What is the go to guide/software to cheaply publish e-books for the market

Foolness · 10-12-2015, 12:53 PM

Been out of the loop for a long time (more than 3 months) but I recall Sigil/Calibre could produce an epub, tedious as it may be. Is this still the only free alternative?

I actually prefer manually writing an e-book using the GrabMyBooks firefox extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...n/grabmybooks/ but unfortunately it has a nasty habit of not having autosave and it is mainly for text based website and it still takes too many steps but at least I am able to deal with pages rather than the normal scrolling of word processors.

Audience-wise, how has the landscape changed?

I primarily write fiction but haven't published any and I also plan to release a blogbook non-fiction by the end of the year but everything appears to become more like a closed gated community what with Kobo not appearing to have gotten much headway in terms of delivering a cheaper Paperwhite and the tablet community having their own "hard to discover" sets of Play Books and IBooks ... I guess what I am asking besides the software question is whether this is a bad time to release a book?

(Marketing can always fix this but compare the boom of new blogs like Kinja and the recently updated Medium versus the dry spell that is mass buying of cheap e-books...I would rather wait for the right time but I might've missed a major news. I simply skimmed the new posts and the today's posts and this is the only active forum I know for questions like this.)

Cinisajoy · 10-12-2015, 01:48 PM

If you are going with Amazon, they have a free uploader. Well technically, it will cost you between 30% to 65% of your sale price per book. That is Amazon's cut.
Now to make a clean uploadable document, I think either Sigil or Calibre will work.
As per your is this a bad time to publish? People are publishing new books every day. So there is no bad time.

Look, it is like rats on a sinking ship, those that are not making money will say it is a bad time. Yes they have 3 dozen handy excuses for not selling. Those that are making money will tell you to publish when the book is ready.

eschwartz · 10-12-2015, 02:47 PM

You can and have always been able to create a book in e.g. MS Word/LibreOffice.

calibre includes a very capable DOCX Input plugin which will automagically convert it to EPUB (or anything else).
Alternatively, see @Toxaris' Word Add-In, which does a number of things to ease transition from DOCX ==> EPUB (and performs the final conversion).

If you like fine-grained control, write in markdown, calibre can convert that -- or use LaTeX or DocBook, then convert it with something like Pandoc.

There is a wealth of tools available.
But since you haven't said what specific features you are looking for, we have no idea what to recommend.

eschwartz · 10-12-2015, 02:52 PM

As for audiences:

You should make your books available at each of the major stores (or else experiment with Kindle Unlimited).

I don't see why a closed ecosystem would have anything to do with whether or not it is a bad time to publish.

Is there a bad time to publish?
Maybe there is a bad time to work on promotion...

The reading landscape doesn't, to my knowledge, associate a book's success with the store each particular consumer buys it from. So long as people *can* buy it, they will read it, and discuss it with other people, etc.

gmw · 10-13-2015, 12:29 AM

AFAICT not much has changed in the timeframe you suggest. I'm still working off the same work flow I was using three years ago: I write using LibreOffice, then use a plug-in to export to epub. Then I tidy that up using Sigil, and test. Then convert to mobi with kindlegen and test again.

But there are many other ways to manage your work flow. Many write Word documents (with Word or LibreOffice) and just hand off to Smashwords for conversion. Many use Scrivener, which can export epub. But given that epub is only really glorified HTML, you can use pretty much anything you like to produce it, and then transfer the result into Sigil or Calibre (or one of many other tools that I've not tried) to produce the epub. I'm guessing there are many tablet/mobile offerings around now too, but I have no interest in those.

After that. Smashwords still won't do Amazon for you (unless you're already selling a lot), so direct to Amazon is recommended - and for many going only to Amazon may make sense (take a look at the latest Author Earnings reports thread). If you have free time there are lots of other places you can place your book, but nowhere else is going to come even close to matching the exposure of Amazon.

My novels are direct with Amazon and Kobo, and submitted to Smashwords for distribution everywhere else. My free shorts I only do with Smashwords at the moment (which means they don't show on Amazon). ... But I don't make a good example, the only marketing I do is on the self-promotion subforum here - and it shows

.

For a guide to publishing you could do worse than reading the offering at Smashwords, in addition to the upbeat hype it also has a lot of useful information. (If you are actually going to use Smashwords then this goes from "could do worse than" to "must".)

In short, anyone can write and publish a book now (as has been the case for a few years), and this is proven by the fact that (it seems) almost everyone is doing so. This means there is not really a good time to publish; it's always a bad time, just do the best you can. The telling factors in success are: how well you write, how well you present (editing, cover etc.), how well you market, and how persistent you are (keep writing and it may happen eventually). It's not something that will happen quickly, and it's highly unlikely to happen with your first book.

HarryT · 10-13-2015, 04:32 AM

You don't need anything other than a text editor and a ZIP tool to create an ePub book. You may choose to use more sophisticated tools to make your life easier, but they aren't essential.

Foolness · 10-19-2015, 12:09 AM

Thanks everyone. Some follow-up questions

1. Is there a zip to epub converter? I would much prefer as lightweight a text editor since I tend to have lots of tabs open but if I am going wordpad or something similar - I would probably just head straight to sigil.

2. How much or how often do you scout your competitors to narrow down the price range? (or I guess this could be rephrased into book launching)

3. I guess by my asking what a good time is, I mean "what's a good time to pursue vanity publishing/book signing/book reading/etc".

eschwartz · 10-19-2015, 12:39 AM

1) Sure, calibre can do that. Or you could import the files into Sigil.

HarryT · 10-19-2015, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Foolness

1. Is there a zip to epub converter? I would much prefer as lightweight a text editor since I tend to have lots of tabs open but if I am going wordpad or something similar - I would probably just head straight to sigil.

An ePub book is a ZIP file. Just change the file extension to ".zip" and you'll be able to look inside it with any ZIP tool.

eschwartz · 10-19-2015, 10:42 AM

I understood ZIP --> EPUB as referring to packaging a plain old zipped HTML folder into an EPUB which has the right mimetype, OPF, NCX, etc.

Which is incredibly awkward to manage by hand, although yes, it is "possible".

theducks · 10-19-2015, 11:09 AM

The folk at Atlantis (AWP) offer a free tool that handles the unpackage / repackage of an EPUB. This allows a quick, simple (no structural change) edit of a piece without worrying about the rebuild.

HarryT · 10-19-2015, 11:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I understood ZIP --> EPUB as referring to packaging a plain old zipped HTML folder into an EPUB which has the right mimetype, OPF, NCX, etc.

Which is incredibly awkward to manage by hand, although yes, it is "possible".

Yes, I was thinking more of editing an existing ePub than creating one from scratch. I certainly wouldn't create one by hand - far too much like hard work

. Once it's been created though, it's easy to treat it as a zip file and edit stuff in it.

Cinisajoy · 10-19-2015, 11:32 AM

As to your second two questions.
Knowing how books in your genre (sub-genre actually) is always a good idea. Though I am going to nitpick and say other authors are not your competitors. It is not like readers only buy one author. I have yet to find an author that has the output of what a voracious reader reads.

As to your good time question, there is no real good time or bad time. I don't know what genre you are planning on but if you ask 10 authors, you would get at least 10 different answers.
I have heard x y and z are bad days. I have also heard x y and z were great days.
Same days, same genres, different authors.

Other little tip, you cannot just put a book on Amazon and expect it to take off.

If someone says give me $200 and I will publish your book and it will be an instant bestseller, RUN. Get as far away from that person as possible.
Note: A bestseller is one that is in at the very least the top 100 in all of Amazon not say
Household-cooking-slow cooker-Tasmania.

I do believe and I may be wrong but I think whoever publishes the book gets paid by Amazon and they pay you.

Anyway good luck.

crich70 · 10-23-2015, 08:43 PM

Scrivener can compile files as an epub among other formats.

rawling · 01-31-2017, 10:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Foolness

Been out of the loop for a long time (more than 3 months) but I recall Sigil/Calibre could produce an epub, tedious as it may be. Is this still the only free alternative?

I actually prefer manually writing an e-book using the GrabMyBooks firefox extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...n/grabmybooks/ but unfortunately it has a nasty habit of not having autosave and it is mainly for text based website and it still takes too many steps but at least I am able to deal with pages rather than the normal scrolling of word processors.

Audience-wise, how has the landscape changed?

I primarily write fiction but haven't published any and I also plan to release a blogbook non-fiction by the end of the year but everything appears to become more like a closed gated community what with Kobo not appearing to have gotten much headway in terms of delivering a cheaper Paperwhite and the tablet community having their own "hard to discover" sets of Play Books and IBooks ... I guess what I am asking besides the software question is whether this is a bad time to release a book?

(Marketing can always fix this but compare the boom of new blogs like Kinja and the recently updated Medium versus the dry spell that is mass buying of cheap e-books...I would rather wait for the right time but I might've missed a major news. I simply skimmed the new posts and the today's posts and this is the only active forum I know for questions like this.)

There, if you're looking to do it cheap then you can do a lot of the basework yourself. I used this guide for mine, there is a part II as well, it was loads of help for me as an amateur publisher. Hope that helps!

10-12-2015, 12:53 PM	#1
Foolness Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2015 Device: Kindle Paperwhite	What is the go to guide/software to cheaply publish e-books for the market Been out of the loop for a long time (more than 3 months) but I recall Sigil/Calibre could produce an epub, tedious as it may be. Is this still the only free alternative? I actually prefer manually writing an e-book using the GrabMyBooks firefox extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...n/grabmybooks/ but unfortunately it has a nasty habit of not having autosave and it is mainly for text based website and it still takes too many steps but at least I am able to deal with pages rather than the normal scrolling of word processors. Audience-wise, how has the landscape changed? I primarily write fiction but haven't published any and I also plan to release a blogbook non-fiction by the end of the year but everything appears to become more like a closed gated community what with Kobo not appearing to have gotten much headway in terms of delivering a cheaper Paperwhite and the tablet community having their own "hard to discover" sets of Play Books and IBooks ... I guess what I am asking besides the software question is whether this is a bad time to release a book? (Marketing can always fix this but compare the boom of new blogs like Kinja and the recently updated Medium versus the dry spell that is mass buying of cheap e-books...I would rather wait for the right time but I might've missed a major news. I simply skimmed the new posts and the today's posts and this is the only active forum I know for questions like this.)

10-12-2015, 01:48 PM	#2
Cinisajoy Just a Yellow Smiley. Posts: 19,161 Karma: 83862859 Join Date: Jul 2015 Location: Texas Device: K4, K5, fire, kobo, galaxy	If you are going with Amazon, they have a free uploader. Well technically, it will cost you between 30% to 65% of your sale price per book. That is Amazon's cut. Now to make a clean uploadable document, I think either Sigil or Calibre will work. As per your is this a bad time to publish? People are publishing new books every day. So there is no bad time. Look, it is like rats on a sinking ship, those that are not making money will say it is a bad time. Yes they have 3 dozen handy excuses for not selling. Those that are making money will tell you to publish when the book is ready. Last edited by Cinisajoy; 10-12-2015 at 01:52 PM.

10-13-2015, 12:29 AM	#5
gmw cacoethes scribendi Posts: 5,809 Karma: 137770742 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Aura One & H2Ov2, Sony PRS-650	AFAICT not much has changed in the timeframe you suggest. I'm still working off the same work flow I was using three years ago: I write using LibreOffice, then use a plug-in to export to epub. Then I tidy that up using Sigil, and test. Then convert to mobi with kindlegen and test again. But there are many other ways to manage your work flow. Many write Word documents (with Word or LibreOffice) and just hand off to Smashwords for conversion. Many use Scrivener, which can export epub. But given that epub is only really glorified HTML, you can use pretty much anything you like to produce it, and then transfer the result into Sigil or Calibre (or one of many other tools that I've not tried) to produce the epub. I'm guessing there are many tablet/mobile offerings around now too, but I have no interest in those. After that. Smashwords still won't do Amazon for you (unless you're already selling a lot), so direct to Amazon is recommended - and for many going only to Amazon may make sense (take a look at the latest Author Earnings reports thread). If you have free time there are lots of other places you can place your book, but nowhere else is going to come even close to matching the exposure of Amazon. My novels are direct with Amazon and Kobo, and submitted to Smashwords for distribution everywhere else. My free shorts I only do with Smashwords at the moment (which means they don't show on Amazon). ... But I don't make a good example, the only marketing I do is on the self-promotion subforum here - and it shows . For a guide to publishing you could do worse than reading the offering at Smashwords, in addition to the upbeat hype it also has a lot of useful information. (If you are actually going to use Smashwords then this goes from "could do worse than" to "must".) In short, anyone can write and publish a book now (as has been the case for a few years), and this is proven by the fact that (it seems) almost everyone is doing so. This means there is not really a good time to publish; it's always a bad time, just do the best you can. The telling factors in success are: how well you write, how well you present (editing, cover etc.), how well you market, and how persistent you are (keep writing and it may happen eventually). It's not something that will happen quickly, and it's highly unlikely to happen with your first book. Last edited by gmw; 10-13-2015 at 12:31 AM.

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10-12-2015, 02:47 PM	#3
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,422 Karma: 85397180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	You can and have always been able to create a book in e.g. MS Word/LibreOffice. calibre includes a very capable DOCX Input plugin which will automagically convert it to EPUB (or anything else). Alternatively, see @Toxaris' Word Add-In, which does a number of things to ease transition from DOCX ==> EPUB (and performs the final conversion). If you like fine-grained control, write in markdown, calibre can convert that -- or use LaTeX or DocBook, then convert it with something like Pandoc. There is a wealth of tools available. But since you haven't said what specific features you are looking for, we have no idea what to recommend.

10-12-2015, 02:52 PM	#4
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,422 Karma: 85397180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	As for audiences: You should make your books available at each of the major stores (or else experiment with Kindle Unlimited). I don't see why a closed ecosystem would have anything to do with whether or not it is a bad time to publish. Is there a bad time to publish? Maybe there is a bad time to work on promotion... The reading landscape doesn't, to my knowledge, associate a book's success with the store each particular consumer buys it from. So long as people can buy it, they will read it, and discuss it with other people, etc.

10-13-2015, 04:32 AM	#6
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	You don't need anything other than a text editor and a ZIP tool to create an ePub book. You may choose to use more sophisticated tools to make your life easier, but they aren't essential.

10-19-2015, 12:09 AM	#7
Foolness Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2015 Device: Kindle Paperwhite	Thanks everyone. Some follow-up questions 1. Is there a zip to epub converter? I would much prefer as lightweight a text editor since I tend to have lots of tabs open but if I am going wordpad or something similar - I would probably just head straight to sigil. 2. How much or how often do you scout your competitors to narrow down the price range? (or I guess this could be rephrased into book launching) 3. I guess by my asking what a good time is, I mean "what's a good time to pursue vanity publishing/book signing/book reading/etc".

10-19-2015, 12:39 AM	#8
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,422 Karma: 85397180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	1) Sure, calibre can do that. Or you could import the files into Sigil.

10-19-2015, 10:42 AM	#10
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,422 Karma: 85397180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	I understood ZIP --> EPUB as referring to packaging a plain old zipped HTML folder into an EPUB which has the right mimetype, OPF, NCX, etc. Which is incredibly awkward to manage by hand, although yes, it is "possible".

10-19-2015, 11:09 AM	#11
theducks Well trained by Cats Posts: 29,818 Karma: 54830978 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The Central Coast of California Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A	The folk at Atlantis (AWP) offer a free tool that handles the unpackage / repackage of an EPUB. This allows a quick, simple (no structural change) edit of a piece without worrying about the rebuild.

10-19-2015, 11:32 AM	#13
Cinisajoy Just a Yellow Smiley. Posts: 19,161 Karma: 83862859 Join Date: Jul 2015 Location: Texas Device: K4, K5, fire, kobo, galaxy	As to your second two questions. Knowing how books in your genre (sub-genre actually) is always a good idea. Though I am going to nitpick and say other authors are not your competitors. It is not like readers only buy one author. I have yet to find an author that has the output of what a voracious reader reads. As to your good time question, there is no real good time or bad time. I don't know what genre you are planning on but if you ask 10 authors, you would get at least 10 different answers. I have heard x y and z are bad days. I have also heard x y and z were great days. Same days, same genres, different authors. Other little tip, you cannot just put a book on Amazon and expect it to take off. If someone says give me $200 and I will publish your book and it will be an instant bestseller, RUN. Get as far away from that person as possible. Note: A bestseller is one that is in at the very least the top 100 in all of Amazon not say Household-cooking-slow cooker-Tasmania. I do believe and I may be wrong but I think whoever publishes the book gets paid by Amazon and they pay you. Anyway good luck.

10-23-2015, 08:43 PM	#14
crich70 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 11,305 Karma: 43993832 Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Monroe Wisconsin Device: K3, Kindle Paperwhite, Calibre, and Mobipocket for Pc (netbook)	Scrivener can compile files as an epub among other formats.