Case Study: Tips for Updating a First Book to Market Your Second
- Why updating previous books is important
- To keep your book’s reviews, avoid these mistakes
- Four changes that require a new ISBN
- How to link to your book’s Amazon review page
Ebook Development
Programming and designing, sideloading, file formats, QA, repair, covers.
How to Manage a 99designs Book Cover Contest
Three secrets for maximizing success:
- Write a detailed design brief with compelling headline
- You are the art director
- Prepare to actively manage the process
Using Amazon’s Kindle Kids’ Book Creator (and a Work-Around for 1 Shortcoming)
The Kindle Kid’s Book Creator (KKBC) is a new free tool from Amazon that allows anyone to create children’s illustrated eBooks. Why is this significant? Because books in this category—think Goodnight Moon, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Green Eggs and Ham—are more challenging and expensive to program than standard text-based narrative eBooks. Regular eBooks, also called …
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Sideloading Large Kindle Mobi Files Using iTunes When Files are Too Big to Email
One of our specialties is programming complex eBooks and that can often mean that the final file can be quite large (here’s why*). If you are uploading the files into the stores then as long as the file size meets the requirements of the store, a large file won’t be a problem. But what happens …
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Fixed Format eBook Presentation-Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators
This past weekend the San Diego chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators held a symposium titled Self-Publishing: How it Works and I was one of five panelists. I focused my presentation on what I consider to be the key differences between traditional, i.e. reflowable, eBooks and publishing eBooks for children. I’ve …
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Sideloading Mobi Files: Installing Kindle eBooks When You Don’t Buy from Amazon
Reading an Amazon Kindle Mobi eBook file is like reading a PDF, all you need is the free reading software designed for your device or app. But for many people the challenge isn’t finding the free software (click here for that), it’s how to get the darn eBook file onto your device! The most popular …
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Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select and BookBaby
What do you do if you distribute your eBook through Bookbaby and decide you want to use Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select? Here is a 6 step program to make the switch easy and low risk. As you probably already know an eBook that is part of the KDP Select program cannot be sold …
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5 Resources to Help You Create eBook Files Using InDesign
Sometimes it makes more sense for a publisher to learn how to create their own eBooks rather than outsource to someone like AuthorImprints. I had a call this week along these lines—I think the person was in front of their computer waiting for me to talk them through the clicks! It’s not something we do …
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Where to Put Testimonial Blurbs in eBooks
The point of those short testimonial blurbs from experts or famous people is to convince you to buy the author’s book. She must be an expert! Look at what everyone is saying about her book! If you are shopping for a print book they can be invaluable. Sometimes placed on the front cover, certainly placed …
How to Handle Consumable Content During eBook Conversion
Perhaps you’ve experienced this: you’re reading an eBook and click to a page that asks you to fill in information or answer questions. This is called consumable content in eBook publishing and examples include workbooks, forms, quizzes, questionnaires, check lists, etc. What got me thinking about this was some feedback I received regarding our recently …
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