Ebook Formatting for Self-Publishing

Ebooks!  Wave of the future!  Whether or not you prefer your novels cheap and virtual or paper, if you’re self-publishing these days you need to have your book on as many platforms as possible to reach the widest readership.  Ebooks are an excellent way for an unknown author to get their name out there, because it allows readers to try you out without investing a huge amount of money on you.

I spend a lot of my time formatting ebooks, as it’s one of the freelance services I offer.  (As you can see if you click the lovely ‘editing and formatting services’ tab above.)  Admittedly, formatting is a bit frustrating because the oddest little things will throw your book into chaos, but!  It is doable if you are patient and willing to spend time trolling internet message boards.  Or you can hire someone (like me) to do it for you if you are short on time/patience and don’t mind spending some money.

There are three ebook publishing venues you should be using (all are free, so if you’re not doing this you’re only cheating yourself):

1. Smashwords
Smashwords takes your Word document, converts it to a gazillion different formats and, as long as your book meets their standards, they’ll allow you not only to sell your book on their website, but will distribute it to pretty much every other ebook retailer out there, including the iBookstore, Barnes and Noble, Sony, etc, etc, et al.  They’ll even create a version that will run on Amazon’s Kindle, though last I checked, it will not list your book on Amazon for you.  (Note: Smashwords is one of only a few ways to get into the iBookStore.  Lulu.com is another, and something you should look at if you are publishing a print version through them.)

However, Smashwords requires you to strip your book down, getting rid of almost all your formatting, to ease the conversion between platforms.  If you have something formatting-intensive, you might have issues meeting their standards, or you might find you cannot get your book to look like you want.

Smashwords offers a comprehensive formatting stylebook to help you meet their standards.

2. Amazon
The Kindle still owns a good majority of the ebook-reading public.  Plus it’s something to see your book listed for sale on Amazon.  Amazon offers authors a 70% royalty rate within a certain price range, which you really can’t go wrong with.

The Kindle is kind of a pain in the butt to format for, however.  Each Kindle book is, at its base, an HTML file.  (Not unlike a website.)  If you know how to program in HTML, good for you.  You are good to go.  There are some programs that you can use to convert your book to HTML (or .mobi or .prc, the other two file formats Amazon will accept) though they are a bit buggy and I recommend fixing the HTML after you’ve done so.  There’s Mobipocket Creator (which I prefer to use, because although it’s buggy, it’s easy to get into its guts to fix things) and Calibre (I honestly think it’s easier to program your entire document from scratch than use Calibre, but your mileage may vary).

If you want NCX files or a lot of pictures and you are not HTML proficient, I recommend hiring someone.  You will spend a lot of time trolling the internet and it will be full of sad, confused people.  (Luckily, if you have a novel, both are usually unnecessary.)

3. Barnes and Noble
The Nook is the easiest of the three basic platforms to use.  You can pretty much just upload your Word document, no changes needed, and it will look pretty and be readable. Barnes and Noble holds about a fourth of the ebook market these days, so even though Smashwords will eventually get your book listed on B&N.com, I’d recommend going ahead and uploading directly to PubIt!  You won’t have to eat all your formatting and it will go live faster.

So there you have it, a very basic overview of ebook formatting for your self-publishing needs.  Have at it, Squiders.

Thursday Round-up

Science/Space
NASA Creates Material Ten Times Darker Than Black
Secret Space Plane Pictures
NASA Ejects Nanosatellite from a Microsatellite (With bonus spacesail)
Dark Matter Galaxies Orbit the Milky Way
Total Lunar Eclipse on the Winter Solstice  (Mmm, the writer in me likes this a lot.)
First Carbon-Rich Planet Found (Trekkie!Me wonders what class of planet this would be.)
Pictures of the Falcon 9 Launch
360 Degree View of the Night Sky (This is truly amazing!)

Science Fiction/Fantasy
Blake Charlton wants input naming the third book of the Spellwright Trilogy
Tor/Forge is giving away a mystery box!
Steampunk.com wants nominations for the Steampunk Book of the Year
BBC making an adaptation of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

Misc Books
Smashwords Author Primed to Make $25K This Year

Writing
Getting Google’s Attention for their New eBookstore
Out of the Slushpile: Getting Your Self-Pubbed Novel Noticed
How to Tell if You Should Cut That Scene
Three Signs Your Characters are Too Perfect

Thursday Round-up

Space/Science
Saturn’s Moon Rhea has an Oxygen Atmosphere
Classic NASA Video of Life on SkyLab (Don’t know what SkyLab is?  Shame on you.)
Picture of Colliding Galaxies
Awesome, Unedited Picture of Enceladus

Scifi/Fantasy
New to Scifi?  Some Recommendations
Review of Midsummer Night by Freda Warrington
Preview of HBO’s Game of Thrones
Exclusive Preview of Orson Scott Card’s The Lost Gate
Review of Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal
Holiday Gift Guide

Misc Books
Saturday is Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day!

Writing
Smashwords Annouces New Pricing Scheme

Stay tuned to NASA today – they’re going to announce they’ve found a new form of life!

The Ease of Self-Publishing

Last year, I published Hidden Worlds, a fantasy adventure novella, through Lulu.  Why I chose to do this particular project myself instead of going a traditional route is another blog subject. 

What’s important to this blog is that I received good interest and reviews and I am putting out a second edition under the Turtleduck Press label later this year.  So, in the interest of making the book as widely available as possible, in addition to Lulu I am also releasing the story through CreateSpace and Smashwords since there are no exclusivity contracts with any of these services.

Now, there are tons of articles out there arguing about which POD service you should use because of royalty rates, distribution, professional services, quality of product, whatever.  You are free to read any of those that you would like.  What I’m going to focus on is ease of getting your product together and ready to go out into the world.

As I said, I published Hidden Worlds on Lulu originally.  I had done some work on an anthology published through them and had been fairly pleased with the experience, so I chose them because they were familiar.  Lulu is straight-forward; you pick what you’d like to publish (hard cover or paperback), put in a title and author name, and go through a variety of options (binding, size, paper type).

CreateSpace works more or less the same way here.  Their language is a little different but it’s not too hard to figure out what they’re talking about.

Lulu will then ask you to upload your interior file.  It then checks it and lets you know if it thinks there’s something wrong with your formatting.  Lulu converts it into an interior file, allows you to view it, and then moves on to the cover.  You can upload your own wraparound cover or use their cover creator, which is fabulous.  There’s separate templates for front and rear covers.  The whole thing is easy to use and versatile enough that I didn’t find it hard to adapt it to what I wanted the book to look like.  Again, after it has converted the file, you can view it and make sure everything looks okay.

And when I revised the book for the second edition, it was as easy as uploading a new cover and a new interior file.  Lulu automatically updated the product page, the preview, and kept my ratings and reviews with it.

CreateSpace also asks you to upload an interior file.  But, unless I am missing something (and my Google Fu says I am not) there is no way to view this file once it’s uploaded.  This is a Bad Thing.  Hidden Worlds uses a non-standard font for the title page that sometimes does not translate over when I upload the pdf.  Lulu’s preview functionality has helped me catch that issue before the book is released for public consumption.  I have no way to know if the font copied over properly until I receive my proof copy in the mail.  Admittedly I won’t release the book until I have the proof copy, but I shouldn’t have to wait two and a half weeks* to see if I need to fix the interior file. 

CS also lets you upload a complete cover or use their cover creator.  Their cover creator, however, is not nearly as versatile as Lulu’s is.  You cannot pick and choose different templates for the front and back covers.  And there is exactly one template for a full front cover which means you’re stuck with the back that comes with it.  Yes, it is easy to use.  Yes, CS lets you preview your cover file to make sure it looks as expected, and it does warn you if the graphics you’re trying to use are low-resolution.  But the lack of versatility is a major issue in my book.

*CS requires that you buy a proof-copy of your book before you list it with them.  That’s fine, I think most of us would agree that we would like to see what we’re putting out and make sure that it’s something we’re willing to put our name on.  The issue here is that the shipping prices are ridiculous.  Hidden Worlds, for example, costs $4.38 for the proof.  (Which is admittedly quite decent.  My proof at Lulu is $7.91.)  Shipping is $3.61 but it takes almost three weeks to arrive.  If I want it in two weeks, it goes up to $6.39.  If I want it in any sort of reasonable length of time, is costs twenty-five dollars!  I ship books all the time.  It costs me $3 to send a book across country priority mail through the US Postal Service.  Those books arrive in 3-5 days.  Lulu, admittedly, is pretty expensive/slow on shipping as well but not to this extreme.

Now, since I am waiting three weeks for my proof, I cannot tell you how easy it is to make changes if necessary and get the product out to the public.  I do not know if I will need to buy another proof before I can release the book if I need to upload a new interior.  Those are subjects for another time.

But based on my experience so far, in terms of ease of use and ability to get your product to look how you would like, I think Lulu’s winning.  We’ll see how things play out in the long run.