The 2010 "Which formats are good to sell" poll

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

It's become a regular new year's thing now for me to evaluate my past year's e-book selling, look at what's to come, and decide whether I need to remove, or add, e-book formats to the list of what I sell--currently OEB (ePub), eReader (pdb), Mobipocket (prc), MS Reader (lit), Sony Reader (lrf), and Rich Text (rtf) for all-around translation to the format of your choice.

So, I invite comments from the gallery, as well as the multi-choice poll to ask: Which formats do you think I should include on the SJB? I've included the "other" category, in case you want to plug another format I've not listed.

I'll start this off with the following comment: I used to make my books available in Acrobat (pdf) on my site, but after the first 1-2 years, I made absolutely no PDF sales. This surprised me, as I know there are still PDF readers out there... but who's to argue with the facts? So I took pdf out and replaced it with rtf, to give readers a private formatting choice.

[Fledchen]

I prefer to make my own ebook files with my preferred formatting, so something like .rtf or .html works best for me. If those aren't available, I'm comfortable with extracting the html files from ePub.

I picked the "other" option because I think you might want to look into .brf and DAISY formats as well. Tech-savvy blind people are hungry for accessible ebooks. Yes, we can get ebooks for free from various non-profit organizations, but most of the blind people I know want some way of supporting the authors whose works we enjoy. Because of DRM, most commercial ebooks are just as inaccessible as print books, which I think is a shame.

[ficbot]

I'd like standard non-drm mobipocket to read on the Kindle (it is a popular enough device that I think there will be demand) or failing that, epub (I can convert it but it won't look as nice as plain old mobi)

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Fledchen

I prefer to make my own ebook files with my preferred formatting, so something like .rtf or .html works best for me. If those aren't available, I'm comfortable with extracting the html files from ePub.

I picked the "other" option because I think you might want to look into .brf and DAISY formats as well. Tech-savvy blind people are hungry for accessible ebooks. Yes, we can get ebooks for free from various non-profit organizations, but most of the blind people I know want some way of supporting the authors whose works we enjoy. Because of DRM, most commercial ebooks are just as inaccessible as print books, which I think is a shame.

Excellent point! What kind of tools are available to convert text to brf or daisy?

[astra]

Originally Posted by Fledchen

I prefer to make my own ebook files with my preferred formatting, so something like .rtf or .html works best for me

Ditto.

If those are unavailable, then .lrf or .ePub.

[Over]

I'm curious. If it wouldn't be indiscretion on my part asking... Could you give us an idea how much you sell (in percentage) of each format? Like: 40% Mobi, 30% ePub, 10% LRF...

Back to topic, I think you should support as many formats as you can. The more choice, the better. But if it's too much work, then I guess mobi, epub, lrf and rtf. I woud say PDFs as well, but I'm surprised you didn't sell PDFs at all.

I fully agree about any other formats who make it easier for people who have certain physical limitations.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Over

I'm curious. If it wouldn't be indiscretion on my part asking... Could you give us an idea how much you sell (in percentage) of each format? Like: 40% Mobi, 30% ePub, 10% LRF...

I don't have a ready tally of those numbers/percentages, but if I find time to put them together, I'll post them.

Originally Posted by Over

I woud say PDFs as well, but I'm surprised you didn't sell PDFs at all.

Believe me, so was I! I assumed some odd corollary between the subject matter (SF), and a tendency of such readers to have moved on to other e-book formats... being "more progressive", as it were... but that is only a guess. Still, I never received a single request to go back to PDF after I removed them.

[Acrimonus]

ePub. Everything else is inferior, especially lit. (ignore my ezreader ppro bias )

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

So, I invite comments from the gallery, as well as the multi-choice poll to ask: Which formats do you think I should include on the SJB? I've included the "other" category, in case you want to plug another format I've not listed.

I voted for eub, Mobipocket, PDF and RTF. But that was before I read your note about PDF sales. If your PDFs weren't selling, don't bother with it.

ePub covers all readers except the Kindle, Mobipocket covers the Kindle, RTF covers those who prefer to format for themselves.

I see no point in supporting the smaller formats anymore - unless you have sales numbers that show they're still important to you.

[=X=]

I voted for MOBI, ePUB, eReader, LIT, PDF and HTML (other).

Right now MOBI and eReader support the most platforms. Once Amazon releases Kindle for BlackBerry's both Mobi and eReader will be on par.

ePUB is a growing standard and soon will catch up to the potential client base MOBI/eReader have.

PDF is still the defacto eBook standard and holds 50% of the market share. While your sales of PDF have diminished you don't know what the future holds and you might see PDF sales come back.

HTML is by far the most portable format and easiest to convert.

LIT easy to convert and is the only format that has TTS built into the reader. Since this is a Microsoft product they have accessibility tied into their platform making it easier for the visually impaired to read/listen to your books.

One suggestion I have is to sell your book allow a user to select multiple formats not just one.

=X=

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by =X=

HTML is by far the most portable format and easiest to convert.

Okay, then, a supplementary question for everyone: Should I replace RTF with HTML (given =X='s above points)?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Should I replace RTF with HTML (given =X='s above points)?

RTF. If anyone wants HTML they can simply extract it from the ePub. And it's trivial to convert from RTF to HTML anyway.

The only reason for providing HTML (i.e. a single HTML file in a zip with any images) would be if it's your source format.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

The only reason for providing HTML (i.e. a single HTML file in a zip with any images) would be if it's your source format.

In fact, HTML is usually stage 2. The original format is MS Word, which is fine for Mobi, but I convert the doc to HTML in order to make most of the other formats.

[Fledchen]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Excellent point! What kind of tools are available to convert text to brf or daisy?

The quick, cheap, and mediocre option is to use NFB-TRANS, a DOS program that will convert .txt to .brf and vice versa. Braille doesn't have bold or italic characters, but does use symbols to indicate "the following word/words are emphasized," similar to how _underscores_ or *asterisks* are used to frame emphasized words in .txt files meant to be read visually. You'd have to insert these characters manually into the .brf file, which is a pain if you're not familiar with the ASCII characters that braille characters get matched up with. Or you could buy Duxbury transcription software (not likely to be cost effective) or hire a transcriber (also not likely to be cost effective). Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I realize the .brf files are probably not worth the fuss. Braille displays and braille notetakers already have onboard conversion software that will display run-of-the-mill .html and word processing document files just fine.

I do still think that DAISY files are something you should consider including. Text-only DAISY books are close cousins to ePub. They're readable by most portable text-to-speech devices as well as desktop/laptop computers. The advantages they have over plain .html files are the multiple levels of navigation, which are useful if you want to navigate a book by part, chapter, section, etc. Of course, they're only marked up as much as the creator of the file wants them to be. Here's a page of approved DAISY conversion software packages, some of which are free:
http://www.daisy.org/tools/572%2B574...and%20Services

I am, unfortunately, just a consumer and not a producer of this stuff. I'll try to help as much as I can.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I've saved the list, and as soon as I get the chance, I'll go through it.