The E-Book Handbook
A
Thoroughly Practical Guide to
Formatting, Publishing, Marketing,
and
Selling Your E-Book
by: Douglas J. Klostermann
Published
by Douglas J. Klostermann / Full Stop.
Smashwords Edition
ISBN:
978-1-4524-0474-5
Version 2.1 – January 2012
Copyright 2011
Douglas J. Klostermann
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or in print, without expressed permission from the author. Every effort has been made to make this e-book as complete and accurate as possible, but no warranty of fitness is implied. The information is provided on an as-is basis. The author shall have no liability or responsibility with respect to any loss or damages arising from the information provided in this e-book including but not limited to the use of any of the materials or methods described, the products, retailers, Internet web sites, or links provided.
All
contents including cover design, text, and photographs, with the
exception of logos and content shown in Internet screenshots, are
copyright by the author.
All logos and content of screenshots
property of the respective websites.
Use of terms which are trademarks or service marks in this e-book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.
Author’s
website: www.dojoklo.com
Author’s
blog: http://blog.dojoklo.com/
Published
by Full Stop.
a division of Douglas J. Klostermann
Photography
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA
http://www.dojoklo.com/Full_Stop/
Contents
Preface to the 2012 Revised Edition
1. So You’re Ready to Write an E-Book
1.3 Exciting E-Book Statistics
2.1 Creating Your Blog and Website
2.1a Setting Up Your Blog
2.1b Setting Up Your Website
2.1c Installing and Setting Up WordPress on Your Website
3.2a Formatting in Word
3.2b Formatting Headings and Table of Contents
3.3 Formatting Your Cover and Images
3.3a Creating a Cover to be Judged By
3.3b Including Images and Illustrations
3.4a Converting DOC to PDF with Word
3.4b Converting DOC to PDF with Acrobat
3.4c Creating a PDF Preview
3.5 Formatting for E-Reader Devices
4.2 E-Book Publishers and Retailers
4.4 Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
4.6 Using Calibre for Conversion
4.7 Smashwords (Including Apple and Sony Reader Store)
4.8 Apple iBooks and iBooks Author
4.9 Google Preview and Google eBooks
4.10 Creating a Print on Demand Version
5. Selling and Marketing Your E-Book
5.1 Selling and Marketing on Your Website and Blog
5.4 Amazon Author Central and Product Pages
5.5 Book Reviews and Communicating with Customers
6. Getting Found: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
6.3 Copyright Infringement and Internet Piracy
7. Affiliate Marketing and Advertising
7.3 Google AdWords and Google AdSense
7.4 Your Own Affiliate Program
8.1 Keeping Track of Sales, Income, and Expenses
8.1a E-Junkie Sales
8.1b Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing Sales
8.1c Barnes and Noble PubIt! Sales
8.1d Smashwords Sales
8.1e PayPal
8.1f The E-Book Handbook Spreadsheet
8.2 Owing and Collecting Taxes
9.1 The E-Book Handbook Facebook Page
9.2 The E-Book Handbook Updates Page
A1.1 Creating a Blog and Website
A1.2 Retailers and Payment Processors
A1.4 E-Book Formatting and Publishing
A1.5 E-Book Viewers and Previewers
A1.8 Search Engine Optimization
A1.9 Affiliate Marketing and Advertising
Appendix 2 – E-Book Publishers and Retailers
Appendix 3 – The Daily / Weekly Routine
Author’s Note
All of the Internet links and the publisher, retailer, terms of service, formatting, and royalty information in this book are current, to the best of my knowledge, at the time of publishing. As this information can and does change, please be sure to verify it by reviewing the most current information available on the Internet and checking for the latest updates on the publishers’ and retailers’ websites and terms of service agreements before registering with websites and submitting and publishing your e-books.
Regarding the websites, providers, and software I discuss throughout the text, I focus on the ones I use to create and sell my e-books and which I also feel are the best ones for most of you to begin creating and publishing your e-books quickly, easily, and inexpensively. I know there are other options and I will mention a few, but based on my research and my experience I have found the sites, companies, and software that work best for me. They are low cost and reliable and I recommend them all without hesitation. If you are familiar with other options that have worked well for you, feel free to continue using them. I include a full list of Internet links to products and websites in Appendix 1 at the end of this book. Other important links provided throughout the text are also listed by categories in the Appendixes. The list of all Internet links in Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 is also available on my blog Picturing Change at:
http://blog.dojoklo.com/ebooks/the-e-book-handbook-links/
Figure
1 – Detail of the Amazon Kindle e-reader device
I am not sponsored by any of the companies or services discussed in this book and my enthusiasm for them is solely due to my positive experiences. I have not asked for nor received any compensation for mentioning them. (I did contact some asking for discount codes for my readers to use, and one kindly responded!)
I am not a financial or tax expert. Please consult an accountant and/ or a financial professional to discuss the financial and tax issues that you may encounter due to the income and expenses related to publishing and selling e-books and earning affiliate income. The advice and information I offer in this book are not a substitute for professional financial and tax advice.
Throughout the text I call attention to a few especially important and helpful tips that I have learned through my e-book publishing experience. Typically these are small, quick, simple, or time-saving actions or advice you can follow that may have the potential for relatively large impact on your sales or success. They are noted throughout the text by (Tip!) immediately following the tip. While all of the advice and information I provide throughout the text is important, some of it is optional, more advanced, or could be applied later once you have gained some experience creating and selling e-books. But these small action/ big impact tips should typically be applied from the start.
Thank you for choosing The E-Book Handbook. I am confident that it will help you to create, format, publish, market, and sell your own e-book as inexpensively and efficiently as possible!
Preface to the 2012 Revised Edition
The previous year, 2011, proved to be an exciting period for anyone interested in reading or writing e-books. The Nook Simple Touch and Kindle Touch were introduced, as well as Amazon’s tablet, the Kindle Fire. These advancements in e-readers provide new and better ways to present content to the reader. Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing brings authors’ works to new audiences in France, Italy, and Spain, and their Kindle Format 8 now allows more versatility and control over content such as tables and layouts. Apple introduced iBook Author software which allows authors to quickly and easily create interactive iPad e-books by simply dragging and dropping content and widgets.
Despite all of these developments, the process of self-publishing a basic fiction or non-fiction e-book had not dramatically changed. E-reader screen resolutions may necessitate higher resolution images and foreign sales may require additional effort to set up and monitor, but new uploading options have made aspects of the process even easier.
Be sure to keep track of new e-book developments throughout 2012 by checking the websites I describe in the Sharing Your Success section at the end of this guide.
1. So You’re Ready to Write an E-Book
1.1 My E-Book Story
One day, several months ago, I was in a bookstore reading some of the latest digital camera guides. As I looked through various books from different authors and publishers I became increasingly frustrated. Very few of them, it seemed to me, really seemed to “get it.” Only one or two of the books or series of guides appeared to be truly helpful to a new digital SLR user looking to not only learn to operate their camera, but to understand when and why to use the various controls and settings in real life. I thought back to the process I went through as I learned how to use my first digital SLR, and all the knowledge I continued to accumulate from experience, books, blogs, and forums, and was convinced I could do a better job of explaining how to use one of these cameras to their full potential.
Over the next few days I contemplated writing an e-book user’s guide for the latest digital SLR that had recently been released. I wondered how many e-books I could sell and tried to determine if it would be worth my time and effort. I concluded that based on the time I would have to invest in researching and writing the guide and the couple dozen copies I would probably – at most – sell, it would fall far short of being a profitable exercise. But I was still convinced that I could write a better guide, so I began working on it. After a couple weeks of intense effort I had completed the guide, put it up for sale using a shopping cart and digital delivery service called E-Junkie and informed the world about it on my photography blog. Two days later I made my first sale.
Figure
2 – One of my e-book camera guides for sale on Amazon.com.
Additional sales slowly followed, and then after two more weeks I discovered that I could also put my e-book up for sale online at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com for free and with a minimum amount of additional effort (see Figure 2). Six months later I was offering five e-books, had sold over 1,500 copies of them, had spent less than 3% of the net profit in costs, and had recently learned I could also offer them for sale on the Sony Reader Store and on Apple iTunes and the iBooks App via an e-book distributor (or aggregator) called Smashwords. Eight months after my first sale my e-books were regularly at or near the top of the Photography Equipment and Photography Reference bestseller lists for Kindle e-books on Amazon and I was earning enough profit to be able to dedicate myself full-time to pursuing my personal interests including photography, continuing to write e-books about photography, and contributing to my blog – the primary marketing tool for my rapidly growing e-book empire.
1.2 Your E-Book Story
While I hope that your e-books are as successful, I’m not trying to imply that every e-book venture will have the same immediate results. Several aspects of what I lightheartedly refer to as my “e-book empire” were already in place and had developed slowly over long periods of time. I had started my blog in 2008 and developed it into a successful site about photography, photography equipment and techniques over the following couple years, and thus already had a small audience of potential e-book readers. I also participate in forums discussing photography and camera equipment and I have acquired photography and digital camera expertise from working as a professional photographer and through my experience as a salesperson in a camera store. I have always enjoyed writing, and have honed my technical photography writing skills with my blog. I have computer, Internet, Word, PDF, formatting, and HTML skills which I had learned over the previous decade or so, as well as graphic design, web design, and Photoshop skills from my careers as an architect and photographer. My website was already in place and I possess the basic knowledge needed to create new webpages. And I already owned a computer and the software required to write an e-book document (Word), create a cover (Photoshop or Photoshop Elements), and convert it all into a secure PDF document (Adobe Acrobat).
But I can tell you that if you have information, knowledge, or a story that others are interested in reading and the skills to write, format, put on sale, and market an e-book, much of the rest is both straightforward and free or very low cost. Even the types of software I mention above are available in free versions such as the OpenOffice software suite (http://www.openoffice.org/). Using a digital delivery site coordinated with a payment processor like E-Junkie and PayPal or an e-book publisher like Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing or Barnes and Noble’s PubIt!, the transactions and digital delivery occur automatically with a minimum amount of participation by you once they are set up. However, keep in mind that this does not mean that once your book is written and put up for sale that your e-book venture will continue to prosper automatically as the income passively rolls in. Every aspect of it, including marketing, updating content, and communicating with past or potential customers takes continued effort and maintenance (see The Daily / Weekly Routine section). But all of it is something you can do, if you are dedicated, in your “spare” time. Yes, I know no one has spare time these days, but if you manage to devote a couple hours a day to the process it will slowly but consistently come together.
This guide will walk you step by step through the processes of formatting, converting, setting up the payment and digital delivery sites, uploading to additional publishers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble, creating a blog or website, marketing, communicating with customers, and keeping track of and analyzing your sales and expenses. And it contains tips and information gained from my experience and research which will help make the process as easy, low-cost, and efficient as possible.
1.3 Exciting E-Book Statistics
Statistics about e-books, e-book publishing, and e-readers are being reported and discussed with increasing frequency. Many different numbers are presented and they are constantly changing, but the overall conclusion is clear: e-book sales are rising at a dramatic pace. As I write this, the Association of American Publishers reports that e-book sales in the United States just exceeded those of each of the other formats, including hardback and paperback sales, and grew 200% from February 2010 to February 2011 (http://www.publishers.org/press/30/). Amazon reports that electronic books are now outselling printed books on Amazon.com – hardcover and paperback combined – and e-book sales are three times higher this year than the same period last year (http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1565581&highlight). The Kindle e-reader is also currently the best-selling product on Amazon, Apple’s iPads are selling by the tens of millions, Android powered tablet sales are increasing, and numerous other companies are developing and selling tablet devices. And both Amazon and Barnes and Noble have recently introduced more affordable e-reader devices. It seems there is no better time to join the e-book revolution.
E-books can be read on a PC or Mac, on an e-reader device like a Kindle, Nook, or Sony Reader, on an iPad, Android or other tablet, or even on an iPhone or other smart phone. PDF versions of an e-book can be printed by the purchaser on their own printer. The publishing playing field has never been so level for self-published, independent authors. Your e-books can be up for sale on Amazon along with all the printed and Kindle books, complete with descriptions, reviews, and an author page, and with the potential to be found and bought by anyone shopping and searching online. Not only are they available on Amazon in the United States and Canada, but also on Amazon in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. With e-books you can publish your books as soon as you complete them, then make changes and additions to your text or descriptions at any time and have the new versions posted and available in minutes from your website or on E-Junkie, or at least within a couple days on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. And through the Internet your e-books will be available to readers internationally.
2. Laying the Groundwork
Before or as you start writing your e-book, it is important to begin putting some other elements of your future e-book empire into place. As I mentioned above, several important components had been established before I ever started writing and selling e-books, including a blog, a website, and participation in related forums. Each of these is important for creating awareness of your e-book and marketing it to potential readers. I suggest that you spend some time to build this foundation that will be required to sell and market the e-books you will be putting so much effort into. When your book is finally ready for publication and you are eager to start selling it, you’ll be glad that some of the groundwork has already been established. This section is somewhat off the subject of e-books but I feel it is important to include as an introduction to other components of your e-book effort that you should consider. If this is not applicable to you, feel free to jump forward to the Formatting Your E-Book section.