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JSWolf · 11-26-2010, 05:23 PM

I've read books that I've found via MR that I may not have read otherwise. So don't give up on MR. Just treat MR like another place to get the word out. Don't treat MR like the be all and end all for your sales. It's just another place like advertising on the radio vs. TV vs. newspaper vs. any other form of advertising.

If you are selling via Smashwords, download all the different formats and see how the meatgrinder has ground up your eBook. Did it do a good job? If not, redo it. Check the sample (if there is one). Is it formatted well enough that people might bother at read it? I've gotten books from Smashwords with mixed results. One book I got was all underlined. Some had no proper ToC. It's a crap shoot there. So please make sure you don't get crapped on.

If you sell via Amazon and no place else, be prepared not to have as many sales because those of us without Kindles won't buy.

If need be, sell via your website featuring hand crafted versions. Start with ePub, fix that up nicely and then go MS Reader & Mobipocket from there. And (I hate to say this) but if you want to make it easy to go to eBook from the manuscript, stay far away from MS Word. The best editor to use is actually Notepad++. You can use the standard text markups such as *words* for bold and _words_ for italics and sort that out later on. You could run the text through Word if you wanted to use the spell check. But the HTML out of Word is more work to fix then writing the book.

11-26-2010, 05:23 PM	#52
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 79,103 Karma: 144284184 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	I've read books that I've found via MR that I may not have read otherwise. So don't give up on MR. Just treat MR like another place to get the word out. Don't treat MR like the be all and end all for your sales. It's just another place like advertising on the radio vs. TV vs. newspaper vs. any other form of advertising. If you are selling via Smashwords, download all the different formats and see how the meatgrinder has ground up your eBook. Did it do a good job? If not, redo it. Check the sample (if there is one). Is it formatted well enough that people might bother at read it? I've gotten books from Smashwords with mixed results. One book I got was all underlined. Some had no proper ToC. It's a crap shoot there. So please make sure you don't get crapped on. If you sell via Amazon and no place else, be prepared not to have as many sales because those of us without Kindles won't buy. If need be, sell via your website featuring hand crafted versions. Start with ePub, fix that up nicely and then go MS Reader & Mobipocket from there. And (I hate to say this) but if you want to make it easy to go to eBook from the manuscript, stay far away from MS Word. The best editor to use is actually Notepad++. You can use the standard text markups such as words for bold and _words_ for italics and sort that out later on. You could run the text through Word if you wanted to use the spell check. But the HTML out of Word is more work to fix then writing the book. Last edited by JSWolf; 11-26-2010 at 05:33 PM.