Unusual Author Questions

[haysRNZ]

I am 75, retired, and an author. My books have all been published via KDP's print on demand or Kindle e-book formats.
What makes me unusual is I have no interest in making income from my books, but I do want to see them get to an audience of bright older teens and young adults. I am thinking of packaging my e-books and a few dozen essays I've written on a USB flash drive, contracted for multiple copies, and mailing them to potential readers. I may also put all these on a web page for free downloading. Kindle is not a good format for this, but I think epubs are, and I can readily do epub versions.
Question 1: is this a bad idea? Am I overlooking something important?
Question 2: is epub the format to use? (I suppose I could instead go with something else.
Question 3: my contractor first sent me a version in epub that had the cover page embedded in the epub. KDP required producing a different version with a separate file for the cover. Should my distribution epub have the cover embedded or separate?

Robert L. Hays, Arizona

[Quoth]

Amazon don't care if the epub has the cover it it. It's just that Amazon ALSO needs a separate high resolution cover. I upload the same separate cover and epub to Amazon, Smashwords (who send it on to Apple, Scribd, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and others) and Google Playstore.

We also upload a dual Mobi from Calibre to Smashwords only, for their own Kindle customers. It has old Mobi/KF7 and azw3/KF8 in one file and seems to work on all Kindles. If newer than FW 2.5.8 kindles select Publisher they get the KF8 that's much like an epub. The older kindles (clue, no Publisher option in Aa menu) only show the old mobi version.

See links in my sig.

We are considering micro SD cards. The user can use a $2 USB adaptor and they come with a full size SD card adaptor which many laptops take. These would have the audio book, the kindle dual mobi version and the epub. Maybe paper-back format PDF version too.

The issue with direct sales is customer service. Paypal and IBAN (especially Europe and India) are simple payment options. Shopping Cart / sales website security is an issue, that's why we ditched selling downloads. As a compromise for a while we offered no download, but emailed a file to the customer's PayPal address. That's a problem too. So selling the SD cards (or USB stick) via eBay and Amazon Market place is safer.

The little box with micro SD card card and adaptor is cheaper and easier to ship than a USB stick. Some tablets, phones & ereaders can even use the card direct. A 4 G byte card is compatible with oldest gadgets.

So distribute epub with embedded cover, a cover, and a dual mobi for Kindle. Upload all these to Smashwords. The same cover & epub will work for Amazon KDP and Google books on Playstore.

P.S. I don't think these are unusual questions.
Charles Perrault was maybe 90 when he started publishing fairy tales.

[gmw]

There are many authors that make their books free - either just a selection of their work or everything - so it's not an unusual request.

In general, people still expect professional packaging, even on free stuff. (Many look at publications that seem to show the author/publisher doesn't care and wonder why the potential reader should care - it's not like there's a shortage to choose from.)

Amazon don't let you set the price to free directly (except via limit promotions in KDP Select?), the trick is to also sell your book via Smashwords or other distributor, set the book free there and then get Amazon to price-match. (Do an Internet search for "make your book free at Amazon" or similar, there are many articles out there about how to do this.)

Smashwords can, given a MS-Word .doc file and a cover image, generate all the formats anyone is likely to want. They make giving stuff away very easy.

Selling USB or micro SD cards sounds like a headache waiting to happen: "My drive isn't working!", "It didn't show up in the post!", "You sent me a virus!!!" I wouldn't do it.

[gmw]

Oh, and another thought: People mostly go book shopping at sites that sell books, and if you want your books to be seen you need them to be where people are looking. Between price matching at Amazon and distributing via Smashwords (who can send on to many other sellers) you can get your book out where people might actually see it ... for a while, anyway.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by gmw

Smashwords can, given a MS-Word .doc file and a cover image, generate all the formats anyone is likely to want. They make giving stuff away very easy.

They don't accept docx. Best to upload dual mobi and epub direct made by calibre and if you want their poorer conversion for other formats you can upload MS doc too. We decided for quality reasons only to upload dual mobi and epub and not the MS doc. That covers almost all ereaders in the last 12 years. Likely people stuck with either pdb format, lrf or wanting PDF can convert themselves.

Originally Posted by gmw

Selling USB or micro SD cards sounds like a headache waiting to happen: "My drive isn't working!", "It didn't show up in the post!", "You sent me a virus!!!" I wouldn't do it.

I agree

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by gmw

Oh, and another thought: People mostly go book shopping at sites that sell books, and if you want your books to be seen you need them to be where people are looking. Between price matching at Amazon and distributing via Smashwords (who can send on to many other sellers) you can get your book out where people might actually see it ... for a while, anyway.

We've not had success with price match on Amazon, butGoogle & Smashwords allow free. I presume then the other sellers Smashwords send to also allow free (Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble etc). But less than 1/2 our sales are Amazon. It's crazy to go KDP Select and give Amazon a monopoly.

Also if you want the book free forever and in the public domain you can say so on the title page and upload to Project Gutenberg, Faded Pages and the Library here. Also Archive Org. But offering Public Domain is a one-way trip. Not the same as Free to Download even though it's free.