, and there’s obviously plenty of room in this market for a number of competitors,” Scott Dougall, director of product management for Google Books, said in an interview. “We’re taking this seriously.”
The eBooks service can be accessed on computers with modern browsers, smartphones and tablets from multiple operating systems including Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.
The service will work on some e-readers as well, including Barnes & Noble Inc.’s Nook. It isn’t accessible on Amazon’s Kindle, Google spokeswoman Jeannie Hornung said.
Google also will let independent booksellers set up digital stores, helping them compete with Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Members of the American Booksellers Association are able to participate in the program.
While revenue sharing varies, the book publisher receives the majority of the sale through a purchase on Google. With independent booksellers, publishers will typically get the largest portion of the sale, though not necessarily the majority, Hornung said in an interview.
Google’s rivals already are benefitting from growing interest in digital books. The Kindle, which has more than 757,000 books titles, should generate $5.32 billion in revenue in 2012, up from an estimated $2.81 billion for 2010, according to Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst at Caris & Co.
Apple, which launched its electronic book service earlier this year, had 35 million books downloaded through Sept. 1, the company said.
The parents of Madeleine McCann are writing a book about their daughter’s disappearance and their so-far unsuccessful efforts to trace her.
A deal has been signed with book publishers Transworld which is an imprint of Random House UK. Few details have been revealed but Kate and Gerry McCann are receiving a “substantial” advance and “enhanced royalties” which gives the couple a bigger than normal share of the profits from sales.
The book is already part-written. Kate McCann said it had been a difficult decision but the money it raised would go directly to the McCanns’ official fund to look for Madeleine.
“My reason for writing is simple – to give an account of the truth,” she said. “With the depletion of Madeleine’s Fund, it is a decision that has virtually been taken out of our hands.”
Hopeful
Gerry McCann said he was hopeful the publication would help the ongoing efforts to find out what had happened to their daughter, who went missing from their holiday apartment in the Portugese resort of Praia da Luz on 3 May 2007, as her parents dined with friends nearby.
“Our hope is that it may prompt those who have relevant information – knowingly or not – to come forward and share it with our team. Somebody holds that key piece of the jigsaw.”
The book publisher, Bill Scott-Kerr of Transworld, is more than happy with the deal and sees the book – expected to retail at £20 – as a big seller.
“It is an enormous privilege to be publishing this book” he said. “We are so pleased to be joining Kate and Gerry McCann in the Find Madeleine campaign.”
There are also expected to be newspaper serialisations around the publication date, believed to be 28 April 2011 which would coincide with the fourth anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance.
The official Portuguese inquiry was formally shelved in July 2008, although private detectives employed by the McCanns have continued the search.
Beginning in the first quarter of 2011, Xerox will move into print-on-demand book publishing in a bigger way through an expanded relationship with On Demand Books, creator of the Espresso Book Machine (EBM), which has been described as an ‘ATM’ for books, allowing readers to wait for books they buy to be printed in a bookstore thereby transforming how books will be bought in the future.
The EBM channel is currently available to indepedent authors through Schiel & Denver Book Publishers. Learn more about the Espresso Book Machine (includes video footage):
While the Xerox 4112 will continue to serve as printer for the EBM, the Fortune 500 company will now market, sell, lease, and service the rechristened machine, co-branded as the Espresso Book Machine, a Xerox Solution. The “solution” includes both hardware and On Demand’s EspressNet software that connects to the machine and enables it to print a library-quality paperback book at point of sale in a few minutes.
With its 4,000-person sales force, Xerox could significantly extend On Demand’s reach and its vision of making any book ever written available as a printed book for consumers. “Certainly they are going to take us to the next level,” said On Demand CEO Dane Neller, who is looking to Xerox to help On Demand overcome the chicken-and-egg problem faced by many startups.
Currently there are close to 50 EBMs in bookstores and libraries worldwide. McNally Jackson in New York City and Flintbridge Bookstore & Coffeehouse in La Cañada Flintbridge, Calif., are among the bookstores slated to add machines later this year. Schiel and Denver UK Book Publishers also offer access to the technology for authors.
“For independent bookstores, the EBM is an extraordinary technology,” said Jeff Mayersohn, owner of Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass. “And now the added value Xerox brings will help us secure new business while satisfying book enthusiasts instantly.”
In other news, On Demand is in the midst of readying a new edition, version 2.2. The fundamental self-publishing a book footprint will remain the same as that of its predecessor. But rather than being raised up, the printer will sit on the floor next to the machine.
It's 22 pages and the price will be $3.99 (for the time being). That's not bad - a guide for the price of a cup of coffee.
I'm hoping to have it available for sale by the end of the week - I'm having a couple of problems. I sent a trouble ticket to lulu.com help. I'm hoping for a speedy resolution.
So, what's in the book, you ask?
Ah, glad you asked; there's quite a lot!
Here's a description:
Do you have a book in you dying to come out? Do you want to self-publish a book you’ve already written, but you’re not sure what to do?
Well, The Self-Publisher’s Guide – An e-Book by Karen Cioffi is for you!
From Writing Your Book, to Self-Publishing options, to Creating a Website, to Promotion - it's all included in this handy guide.
Topics include: learning to write, critique groups, being ready for publishing, choosing a publishing company, creating visibility through promotional strategies, bringing traffic to your site, resources, tools, and much more.
Great self-publishing and promotional tips, advice, information, and examples!
For subscribers to this site, I am giving this e-book for free. It will be in monthly installments in our Newsletter.
If you haven't subscribed yet, please sign up now. The first installment will be in our October 2009 issue (sometime toward the end of the month).
Talk to you soon, Karen
2 Comments on The Self-Publisher's Guide - An e-Book, last added: 10/9/2009
Our friends at Bountee, the fantastic print-on-demand t-shirt shop, have relaunched as MySoti. MySoti stands for “My Stuff On the Internet” and they’re expanding beyound just t-shirts. Currently they’re offering poster and canvas prints of your artwork, but expect other products soon.
Like Bountee, after uploading your art you can sell and share your creations, and you always retain the rights to your work.
To help celebrate we’re helping MySoti give away a prize pack including:
5 free shirts (of your choice)
1 free canvas print (any size)
1 free poster print (any size)
As it has started to snow here in Toronto, what could be a better theme for this contest than winter? To enter, simply create a product on MySoti with your winter-themed artwork or design and tag your entry ‘drawnblog’. It’s that simple. You have until January 31, 2008, after which myself and the crew at MySoti will pick our favourite entry as the winner. So get creating!
1 Comments on Drawn! and MySoti Winter Contest, last added: 11/25/2008
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Thanks for writing this - am still on the verge of e-booking - but one of these days!
good
Good luck, Ruth, make sure you share your experiences.
Re that festival, I was there and my events were cancelled with the rest of the Festival at about 11.00 am on Sunday. I saw no children whatsoever. Good luck with all ebooking,though.
Hi Adele - I'm very sorry your event was cancelled. It's a shame it was such a washout - I was there on Saturday, all the traders were up in arms, and many said they weren't coming back the next day. I don't know what possessed them to situate it at that venue.
I was there on Saturday and had an audience of seven. The whole thing was a shambles, best forgotten. You should have come to say hello, Dennis!