Part 2 Why You Must Publish an eBook: Here’s Some Testimony, & Resources

Read Part 1

A new installment in the series, A Self-Publishing Journey. Keep your eyes peeled for the next few months. I’ll be posting about what I’ve learned in my own self-publishing journey, and many top experts in the business will be adding their thoughts to the soup too. See all posts in the series.

Because of the numerous financial advantages of self-publishing my eBook, I concentrate more than half of my marketing efforts, and money, on digital sales. I’d be crazy not to when my sales are mostly eBooks, and the electronic version consistently attracts more attention (clicks/views) than my prints. See discussion of the award winning views stats for Rightfully Mine at the BookBuzzr site.

Beyond those companies I’ve personally used (below), there exists a nearly unlimited number of places to publish and/or list your eBooks, provided you have full electronic rights. If your book is published through a traditional publisher and you don’t retain the electronic rights, you’re omitting one of your richest sales sources. Most publishers can only be counted on to publish your book to Kindle, but that’s just the tip of the eBook iceberg. Even if your publisher has progressed into distributing their titles to varied eBook markets, they still keep most of the profits, and would never submit them to the dozens of online distributors that you would; which is why you are reading this, and considering self-publishing your book.

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Here’s Some Testimony

February/March 2010. “The future for electronic books is bright, with spending in libraries expected to double within the next three years,” Maxim van Gisbergen, product manager for e-books at Swets, told a seminar at the Online Information show in London at the beginning of December. “Some 97 per cent of US academic libraries already have some e-books.” by Tom Wilkie and Sian Harris, Research Information.

February/March 2010. David Nicholas of UCL’s CIBER group commented, “E-book adoption is already pretty significant but there could be tens of thousands times more use of e-books. We think that…the digital transition is done but in fact it has only just begun.’ by Tom Wilkie and Sian Harris Research Information.

December, 2009. “eBooks, some of them free eBooks, outsold print books this Christmas. On December 26, Amazon announced that, for the first time ever, they had sold more eBooks than physical books on Christmas day. by Jessie Kunhardt The Huffington Post.

July ,2009. “USA TODAY‘s “Best-Selling Books” list becomes the first major list to include Amazon Kindle e-book sales. The move reflects both the growth of eBook sales and Kindle’s role in that market, says Susan Weiss, managing editor of the Life section.”This week, Barnes & Noble announced the launch of its own eBookstore with 700,000 titles.” by Anthony DeBarros, Bob Minzesheimer and Deirdre Donahue, USA TODAY.

July, 2009. “Percentage sales of e-books are skyrocketing – but keep in mind, from a very small base. That said, traditional book sales are going in the opposite direction. Latest figures from the Association of American Publishers showed e-book sales up 167 percent through May of this year. Printed book sales were down 4 percent.” by  Steven E. Levingston, The Washington Post.

May, 2009. Said Jeff Bezos at Amazon’s launch of the Kindle DX . “For books that are available on the Kindle, sales are already 35 percent of the same books in print, up from 13 percent just a few months ago.” by Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch.

Sales reports everywhere support the belief that electronic sales will soon equal, or surpass, print book sales. Think about it, there’s no printing cost, no shipping (for distributors or customers), nor warehouse storage; manufacturing costs are virtually out the window. Plus you get it instantaneously, and exactly what you want, no choosing from what’s on the shelf.

Readers now can purchase digital articles, rather than whole books, and whole book cost a whole lot less, so readers are purchasing more than ever, according to sales reports. And further, there are free sites where authors can record the digitized audio versions of the books, articles, interviews, etc. and offer them through iTunes, and numerous other onsite stores. And we’re just talking about today. Imagine what new sales sources will be available to the self-published author in five years.

Today, traditional publishing houses like Simon and Schuster are already joining forces with this digital micropayment paradigm. Several houses have already struck content deals with Apple iPad and all the numerous e-readers. Readers, authors, traditional publishers, magazines and newspapers, and self-publishers are all realizing that Apple;s iTunes Store created a model of micropayments that sets the mold to financial security for us all.

The  Apple iPad , together with the likes of the first iPhone, set the stage for saving the publishing industry, including indie authors, rather than destroy it, as a multitude prophesied at the time. Micropayments are a whole new arena of income, not only for book publishers and authors, but magazine publishers, newspapers, podcaster etc.

Imagine this. With your Apple iPad, or similar device, you are sitting in an airport café, enjoying your latte and checking your email when you realize you didn’t bring enough to read. Click, click. You downloaded an extra magazine for the long flight. But look, in the process of looking for a magazine, you came across a white paper on the topic you’re speaking about at the end of your flight. $0.99 + click, click. Ah, just the data you needed to support your speech.

January 28, 2010. “I think (Steve Jobs of Apple) will be remembered as the digital Gutenberg,” said Bruno Ruffilli, a writer at La Stampa newspaper in Italy. “It could be a way out of this (publishing) crisis.” Print Media Hail iPad’s Potential by Mallory Simon, CNN.

January 28, 2010. “We think there’s a lot of opportunity there (the Apple iPad),” said Adam Rothberg, vice president of corporate communications at publishing house Simon and Schuster. “It creates a much more robust marketplace. The e-book market has clearly been growing at a really rapid clip in the last year. I think this will certainly tick it up a notch. It expands the universe of potential customers for us in a big way.” Print Media Hail iPad’s Potential by Mallory Simon, CNN.

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Here’s Some e-Publishers

Many of those listed below are technically not a publisher. I list them as such because I publish my book to their site, which lists it before their hundreds of thousands of viewers. So technically they might be labeled as directories. I’ll take that. Any and all web presence is the goal.

Some companies listed below take a cut, some charge a bit to list you. I opt to use the free eBook publishing sites, at least at first, and then add expenses as I can afford them. This list is just a starting point. Scour the web on your own, ask your writer friends, put your questions out to your social site buddies. You may find places you like even better. If you do, please list them in the comment box so others can benefit from your experience.

The route I choose is to publish my eBooks on every site I find fitting; the more sites the better exposure. Some in this list may require exclusive publishing rights. So far I steer clear of those, but eBook publishing is highly individual, your needs may be far different, so I’ve included a few of those.

I have used some of these companies myself, but I can’t warranty any of the companies listed. I don’t endorse, or otherwise investigate and approve, just because they are listed here. Sorry; I have to say that! Just make sure you check them out thoroughly before signing up, even if I say I’ve used the company.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to post in the comments box below. Please also list your own favorite sites for the benefit of our readers.

IndieReader.com. every book on the IndieReader site is reviewed prior to acceptance.

Digital Text Platform. For selling through Kindle books. No charge to publish.

Clickbank. One of the largest do-it-yourself eBook marketing sites. Auto-offers affiliate sales of your book. Small, one-time fee, plus percentage.

Smashwords, do-it-yourself eBook marketing, formats automatically for Kindle and nine other ebook formats to fit most e-readers. Auto-offers affiliate sales of your book. No charge to publish, takes percentage.

Lulu. Do-it-yourself e-publisher, print-on-demand and eBooks. No charge to publish. Takes percentage.

OffTheBookshelf. Joining is free. create your own online bookstore, upload your books, choose your price, and start selling.

eBookFreeway. Offers Free and Paid eBooks. I list here.

The eBook Directory. List your ebook there for $10 each 6 months. You keep 100% of the sales. I list here.

TheeBookSale Publishing. Print and eBook publisher. Not free, but extremely reasonable.

Booklocker. Royalty paying, print-on-demand and eBook publisher, iPhone friendly. Not free, but extremely reasonable.

A list of eBook publishers belonging to EPIC, Electronically Published Internet Connection.

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Here’s some eBook Format Conversion, Human & Otherwise

Conversions is vital if you want to get your eBook published as many places as possible. Smashwords is ahead of the game right now, because they are free, and when you upload to them, according to their specifications, they translate into 10 different formats, including ePub, which is a standard that even the Apple iPad Bookstore accepts.  If you are already published to Lulu, they have an ePub conversion service you can use.

Again, I’m staying with Smashwords, who already publishes my books to Kindle and Sony Readers bookstores (among others), and anticipating them to strike a deal with iPad, and hopefully the EnTOURage eDGe.

Cindy Bauer Book Publishing Services, convert your MS Word manuscript to eBook format.

Lillie Ammann Editing Services, convert your MS Word manuscript to eBook format.

Ebook conversion order form at eBookMall

Calibre. (I use this one a lot to convert docs to a format I can place on my Kindle Reader.) Download the program. Free. Converts things to epub format and is mainly for Sony Reader, although it supports Cybook.

Zamzar. Online conversion tool. Free.

Ecub is a tool that lets you import HTML/XHTML files and spit out EPUB and Mobipocket books. Free.

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See all the posts in this series, A Self-Publishing Journey

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