Article on creating a free ebook

[Hatgirl]

I read an interesting article today by the author Oisín McGann. In it he lays out the logic behind releasing a free ebook to publicize his other works.
Irish Publishing News: How to Make Ebooks and Influence People.
The ebook is still available and is linked to in the article, but I'll stick it in here too: The Vile Desire To Scream

I thought his explanations about concepts like why there are different formats and the minefield that is free vs spam, were excellent. And I found it interesting that even though it was "self published", he still needed a team of people to help him. Even in a paper-free world, I guess we'll still need editors, programmers, illustrators and publicity experts!

[AlexBell]

I'm really surprised at his stats - '368 registered downloads of the book; 292 of those were PDFs, and 76 were epub files. There haven’t been enough downloads of the Mobipocket file to register on the stats.'

I downloaded the ePub version just to do my little bit.

Regards, Alex

[mr ploppy]

You shouldn't be. Like he says himself, most screen based reading is still being done on a computer screen, not a dedicated ebook reader.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

You shouldn't be. Like he says himself, most screen based reading is still being done on a computer screen, not a dedicated ebook reader.

Yes, I know, but to this extent? And to have mobi not statistically significant?

Regards, Alex

[neilmarr]

Hi Alex and Ploppy. Smashwords also shows PDFs (generally, not SW specific, I think) as by far the most popular download with ePub trailing in second place. Mark Coker's exlanation, which makes perfect sense, is that some books (text books, illustrated books, books (like the hugely popular cookbooks) containing colour photographs, books with complex tables or graphs, books with eccentric layout, and many 'documents' make sense only in PDF form. It would be interesting to see a reliable study of format popluarity in straight novels with these anomalies removed. No easy task, I guess. Thanks for the OP, Hatgirl. Bestest. Neil

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Yes, I know, but to this extent? And to have mobi not statistically significant?

Regards, Alex

Of course. Everyone has heard of PDF, and will almost certainly have a program to read them. The only people who will have heard of epub or mobi will be people with dedicated ereaders.

[Hatgirl]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Of course. Everyone has heard of PDF, and will almost certainly have a program to read them. The only people who will have heard of epub or mobi will be people with dedicated ereaders.

Heh. That's actually what I liked about the article, the way he explained why people who have ereaders generally don't like pdfs. Hopefully some of what he has written has squirmed its way into the subconcious of any publishers that read it!

[mr ploppy]

PDF is only really a problem on devices with a small screen, so if the future of ebooks really is in devices like Apple's iPad, publishers will be likely to want to stick with it.

[Orochi]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

PDF is only really a problem on devices with a small screen, so if the future of ebooks really is in devices like Apple's iPad, publishers will be likely to want to stick with it.

I don`t know if I necessarily agree with that. Epub is very rapidly gaining momentum and from what I hear they are pushing for Epub to become an industry standard.

The problem is not so much with the format, but more the technology. E-ink screens are currently far behind the capabilties of an LCD screen, but that is going to change in a few years. Developers are really excited about how quickly E-ink is growing and the first color E-ink screens will start appearing late this year or sometime next year. Manufacturers of devices are quite excited about the possibilities as well, as E-ink uses much less power and resources than a LCD, is much thinner, does`t require a backlight, is easier on the eyes and less subject to glare.

As neilmarr stated ``...that some books (text books, illustrated books, books (like the hugely popular cookbooks) containing colour photographs, books with complex tables or graphs, books with eccentric layout, and many 'documents' make sense only in PDF form.`` Once E-ink catches up with color and refresh rates, this will be much less of an issue, and I think you might be suprised how fast it happens.