How (not) to sell an ebook

[mr ploppy]

I can't find it online, but in this week's Micro Mart magazine there is an article on how to make money from your creative work. How to sell mp3s, how to sell ebooks, etc online.

It said the best way to sell your ebook is to create a PDF of it and upload it to lulu.com.

Has that ever been true? PDF is the worst format you could ever have for an ebook, and who would think of looking on lulu.com for one anyway?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I'm not sure who would look for it on lulu... but don't forget, PDFs are still one of the most popular digital document formats, and plenty of people still read by them (mostly on PCs and laptops).

[neilmarr]

True, Steve. But a huge part of the PDF slice of the digital pie is documents, technical work, forms, and complex texts and with footnotes, reference links, graphs, pictures, etc. I don't know if there are yet any statistics that would give us an idea of the most popular formats for straight novels. Excluding PDF-for-print, I'd guess ePub with Mobi running a close second because of the dominance of Kindle. My own indie house turns out PDF, ePub and Mobi, and so far PDF is running a slow third in popularity. Could be, of course, that we pitch our ebooks more toward an ebook-dedicated reading device readership. And we may see PDFs pick up once we've taken off properly with Apple's iBookstore for iPad. Cheers. Neil

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

Could be, of course, that we pitch our ebooks more toward an ebook-dedicated reading device readership.

I think that's key, Neil: It depends greatly on the audience and the content. Business and educational-related texts, for instance, have a high PDF segment, selling heavily to laptop readers... fiction is lower PDF, more ePub and Mobi/Kindle.

On the other hand, my father loaded all of my fiction novels, in PDF format, onto his Nook. People are so used to PDFs that they will still ask for them out of familiarity, even if they have the means to read other formats.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

On the other hand, my father loaded all of my fiction novels, in PDF format, onto his Nook. People are so used to PDFs that they will still ask for them out of familiarity, even if they have the means to read other formats.

It would all depend on how the PDF is generated. Is it generated for A4/letter format? Or for that 5"/6" device? If it's the latter, it'll be perfectly readable, as long as you don't need a huge or tiny letter... (assuming the PDF is made up for the average person).

[AlbertaCowboy]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Has that ever been true? PDF is the worst format you could ever have for an ebook, and who would think of looking on lulu.com for one anyway?

Funny you should ask...
Long before I had my first eReader, I bought an ebook from Lulu. (Gundog Training Made Easy by Eric Begbie). I have never bought from them again, nor did I even remember they existed until your post. Maybe I should go back and have a look...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I think that's key, Neil: It depends greatly on the audience and the content. Business and educational-related texts, for instance, have a high PDF segment, selling heavily to laptop readers... fiction is lower PDF, more ePub and Mobi/Kindle.

On the other hand, my father loaded all of my fiction novels, in PDF format, onto his Nook. People are so used to PDFs that they will still ask for them out of familiarity, even if they have the means to read other formats.

Take your father's nook and remove the PDF and put on the ePub and watch him actually be able to finally read without issue.

[JSWolf]

Lulu's site is a mess of confusion.

[JeremyR]

I always though of Lulu as more of a Print on Demand company. Maybe that's what the article meant?

I guess that's going to be somewhat hurting from e-reader competition. But I know a lot of small companies (very small) use it for RPG books and such, which probably don't work very well on most e-readers (I guess on iPads, but that's about it).

[doreenjoy]

At my publishing company, over 60% of sales are in PDF format. Still, I'd never say it's good advice to rely on PDF and Lulu.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Take your father's nook and remove the PDF and put on the ePub and watch him actually be able to finally read without issue.

I've seen the PDFs on the Nook (and my PDFs are, of course, tagged). They are perfectly readable, flow perfectly, don't take long to load. I personally loaded some ePubs on it later, and there was no significant difference in readability or performance. My mom-in-law has read most of my books, and a number of professionally-prepared books from B&N, on the Nook, and never once mentioned any difference in readability between the two.

Further proof that properly tagged PDFs, read on certain devices, are as good an ebook format as anything else...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I've seen the PDFs on the Nook (and my PDFs are, of course, tagged). They are perfectly readable, flow perfectly, don't take long to load. I personally loaded some ePubs on it later, and there was no significant difference in readability or performance. My mom-in-law has read most of my books, and a number of professionally-prepared books from B&N, on the Nook, and never once mentioned any difference in readability between the two.

Further proof that properly tagged PDFs, read on certain devices, are as good an ebook format as anything else...

Have a URL to one of your PDFs that I can try on the 650 to see how they look when reflow is used? Thanks.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Have a URL to one of your PDFs that I can try on the 650 to see how they look when reflow is used? Thanks.

I'm pretty sure all the PDF formats on my Free Content page are tagged. Go for it.

[Purple Lady]

I haven't had much luck with pdf files, so I gave it a shot. It can still leave a single line on a page if you have to zoom - I need 250% with this one. It also left a single word on a line near the bottom of the page and the "d" after the apostrophe on the next line, but I don't know if it's the boox pdf viewer causing this or not.

I have seen single letters left on a line, spaces added in between letters of a word, underlines being moved to the next line by themselves, page numbers in the middle of a page, etc., so this one's not so bad.

These are from The_Onuissance_Cells_Steven_Lyle_Jordan.pdf
the last is with no zoom - way too small for me to read, but I need a much larger font than most people

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Every PDF viewer is a bit different, and can handle files differently. Some of them don't handle tagged PDFs any differently than a standard PDF, unfortunately. That's why I always err towards readers made by Adobe, as opposed to third-party PDF readers.

The same file, displayed on the Nook, did not show the same artifacts.