Free eBooks: What's up with that?

I’m a bit discouraged about the world of eBooks.

Even though the electronic age unofficially belongs to a generation to which I no longer belong to, I’m a big fan of the changes of the “revolution.” However, I’m not happy about the residual effects, the innocent ravages of change.

Note please: The malaise has nothing to do with my own endeavors in the field. It’s something I’ve been ruminating about for a while now and it surfaced from random thought to full-blown reality this morning. That’s when I read my newsletter from American Editor

In the newsletter, the author listed 22 eBooks recently added to his eReader. Great! He also listed four hardcover books he’d acquired. Then, without mentioning how he acquired those tomes, he admitted that of the 22 electronic books he added to his TBR (to be read) pile, most (90%) were free!

I can’t remember the last time I walked into a bookstore, picked up a dozen books, and walked out without paying for them. I’m not talking about stealing; I’m saying free!

Why are so many new-age author/publishers willing to give their work away?

I’m sure part of the reason has to do with advice. Just about every blog, article, chat room and discussion board recommends that newly published authors should offer freebies. I think another part of the reason has to do with the competition. With so many books flooding the electronic world, competition is becoming fierce; getting noticed is tougher.

Writers who thought finding an agent or getting through the hallowed doors of the print publishing buildings was daunting, now find themselves in similar disheartening circumstances.

I’m not so sure we should follow the trend by giving away our work. Is there another profession so hard up for “customers” that does so?

We all know the annual income for many writers falls below the poverty level. My biggest concern is that it’s tumbling even further because of the free trend.

Like the big publishers, I’d offer review copies to qualified reviewers. That’s a legitimate avenue toward publicity. I could be wrong but I don’t believe giving titles away randomly to a large population will enhance a writer’s public image. So I stand against what looks to be conventional wisdom (everything’s fast in the electronic age) and say NO TO FREEBIES.

Print publishing is not dead

Because I publish my work in electronic editions, I frequent the ebook forums and chat rooms and in particular the kindle boards to keep up to date on all topics that focus on ebooks. One of the most talked about topics on these sites is whether or not the publishing world as we have known it is doomed.

Image via Wikipedia

No, I don’t think print on paper, hardbound or paperbound books, will disappear from the face of the earth. I believe the subject can be compared to the music industry.

There was a time (through the 1950s) when a handful of record companies ruled the world of music. If musicians couldn’t get a deal with one of the five or six big outfits, they were relegated to obscurity. Their work was virtually invisible. But with the emergence of rock and roll, independent producers created their own labels to showcase singers who didn’t fit the traditional mold. Then came Motown and the music industry changed forever.

Technology changed, of course, and the 45 rpm record took a back seat to the vinyl LP for a while, then the eight track hit the market only to be overtaken by the cassette, which eventually fell out of favor, replaced by the CD, and now we have the mp3 player. And with the advancements came independent producers and companies.

But, did jazz die? Did classical music become obscure? Did big labels suddenly fall off the face of the earth?

Guess what? Changes in taste and technology aside, the big record companies of the past are still alive. Music is still alive.

I think publishing will follow suit. Tastes will shift; technology will continue to make headway; the dominant publishers will continue to publish and independent publishers will make their voices read.

Related articles

• Self Publishing, Podcasts and YouTube Video: How the Internet Facilitates Creative Expression (savings.com)

Promoting your eBook: Part One

Promoting your eBook has to be one of the tougher parts of the writing and publishing process. You have to sell yourself and your title. If you're the more reticent type, someone who is good with words as long as they aren't "personal," you have to figure out how to come out of your shell and spread the word.

I used to be that reticent person but the more I read and learn about self-promotion the more I realize there's no sin or crime or negativity attached to tooting your own horn.

Shameless commerce works!

As I figure out ways to tell the world about my own work, I'll post them here so you don't have to travel all over the Internet trying to figure out how to get more sales.

I started out by announcing The Mine on my facebook page. That encouraged my friends to post the news on their pages.

Immediately after, I tweeted the announcement.

I'm not sure the twitter thing has brought any visitors to look at the title. I know facebook resulted in a couple of sales.

Next, I joined the Kindle Board Community because I see that many independents use the boards to hype their work and discover what's going on in the eBook world. I started by reading other posts, making lists of books that sounded appealing to me, and then dropping into the Indie Authors: Plug Your Book Here discussion to introduce myself and my work.

For now, I'm off on the hunt for more. As soon as I find them, you'll know about them.

The ebook journey - Part Nine and a Half: The Wait is Over

Let me rephrase the headline for this post.

The wait is almost over.

It took more than 24 hours for The Mine to go live. I downloaded a sample to my kindle and almost cried. The images did not show up!

So it was back to the proverbial drawing board, an hour of searching, and a quick review of where I went wrong. Apparently, when I uploaded the file, the images (a color cover, a black and white cover and a vignette) didn't upload. Actually, I missed that step somehow.

To rectify the error, I had to download the title -- it's comes as a zipped file -- add the images to the to the zipped folder that contains the title, and upload again.

Not a problem except that it will be another 24 to 48 hours before the book goes live again.

As soon as it does, I'll sample it and make sure it's okay before making the final announcement that it's available for purchase.

The ebook journey - Part nine: Waiting

It took a bit longer than 24 hours for The Mine to pass the review stage on Amazon's Kindle page.

I believed the review process would be the final step but apparently there's one more -- publishing. The novel has been in that stage for about the same 24-hour time period and my sense of dread is growing. Those people who live in my head are having nonstop anxiety conversations.

What if there's a mistake? What if she missed a typo? What if it doesn't look like an ebook? Are you sure the cover is going to be sufficiently attractive? What if it gets stuck in the publishing stage? Did she miss a step along the way? How is she going to promote this baby? And finally, the worst question: What if nobody buys the darn thing?

Then somebody up there chimed in with a totally unrelated question: "What's the correct way to spell ebook (eBook, Ebook, EBook)?"

Think I'll take the day off and work in the yard.

The ebook journey - Part seven and a half: Images

Okay, so I guess the real answer to getting everything right the first time around is simple: Read the directions!

But, being adventurous, I usually don't resort to that when all else fails.

And, of course, previewing The Mine on Amazon had me upset because my images didn’t show up … so all else failing, I read the directions – and there are tons of them.

Seems images don’t show up in the preview.

The ebook journey - Part seven: Finding formatting gliches

Finally!

It’s time to upload the spiffed up, cleaned up, formatted, reformatted, html file of the novel.

Or so I thought.

After following the directions and confirming the coding by searching for and finding several sources, I believed the product was ready to upload and preview.

Hmmm. We know about those “best laid plans.”

Apparently, after fifteen reformats, there’s a problem getting the images to show up in the preview. I’ve used only two – a version of the cover and a little vignette to separate some of the sections in the novel.

Neither image shows in the preview. In fact, there’s some little camera icon with that scary little exclamation point inside a triangle – you know, the one that serves as a warning that you’ve done something wrong.

Interestingly, both images displayed properly in the two ebook readers I used to review my changes.

So it’s back to the drawing board to see if I can figure out what the deal is.

The ebook journey: Part six- cover design

I've made a mock-up of the cover for the novel I've been putting into ebook format. 

How does it look?

The ebook journey: Part five - editing and proofing

Following the guidelines from Guido Henkel, the first pass of the ebook formatting went well.

Viewing the results in my browsers (I used Firefox, Explorer and Chrome), I was able to read it over. This doesn't show page breaks, of course, but it's a good way to check for coding errors. I also noticed a couple of problems with chapter heads and italics. (I use italics a lot.) So, it was back to html for redo.

I'm not a perfectionist in my everyday life. Good enough works for me most of the time. You know, a swift wipe with a cloth works; no need for polish and wax. That sort of thing. But when it comes to something that's going to last, it has to be as perfect as I can make it.

Even though I have kindle for the PC, I'm not able to use the app to review my own work. So my next step was to look for some kind of software that would output the look and feel of an ebook. For this, I downloaded Calibre and followed the directions outlined in Henkel's post.

Great! Except! Viewing the draft wasn't okay but some cliches did occur, so I opted to get some additional reader software, just to double check. Firefox has a an add-on reader called EPUBReader that worked well.

Finally, we're getting somewhere! I'll soon be ready for a kindle upload.

The ebook journey: Part four - copyright permissions solved

I've decided.

The lyrics are gone!

Maybe one day some big movie company will option the rights to the novel and I'll hand over the original manuscript, lyrics intact, and let them work it out. (One can aspire!)

Maybe one day my ebook will become an electronic best seller and I'll be able to hire someone to get the permissions needed for the copyrighted lyrics and I'll do a second edition. (One can aspire.)

The ebook journey: Part three - copyright permissions

Oh crap!

I mean it!

Oh crap!

My novel uses various song lyrics to set the tone of different chapters and I'm about to strip all of them out.

Here's the deal. Song lyrics are protected by copyright and in order to use them, you have to get permission from the copyright holder.

Well, let me tell you, this is a daunting task.

First you have to find out who owns the rights. Not so hard? Don't bet on it. Sometimes the author owns the rights; sometimes the rights have been transferred, not once, not twice but three times. Sometimes, the owner of the copyright is dead, which means looking for heirs. Then, if you manage to get to the end of the search, you might have to pay for using the rights.

This could take longer than it took to write the darn novel!

This seems weird, especially since the lyrics are spread across the web in dozens of sites, with no permission and sometimes without attribution.

But that's how it works. Don't believe me? Check out this article from the Stanford University Libraries.

The book journey: Part two - formatting your ebook

A few years back (Please don't ask how many.), I decided to do an online newsletter at work. Using Microsoft Word as my platform, I created the content then exported it as html.

Let me tell you, the output was outrageously complicated, not so much in the look in feel of the copy as in the editing phase. The html code looked like an ancient foreign language.

This lead me to research html for beginners. Thankfully, the web was (and still is) filled with instructions for html coding. I dug in, opened my file in Notepad, and began deleting all the extraneous Word stuff in the coding. Trial and error, undo and save, hit and miss, start anew ... eventually the newsletter made it to the web in (almost) perfect coding.

Remembering all this made my decision not to format my ebook directly from Word easy.

What made it even easier?

I came across a nine-part post by Guido Henkel titled Take pride in your eBook formatting. Suddenly, the task is turning from a dark and stormy night to a breezy, sunny day. If you haven't seen the post, take a look at it and you'll understand that the task of formatting doesn't have to weigh you down.

Henkel recommended some editing software but I've been using a free and extremely easy program called html kit, which I found back then, so I'm using that.

Granted, the conversion will take time, but right now it's looking up.

(For those who need an even tighter, more thorough look at formatting for Kindle, check out this book.)

***

(See Part One of the journey)

The ebook journey begins: Part one

Been reading instructions for ebook formatting ... so many different opinions. Should you use pdf, transfer directly from a word processor, format in html, hire a pro, download software?

Just to muck up the works, it looks like different readers use different submission guidelines.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

I made a cartoon video of my last post

This site is a hoot. It lets you make a video ... free at first but you can dress the videos up if you register and pay a fee. I edited it three times and ran out of free publishing minutes so the final product is in the can but not ready for release.

Take a look.

Query letter from the Holy Ghostwriter

(In my last post, I wondered how the authors of the Old Testament might query an agent regarding publication. I’m sure this isn’t an original question but since I’ve never heard it asked before, I think I’ll just make a feeble attempt to guess—with apologies to whomever—how this might work.)

Dearest Agent:

The Old Testament is the story of how a superior entity, who goes by the name of God, created the world in just six days, seven if you count His 24-hour coffee break.

In the beginning, He just wants to create Earth but somehow that doesn’t seem like enough. After all, what good is this big round beach ball if it’s just rotating around the sun? God has this drive, this need to populate His universe, to see where his invention goes. Maybe He is just playing a game; maybe it’s an experiment; maybe it’s for real.

If God knows, He isn’t telling.

As the hours and days go by, God tinkers with His project, adds a little day and night to the mix, some firmament, a bit of fruit, even a couple of human beings and a creature that lurks around apple trees.

It’s hard work, creating the earth. After six days and nights, God was a bit on the weary side so He takes a day off -- and when he does, all hell breaks loose.

The Old Testament follows up on God’s creation as it progresses from those early days to the birth of His Son, ages later. Between the two events, we experiences a horrendous flood, watch towers being built, learn how to worship idols, get some important commandments, discover a Holy Land, and realize how God’s children had to come to terms with their sins.

The Old Testament is a fast-paced 500,000 word (more or less, depending on which version will be submitted) mystery manuscript, part of a two-book series, the second of which (titled The New Testament) is in the rewrite stage.

We respectfully await your response.

Sincerely,
Anonymous

P.S. I think the ebook version will be a gangbuster!

The new era of publishing

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs about publishing lately. Based on what I’ve seen, it isn’t much of a stretch to realize that writers are leaning toward the ebook version of their potential best sellers rather than jumping through the almost impossible hoops of writing snappy query letters and synopses (I had to use a dictionary to find the plural of synopsis, by the way.), finding an agent and hooking up with a publisher. It seems there’s a plethora of complaints that even if (I should put that word in upper case.) a writer manages to hit the target in all three areas, he or she still has to do a ton of self-promotion to get the darned finished product in the hands of the important people – the readers.

I think there’s still a place for printed books. While they might not be as handy as the kindle versions, they’re still nice to take to bed with you, or pull from the bookcase and flip the pages to look for and remember favorite passages, to enjoy the cover art, to collect, even to enhance the décor of your rooms.

But, unless I’m being totally deceived (and I don’t think I am), the same self-promotion you need to publicize your work will mean a lot more money in your pocket and in the end, that’s the result that can make you a full-time, self-supporting author.