Publish your own eBook

Happy Friday from California's central coast! Julie Carobini here.

Ever wanted to publish your backlist titles as eBooks? Recently, I released my 2007 novel, Chocolate Beach, on Kindle and Nook. I can't tell you everything there is to know about creating an eBook...yet. However, I have managed to get a few things right ~ while still working out the kinks of others. Here's a bit of what I learned:

You do not need a .pdf file of your book. What you do need is a Word file (.doc). The publisher offered me one, but at a high price, so I decided to work from my original manuscript. The version I had on disk had already been through a macro-edit, and I realized that it was very close to the final version. So I read it through, made some changes I'd always wanted to  ~ we writers are never satisfied! ~ then added bonus content (recipes and an interview with one of the main characters). Why not?

There are other options to re-editing your book.  If your manuscript needs a lot of work, think about obtaining a copy another way. Author Julie Ortolon wrote about finding a pirated copy of one of her books online. She paid to download it, then sent a cease and desist letter to the copyright infringer! Her moxy impressed me.You could go about obtaining your file Julie O's way :), or you could pay to have your book scanned. Julie recommends SB Virtual Assistant Services as a reasonable option. They scan the book and convert it to a Word file for you. (Note: I've no experience with them personally, but do plan to use a book scanning service in the future. Hope to post on that soon.)

Upload your manuscript to Amazon and Barnes & Noble directly. Go to each bookseller's digital publishing site, create an account, and upload your book. Go here for Kindle and here for Nook. Follow their guidelines for formatting. I found both sites easy to use. Smashwords, another option I've used to produce my eBook in various formats, has not worked as well as I had hoped. They provide a detailed style guide that I worked through, but my book still looks wonky. Because Smashwords provides some solid distribution, however, I'm not giving up. In the meantime, the Kindle and Nook versions of Chocolate Beach look good. (I will write about Smashwords in a future post.)

I'm still a bit of a purist when it comes to reading for pleasure ~ I keep a book made of paper on my nightstand, for goodness sake.  But I do have a Kindle app on my iPhone, and my brothers and I gave our mother the Nook she wanted for Christmas. With the recent news that Kindle eBook sales overtook paperback sales on Amazon, the digital publishing experience is here to stay. Will you be part of it?

Thanks for stopping by the CANblog today, my friends. Feel free to drop me questions here or visit my beach pad on the web any time: www.juliecarobini.blogspot.com

 

Comments

[Donna Perugini]

Do you have any info regarding making e-books of children's picture books?
The Nook is in color, so a picture book would work on it well, but the Kindle is only black and white. The i-Pad is ideal for children's books and I wonder if getting on Nook first paves the way for i-Pad.
I have the e-galleys in pdf and can see what Barnes and Noble can do for me. Any other thoughts beyond that?
Your posting is intriguing!

[julie carobini]

Thanks for the comment, Donna. I've not read anything about picture books, however. Smashwords is not an option since they use a "meatgrinder" approach, i.e., they take your text and try to produce acceptable layouts in various formats. Because it's a generic approach, the books generated never quite have the pizzaz that direct-to-Kindle or direct-to-Nook have.

I think you're right to go directly to Pubit.com (B&N's self-pub website) and see what you can find. And here's another link to some ePub technology. Perhaps there's something you can glean from there as well: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/epub-file-ipad-nook-kobo/

Best to you! Come back and tell us if you found a way to digitally publish your picture book, will you? Thanks ~ Julie C