Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish And Why You Should

[David Gaughran]

I released my self-publishing guide at the end of July, and it's already received FIFTY five star reviews and sold over 600 copies.

One reason for its success is that I released the PDF version as a FREE download to help spread the word (link to that at the end).

Here's the cover and the blurb is just underneath.



"You won't make any money from self-publishing."

MYTH!

The internet has revolutionized every business it has come into contact with, and publishing is no different.

For the first time, these changes are handing power back to the writer. It's up to YOU if you want to profit from them.

Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should.

This guide contains over 60,000 words of essays, articles, and how-to guides, as well as contributions from 33 bestselling indie authors including J Carson Black, Bob Mayer, Victorine Lieske, Mark Edwards, and many more.

It covers everything from how the disruptive power of the internet has changed the publishing business forever to the opportunities this has created for writers. It gives you practical advice on editing, cover design, formatting, and pricing. And it reveals marketing tips from blogging and social networking right through to competitions, discounts, reviews, and giveaways.

If you are considering self-publishing, if you need to breathe life into your flagging sales, or if you want to understand why it's a great time to be a writer, Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should will explain it all.

Praise for Let's Get Digital:

"Credible and comprehensive. I'd recommend it to any writer who is considering self-publishing or anyone interested in the current state of publishing." -- Big Al's Books and Pals - 5 stars.

"Even with my background as an indie writer, I picked up several valuable tips...this is simply the best book about the ebook revolution that I have read." -- Michael Wallace, bestselling author of the Righteous series.

"It should be THE starting point for anyone considering self-publishing today. This book is a Pixel Pick, and should be considered required reading for any Indie author." -- Pixel of Ink.

Let's Get Digital is available for $2.99 from the following retailers.

Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005DC68NI
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005DC68NI
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lets...ran/1104808124
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/74884

FREE PDF: http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/lets-get-digital/

[Michael Wallace]

It's a great book, David, and I was happy to add my endorsement.

[AlexBell]

I found it interesting and useful, but I was disappointed that it is so Kindle centric, and that the formatting of the Smashwords ePub version is poor.

[David Gaughran]

@Michael Wallace

Thanks Michael

@AlexBell

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your comments.

The book is quite Kindle focused as most self-publishers make 80% to 90% of their sales there. Some don't even bother to upload to the other sites. Now, I certainly don't encourage that, but it made sense to focus on the areas most useful to self-publishers.

Also, a lot of the advice is transferable. So, if I outline a strategy for, say, getting Amazon reviews or marketing to Kindle owners, it doesn't take too much tweaking to use that for other areas.

I'm sorry to hear there was a problem with the Smashwords EPUB version - and I'm surprised. I test everything extensively myself, and I have sold over 100 copies through Smashwords alone and I have had no reports of this.

Would you be able to give me a little more detail on the formatting issues you are seeing (what kind, where in the book, what reader you are using, when you downloaded the book?) - I would appreciate that very much.

I hand code all the HTML myself so that the book renders perfectly on any e-reader, tablet or phone. The Smashwords Meatgrinder can do awful things to these books, but there are ways of minimizing the damage that their system will do, and I thought the EPUB version was in good condition - I do take a lot of care to make sure everything bearing my name is a professional product.

I am happy to send you the hand-coded EPUB version (which is much prettier than the version the Smashwords system spits out) if you PM me your email address.

Dave

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by David Gaughran

I'm sorry to hear there was a problem with the Smashwords EPUB version - and I'm surprised. I test everything extensively myself, and I have sold over 100 copies through Smashwords alone and I have had no reports of this.

Would you be able to give me a little more detail on the formatting issues you are seeing (what kind, where in the book, what reader you are using, when you downloaded the book?) - I would appreciate that very much.

I hand code all the HTML myself so that the book renders perfectly on any e-reader, tablet or phone. The Smashwords Meatgrinder can do awful things to these books, but there are ways of minimizing the damage that their system will do, and I thought the EPUB version was in good condition - I do take a lot of care to make sure everything bearing my name is a professional product.

I am happy to send you the hand-coded EPUB version (which is much prettier than the version the Smashwords system spits out) if you PM me your email address.

Dave

Thanks again Dave

I've already answered your private message, and declined your very kind offer since, as I mentioned, I already knew that Smashwords' meatgrinder often doesn't do a good job. But since I read your comment above and since I do ePub ebooks by hand myself I'll send you my private email in another message so you can send me the ebook and I can learn from you.

My concerns about the Smashwords version fall into two main areas:

- There are many bolded subheadings, and they are flush below the section above with a space below the subheadings above the material to which they refer. That probably doesn't explain what I mean, so I'll give an example

material in section above Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer
Subheading for the next section

Start of material for next section Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer

- There is a list of contributors (I think from memory that's what it is) which has names and URLs. The text is justified, so that there are many big spaces between the names and the URLs since the URLs won't break. I know that most people could tell their reader to go to left align instead of justified, but it would have been so easy to make that section left aligned in the CSS.

Thanks again for your response.

[David Gaughran]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for providing that extra info.

In case anyone doesn't know what we are talking about, Smashwords have an unusual system (on the author/publisher side). Instead of letting us upload our e-book files directly (like Amazon), they make us upload a Word doc of the book.

Their system then converts this automatically into the various formats: epub, mobi, PDF etc.

The problem is that the system isn't that smart. And to avoid tripping it up, the Smashwords version has to be extremely simple, or else the whole document can go haywire. In fact, sometimes even when you do everything right, it can still spit out some strange effects.

Alex, with regard to the two issues you have highlighted here, I'm aware of the second one, but I am unable to see what you are referring to with the first one.

While I rigorously test each document for a couple of days before announcing the release of the book, it's simply not possible to test what the book will look like on every single brand of e-reader, tablet, and smartphone. I test each format on several different devices, but that's the best that anyone can do.

Can I ask what brand of e-reader/device you are viewing on? That could help me hunt down what's causing this. The reason I ask is that the Smashwords system can put in gunky code that may only trigger the kinds of things you are seeing on one make of smartphone or e-reader - which might be why I haven't heard anything about this yet.

With regard to the second issue, I don't think there is anything that can be done to prevent this. As I explained above, Smashwords require a Word doc. And in fact, they require it all left aligned, which they then convert to justified. If there is a workaround to prevent this, I'm not aware of it - but I don't think there is.

In short, we have no way of editing the CSS/HTML of the files their system spits out, and no way of "priming" the Word doc to achieve affects like altering the justification of the text.

I am a big fan of Smashwords, but this is on area they really need to work on. I take the time to hand code the HTML for all my e-book files, and it really pains me to have to take the regressive step of uploading a Word doc so Smashwords dumb system can mangle it like this.

In fact, some indie writers (and formatting experts like Guido Henkel) refuse to use Smashwords for this very reason.

I, along with many other writers, have been plaguing Mark Coker to allow us to upload our own epub and mobi files to the site. Unfortunately, he has stated that this is not a priority for Smashwords.

Thank you Alex for bringing this to my attention and for PMing me your email. I will send you on the proper epub file now.

For anyone else affected by this issue, especially readers, I urge you to send an email to Smashwords to complain about the files their system spits out. I think they may listen to readers more than writers here.

Dave

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by David Gaughran

Can I ask what brand of e-reader/device you are viewing on? That could help me hunt down what's causing this. The reason I ask is that the Smashwords system can put in gunky code that may only trigger the kinds of things you are seeing on one make of smartphone or e-reader - which might be why I haven't heard anything about this yet.

<snipped>

I am a big fan of Smashwords, but this is on area they really need to work on. I take the time to hand code the HTML for all my e-book files, and it really pains me to have to take the regressive step of uploading a Word doc so Smashwords dumb system can mangle it like this.

<snipped>

For anyone else affected by this issue, especially readers, I urge you to send an email to Smashwords to complain about the files their system spits out. I think they may listen to readers more than writers here.

Dave

Thanks, Dave. I sent you an email in response to yours sending me the ePub, so I won't repeat it in detail.

Your original ePub version is very much better than the Smashwords version, and if Smashwords was close to that standard I'd have given you a four star review.

It's only four star because I still think that you have almost ignored the 40% of your readers (your figure) who prefer ePub, still think that mobi is a crippled proprietary format, and am still irritated by having to dumb down the markup to make it work in a mobi version.

I accept that it's mainly a Smashwords problem, and certainly accept that I should have complained to them. But I wonder if there is not some shared responsibility - you published through them.

I use a Sony PRS 650. I very much doubt that the first problem relates to a limitation of the Sony - so far as I know all or almost all devices which read ePub use ADE, except of course iBooks.

I think you've mentioned elsewhere that you ask others to check your ePub formatted ebooks. I do some conversion of ebooks myself, for a small UK publisher, and bought a Kindle and more recently an iPad so that I could be sure that the ebooks I produce are well formatted. I've sometimes had unpleasant surprises when the mobi version converted from the ePub version doesn't work on the mobi, and have had to redo parts of the XHTML.

[David Gaughran]

Hi Alex,

Thank you for your comments.

I fully agree that mobi is a poor format with extreme limitations. There have been a lot of rumors that Amazon will finally put mobi to bed by allowing their devices to use epub files. I hope this is the case because the limitations of mobi are very frustrating, especially non-fiction where the text is usually broken up with various solutions such as typography, break-away boxes, graphics, pictures, charts and so on, all of which are either impossible to do, or can render poorly due to the limitations of both the readers and the formats.

I don't think it really makes sense for most publishers (especially small ones like me) to design separate mobi and epub editions to take advantage of the minor improvements afforded by the epub format. This may become an imperative in the future as epub develops (and the plans for the format are exciting) - but it looks like we might see the back of mobi anyway, which will make everything simpler. In any event, developing two editions would probably lead to an increase in price - something I would like to avoid.

I'm not sure how I ignored 40% of readers. The book talks a lot about Kindle and Amazon because self-publishers tend to make 80% to 90% of their sales there. Personally, I don't think this is a healthy situation, and I encourage self-publishers to at least try and diversify a little so that they are not so dependent on one source for most of their revenue. However, I also understand that there are logical reasons for this - Amazon is by far the easiest place for self-publishers to make a sale (for all sorts of reasons).

That target audience for this book isn't the average reader, it's aimed at writers, self-publishers, and readers who are interested in the changes ocurring in the publishing industry. The core audience is self-publishers. As 80% to 90% of their sales are on Amazon, the content needs to be focused on selling on Amazon. I do talk about all the other major retailers (Barnes & Noble, Apple, Sony, Kobo, Diesel, Smashwords, Omnilit) more than most books of this type, and I certainly have a greater international focus than any book of this type.

However, devoting more than, say, a paragraph to the Sony e-bookstore when the average self-publisher makes less than 0.01% of their sales their would be a waste of time.

With regard to testing, I have a pretty rigorous and exhaustive process. I doesn't make sense for me to go out and buy every single brand of e-reader, tablet, and smartphone (and believe me, there can be issues native to each). What I do is this.

I hand-code the HTML for the e-book file. As I write the code, I continually preview it in a browser. This will catch most issues. When it looks clean there, I compile the epub and mobi files in Caliber.

I don't convert the mobi from the epub (or vice versa) as this can create issues like you have mentioned. I actually compile each file individually.

Next, I test those in Kindle-for-Pc, Nook-for-PC, Kindle Previewer and Adobe Digital Editions. This will usually highlight a couple of issues. Once those are resolved, and it all looks fine in a browser, I test them again.

Once it's all clean and rendering perfectly, I farm it out to 20 testers/proofers (who are all working off different devices). Often a couple of typos here and there will be spotted at this point, but rarely a formatting issue. If there are any, then the testing cycle begins again (but it's usually quite quick at this point).

When that is done, it's ready for upload. Once the file goes live on Smashwords and Amazon, I immediately download it for extra testing. The Amazon file is normally fine, but the Smashwords one can have issues because of their system.

This part of the process takes a day or two, and once I am confident that there are no more bugs, I announce the release of the book.

I think you will agree that this a pretty rigorous testing process. Now, even with a process like this, stuff can still slip through; it happens. One reader caught a minor typo that had slipped past me (multiple times), my editor (twice), and all 20 of my proofers. No system is perfect.

Dave

[Dr. Drib]

I think further discussion now needs to be moved off-site, or else into the Writers' Forum (without any self-promotional aspect or links, of course).

This thread is for the self-promotion of a book, and one that follows the guidelines for self-promotion.

Thank you for your understanding.



Don
(Moderator)

[anamardoll]

Heh. I bought this book yesterday from Amazon, didn't even realize you were a Mobile Reader! Always happy to contribute to a Mobile Reader!

[David Gaughran]

Thanks Ana!

You can always ping me on Twitter if you have any questions:

@DavidGaughran

[anamardoll]

I may just, thank you. I'm sad to see from this thread that Smashwords uploading is as nightmarish as I'd feared.

I'm seriously thinking about outsourcing out the Smashwords formatting to a professional, but I don't know who would be the best to choose, and it sounds like even the experienced can be tripped up by the meatgrinder.