You’ve created print and electronic versions of your book. Congratulations. But why stop now and miss out on the $2.5 billion audiobook market? “There is a growing perceived or actual ‘scarcity’ of time people feel they can spend sitting and reading,” says David Wolf, founder of audiobook production company Audivita Studios, “which presents an opportunity for authors across the spectrum.” Including you. So, let your fans listen to your book while they’re running errands in the car, walking their dog in the park, riding the stationary bike at the gym, and drifting off to sleep. Finding Your Voice (or Someone Else’s) First, Wolf says, you’ve got to find the narrator, who may or may not be you, “based on the capacity of the author to actually perform the reading, which […]
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Coding files for your book so you can upload them to their respective platforms may be a task you farm out. It has to be done but you don’t have to do it. Coding Files Starts with Smashwords I start with Smashwords when coding files for my ebooks. I like Smashwords. Founder Mark Coker is a writer who has created a writer-friendly platform to distribute ebooks. He regularly posts blogs and offers website promotions to help Smashwords authors sell more ebooks. His free ebook, The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, suggests more ways to promote books than I will ever absorb. I also like that he pays royalties monthly even if the amount owed is as low as a penny. Let me put that into perspective. Traditional publishers often withhold royalties […]
You finished your book manuscript. Congratulations. What a major accomplishment! But only your best friends and your advanced reviewers will read your unpublished manuscript. How do you handle manuscript submission? It depends. Will you publish through a traditional publisher or independently? First Contact with Traditional Publishing World When you first approach a traditional publisher, it won’t be with a complete manuscript. Every publisher will have its own submission criteria, which you can read off their website. Most will involve some variation of a table of contents, an overview of the complete book, two or three sample chapters, all sent as Microsoft Word doc file attachments, and a cover letter of one or two pages that explains what the book is about, why you are qualified to write it, and how […]
The ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, is the number that identifies your book or audiobook from among all the others. Libraries order books by ISBN. So do grocery stores and bookstores, which get discounts so they can resell them and make a profit for their service. Some platforms, including Kindle Direct Publishing, offer free ISBNs as a convenience. Remember that not all conveniences are free. ISBNs are assigned by publisher. When you allow your platform to assign their own ISBN, you are in effect allowing your book to appear in Books in Print as if they are the publisher, not you. Kindle Direct Publishing now offers a slight nuance. As their customer service representative told me, “We will register your book’s imprint name as ‘Independently published’ with Bowker (the […]
Does your homemade book cover look homemade? You may be losing sales. Readers will judge your book by its cover. Do It Yourself I showed you in “Ordering Your Book’s Front Matter and Back Matter” that you can’t use the same inside text files for both softcover print on demands (PODs) and ebooks because the front matter and back matter items appear in different order. You can’t use the same cover file for both formats either but for a different reason. Your ebook and POD front covers can be the same, but ebooks don’t have a back cover. Also, like butterflies, they don’t have a spine. If you have artistic skills or desire, you can design your own cover by uploading photos and images from your personal collection or that […]