NEW! Novica & Invited Guest Contributors Tips & Product Reviews Pt 5
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If you're buying promotional items, remember to go to New Releases and see the page of freebies. They did change them, and add a few items. I got the maze (and a freebie) in one order, then the Carriage House (LOVE that interior) and another freebie- broke it down into several orders. Couldn't resist the dandelions so got another freebie in a third order. :) Grew up with dandelions and I don't have them here very much. I saw one this spring- ONE. We are told they are weeds but I think they are pretty! WHO decides what a weed is anyway?
Texas has a great program started by President Johnson's wife- they plant wildflowers along the interstate, etc. I've seen gorgeous blue bonnets and hot yellow flowers. Way to go Texas!
Thank you for topic
I'm reading the post right now, there is much information in this topic
I am trying to assimilate the information in my mind for a while ...
thank you so much
does the dandelion set contain any 'fluff' IE the pods floating in the air? I love those, even though, yeah, they are weeds.
http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/8-weeds-you-can-eat
The trick is to harvest them early. Hmm. Learn something new every day. You can eat both the stem and the flower. However, bittersweet doesn't appeal to me. I'm a candy girl :) (CHOCOLATE. Where's the Doves?)
Jorge, have fun with the info. Lots more coming tomorrow night. :)
Hello again. I know it's not Friday night yet (although it's nearly Friday where I am), but before we dive into specific topics and questions tomorrow night I wanted to make a few points here just to be sure we're all on the same page, and clear up some common misconceptions regarding ebooks.
I have also decided to provide my answers to the questions Novica posted the other day, because they cover a lot, and it will give you all a chance to read through them and formulate your own questions for tomorrow.
This may take a minute, so bear with me...
First, there is a great deal of confusion regarding the difference between reflowable ebooks and fixed layouts, and when you should use one and not the other. The practical answer to this is that if you want "full-bleed" images with art that runs from edge-to-edge with no borders, or you want live text layers that overlap or wrap around your artwork, or you have multiple pieces or art that need to be positioned precisely on the page, fixed layout is the only way to go. In fixed layouts all the page content is fixed, so that the layout remains exactly as you made it.
Reflowable files are ones where the reader can change the text size, the margin width, and even the font style and color, and the amount of content that appears on each "page" is infinitely variable from one device to another and with different settings. These are used for all text-only books, or for ones which have only a handful of illustrations. If you have images that can go in between blocks of text, and that work okay with page margins, you should probably use the reflowable format instead. Even so, you may want to use the fixed layout format if you want to be sure an image and a block of text appear together on the same page, as in many children's books, where there is a half or 3/4 page image with a few lines of text beneath. If you use reflowable formatting you can't be sure the text and the image will appear together.
Second, I get a great many questions asking if there is a simple drag-and-drop program that can make Kindle ebooks, and the answer to that is "no" as far as I'm concerned. Amazon has the Kindle Comic Creator and the newly released Kindle Kid's Book Creator, but they're both very limited, and create files that have inherent flaws. I can talk about these in detail if you like.
There is also a Kindle plug-in for InDesign that exports to the KF8 fixed layout format, and the latest version of InDesign CC now has a built-in export option, but neither of these work as they should, and all of them add a ton of bloated code and change the names of all your files, so that if you ever want to go in and hand-edit anything you'll be faced with a load of gibberish that only the program you used can understand. In other words, if you use a given program to create your ebook, you will forever be tied to that program to edit and update your file - or start over from scratch. And we all know that any company can discontinue any software at any time, or go out of business altogether.
So my take on ebook creation is that the only real way to be in control of your work is to build it for yourself. And this is not as hard as it may seem. Especially if you have a template to guide you through the process. But we're not here to learn how to format ebooks tonight, but to talk about specific issues of interest or concern to all of you.
Novica has provided me with a set of questions (posted earlier) that she would like have answered, so I will start with the first of those and we can go from there. In fact the first four questions all relate to images, and being that this is an art forum, that is only right!
1.) How many, if any, interior images do you have in your books?
The number of images in an ebook greatly affects the file size, and along with image resolution, is probably the main thing you will need to deal with as an artist when creating an illustrated ebook. To answer the question, my first book, The Saga of Beowulf, has only two, plus the front and rear covers. My formatting guide, however, has 167 interior images, but they're all smallish-sized vignettes, the largest taking up no more than half a page. I wasn't overly concerned about the quality of the images in this case because, for the most part, they're only there to add visual interest to what would otherwise be a very dry and tedious textbook. Most of the images serve a purpose, but they're not "art" per se, so high resolution full page graphics were not called for. And these are both reflowable ebooks, so high resolution graphics were not even an option anyway, due to the restrictions Amazon had in place for image file size at the time (more on that in a bit).
By the way, I'm sure many of you recognize Nursoda's Bong & Bonga, who I "hired" as my models to act as tour guides through the book. You find them in a wide variety of (hopefully) amusing situations throughout the book, as well as in both templates.
The templates are, of course, both fixed layouts. The "Simple Edition" contains 9 pages with a single full page image each, plus two pages with a "full page" image consisting of several smaller images, precisely positioned to create a full page layout. The "Advanced Edition" consists of 18 pages, but is made from a total of 26 images, since it also includes several image pop-ups that contain different images from the one underneath.
For my current project, which is a 4-volume illustrated novel of around 100 pages each, will have, naturally, around 100 full-page images per volume. It's a massive undertaking on which I've been working already for several years. It will take many more to complete, since like my other books I'm doing everything myself. File size, obviously, is a big issue in a project of that size.
I will address the next three as a group, since they all deal with the same issue of image resolution.
2.) Kindle: Is there a size you recommend for interior images?
My personal recommendation for some time has been to create images as large as you can get away with, because device resolution is continually increasing. However, we are now finally approaching the point where device resolution is reaching the limits of human perception (at around 350 pixels per inch, beyond which the human eye cannot discern any difference), so we can only now begin to determine "once and for all" what the optimal image size might be.
This is complicated, of course, by the fact that ebooks are read on everything from 4" smart phones to 26" desktop monitors, or greater. But if we focus on just e-reading devices themselves, we now have a top display resolution of 2560 x 1600 on the Kindle HDX 8.9, Google's Nexus 10, and the Kobo Arc 10HD, the latter two at 300 ppi, and the Kindle hitting an impressive 339 ppi - the best of any device on the market to date.
So the question of what size I recommend now becomes more a question of file size than image resolution, which brings us to the next question (although that is still important, and I will come back to it in a minute):
3.) Kindle: What is the most recent guidelines for file size for interior images?
Up until just recently Amazon has enforced a very severe restriction on image files sizes for Kindle ebooks: a maximum of 126 kb for each image in a reflowable file, and 256 kb for images in all fixed layout ebooks, with the single exception of comics, which could have images of up to 800 kb in size (each). This was fine for vector art or images with mainly solid color fills and lots of white space. But as you all well know, digital renders contain different color information for virtually every pixel in an image, making them very "byte intensive" unless a lot of image compression is employed, or the images themselves are shrunk in size.
Amazon's reasoning for this was due both to the cost of transferring files over their free Whispersync network, as well as the speed at which a Kindle device could render the art on a page - higher resolution art obviously takes much more processing power to view, and the early Kindle processors just couldn't handle much data without becoming jerky and unresponsive.
Fortunately, device hardware now can often rival what is found in budget laptops, with quad-core processors and blazing fast computation speeds, so this has become less of an issue. Consequently, Amazon has recently increased the image file size allows in all Kindle ebooks to a whopping 5 Mb each! This is vastly more than you will likely every need, except perhaps for the occasional highly detailed image of a map or enormous battle scene, or something of that nature.
In fact, you would not want to put images that big into your ebooks for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it will take up an enormous amount of room on the reader's device (some of which don't have much storage space, after all), and take a long time to download for those unfortunate enough to still live in regions without broadband Internet. Moreover, my tests have shown that an ebook made entirely of images at 5 Mb currently perform very poorly in page-turn speed - up to a 5 second delay, which is painfully slow. This will, of course, improve in time, but there is another, even more important reason not to make your ebook file size so big, and that is delivery cost.
Amazon charges a .15 cent "delivery fee" for each megabyte of data transferred the first time a buyer downloads an ebook file they have bought (all downloads, syncs, and transfers after that are free). This, obviously, would quickly add up to a ridiculously unprofitable surcharge with 5 Mb images on each page! That is, after all, .75 cents per image at that size. However, this is complicated by a further issue that very few people are aware of, as Amazon has intentionally not announced it publicly, for reasons that will become clear in a minute.
When I first learned about this increase in image size, I assumed a change in the delivery fee would be forthcoming. But it never changed, so I confronted Amazon about it. And what they revealed to me was that, while the full size images will be delivered to the HD Kindle devices, the images will be compressed to the original image file size limits (126/256/800 kb) when the same ebook is sent to non-HD devices - and (here's the important part) - the seller will only be charged for the smaller file size, even when the HD version is delivered. So you will never be charged for a 5 Mb image, even if you include a hundred of them in your ebook. In effect, Amazon has changed the delivery fee without telling anyone about it.
This doesn't mean you should put in tons of huge images, for the reasons mentioned earlier, but it does mean that you now have a lot of leeway to include higher quality artwork than you previously could.
4.) Kindle: Cover- recommended file size
In the Kindle Publishing Guidelines Amazon recommends that cover images be 2560 x 1600 pixels in size (the size of their highest resolution device), at 350 dpi (dots per inch).
Let me state right here that dpi (or ppi, which is pixels-per-inch), is irrelevant in ebooks, and the only reason Amazon is making this recommendation is because they want you to also publish a print edition with CreateSpace (which is legitimate, but not your only, or even best, option. But print is another issue entirely).
It is wise to always create your artwork at at least 300 ppi, since it is hoped that at some point you will want it printed, either for a print edition, or for marketing materials, or for both. And print does require 300 dpi as a minimum. But an image 800x600 pixels will fill up the screen of an 800x600 pixel display regardless of whether it contains 300 ppi or 72 (the web standard since the days of slow dial-up Internet connections). In fact, if you were to create an image 800x600 pixels at 1 pixel per inch, it would still fill up an 800x600 ppi display! The pixel-per-inch specs given for e-reader devices only tells you how many pixels the device has managed to cram into that display, and consequently how fine the details will appear - lower resolution screen appear blocky and jagged, while high resolution displays have perfectly smooth curves and angles.
But to return to the issue of image resolution, Amazon's recommended size is a good place to start in terms of image size for both the cover and interior images, which to my mind are no different. To come back to Question #2, I would now personally recommend that you include images 150% larger than what Amazon suggests (which would be 3840 x 2400 pixels), both for future compatibility and because that way you can allow your readers to zoom the art to see more details, even on the highest resolution displays. That is, of course, a matter entirely up to you, and will depend greatly on the nature of each particular project. I would qualify my recommendation by saying that you should put in images as large as possible while keeping the individual image file size down around 1.5 Mb at most, and no larger than 2 Mb, except in rare instances.
In time, all of this will be academic, as devices will ultimately have enormous capacity both in terms of memory and speed. But we must deal with today's limitations today.
On to the next question...
5.) Marketing strategies. Smashwords is pretty adamant about not limiting sales to Amazon, but for exposure (particularly for a series and just getting started) the option of providing it to Prime members and getting paid for downloads (while exclusive to Amazon) seems like a decent strategy.
I have qualms with exclusivity for many reasons, although it can in some cases work to your benefit. But first, you must be aware that only the very top few authors are actually getting any real significant benefit from Amazon's arrangement, and that most of what is published via KDP Select is done so only because those authors have no sales elsewhere anyway. This is because no one but Amazon has any marketing muscle at all.
Neither Smashwords, nor Apple, nor Barnes & Noble, nor anyone else for that matter, will put anything but a rudimentary effort into promoting your ebook, and they do the same thing for every other author too, so that no one actually stands out.
Amazon, on the other hand, has the biggest and most efficient marketing machine of any online retailer, with incredibly effective recommendation engines that are constantly presenting patrons with a customized selection of potential purchase options on every single page on their website (and through direct email too!). So Amazon will definitely be the number one proponent of your work (they have, in fact, done more for independent publishing than every other retailer and publisher combined). But should you go with them exclusively?
I say no, and here's why: not everyone has a Kindle, or a Kindle app, or even wants one. Some readers prefer the iPad, or the Kobo, or an Android reading app of one variety or another, or even a web-based reading app like Azardi or Readium. Do you really want to turn away potential readers just because they don't have the hardware your product is available on? Physical books are platform agnostic: they can be read by anyone anywhere. Don't limit your books to just a fraction of your potential market.
For me, there is another factor as well, which is that the exclusivity agreement with Amazon also restricts you from selling your own books on your own website - it states this specifically in the contract terms, and I can tell you they mean it because I had my book pulled from Select program when the only other place it was for sale was on my own website. Not everyone has a shopping cart setup, but for those of us who do it is a little bit perturbing to be unable to sell someone your own work.
That said, there are authors who feel that they are making up for any potential lost sales elsewhere by the extra bonus Amazon adds on. But how can you really know what you might be losing? Historical figures might suggest that you are making more than you used to before going exclusive. But it only takes one reader to start a landslide, and that one reader might only use a Nexus or prefer iBooks. What if that one reader was Oprah, or Stan Lee, or Peter Jackson? My philosophy is "never limit your options." But that's just me.
6.) Other marketing strategies
I could go on for hours here, because there are literally as many marketing strategies as you can think of, and books have been discovered in the weirdest ways imaginable. But I will say irrefutably that the number one thing you can do - as a content creator of any kind - is to start a blog or website and fill it will really good content that your potential readers can use, will enjoy, and that will bring them back.
As a personal example, during the process of creating and publishing my first novel, I detailed the entire experience from start to finish over a two year period, including all the facts and figures I could come up with, from how to start your own publishing company (and why) to production cost breakdowns for print-on-demand and ebooks, as well as following sales statistics and industry trends as ebook growth exploded. When I published in 2008 the first Kindle had been out for less than a year and ebooks accounted for less than 1% of all book sales. That grew to 3% the next year, and 9% the year after that, and I posted charts that broke it down by category, and created my own charts showing year-on-year growth and extrapolating where the trend would go. And when I started working on learning ebook formatting I shared what I learned there, with tutorials and detailed posts on every aspect of digital production. I've even done some posts on how to do 3D art, which is a subject that will soon become a major topic on my blog.
The point is to make yourself known, to become a destination, a place your potential readers like to go. Many (if not most) will never buy your book, but they will very likely tell their friends about your site, and that's how viral trends begin.
7.) How ebooks have changed and particularly the fixed format options
They've become more complicated. And they will continue to do so for as long as they exist. Ebooks were initially just flowing text files, with no formatting options at all. Now they can be about as complex as you want to make them, limited only by what a given format supports. We're still greatly limited on video and audio support, as well as support for scripting on most devices, including the Kindle (although iBooks supports Javascript for things like transitions and animations). But today you can replicate almost any print book precisely in ebook format. What is being worked out still is what ebooks can do that print books can't. That's the wild frontier. And who can say where that will lead?
The biggest change (and challenge) for fixed format - and ebooks in general - is the fracturing of platform support. EPUB3 is the prime example of this, where a really great set of code (known as a specification, or spec for short) has been created that can do almost anything, but there is yet to be a device or app that actually supports it all, even though it was finalized almost two years ago. Some platforms support one part, some another, some a lot, and some none at all, essentially making the entire format useless.
Meanwhile, iBooks is a proprietary brand of EPUB that only works on iOS devices, just like B&N's fixed format only works on Nook devices, while Amazon, ever the independent outsider, has created their own format altogether from a core of EPUB with a lot of their own unique code that only works on Kindle. Basically, we now have three primary formats competing for predominance - Kindle (KF8), iBooks, and ePub3 - with Kindle winning by a landslide.
By the way, if you see me use the term KF8, that's just the technical name for the Kindle format that supports fixed layout; although KF8 also can be reflowable, its predecessor KF7 was reflowable only.
As for the particular changes that have come to fixed formats, the main ones are magnification regions (pop-ups and Panel View) in Kindle, and Javascript in iBooks (created mainly using iBooks Author, but it can be hand-coded as well). As I said, we're still waiting for good audio and video support, although iBooks has a nice soundtrack option available. Text-to-speech and embedded language tracks are possible in iBooks, but not in Kindle fixed layouts, as yet.
8.) Words of wisdom about Calibre and Sigil
Both of these are excellent programs that I've used a lot, with Calibre being my program of choice for library management and reflowable file conversions. And Sigil is a great program for creating and editing reflowable content. However, neither Calibre, Sigil, or any other software, can convert fixed layout files from one format to another, due not to shortcomings in those programs, but to the differences in the underlying code that makes each individual format of fixed layout work. They are simply not alike enough to be interchangeable. Much of the code is the same or similar, but each one contains enough of its own unique code to make it incompatible with any of the others. Consequently, no more needs to be said about either of these program with regard to fixed layouts.
Sigil is, incidentally, no longer being developed by its creator, so it will suffer a long slow demise as it is left behind by inevitable changes in the industry.
9.) KindleGen issues
Honestly, there really aren't any. Kindlegen works precisely as it is supposed to, and does what it is intended to do admirably well. If you have specific issues with Kindlegen please bring them up, as I have had no problem using it, as I have done for many years.
There are things that Kindlegen will do that may seem weird, or not what you intend, but that would be entirely due to the code being input. Kindlegen will, for example, abort conversions if certain criteria are not met. But that is not the fault of KG, but of the file being fed into it. I have certainly been stumped by certain warnings or results on more than one occasion, but in the end the fault was always mine.
One problem people have with Kindlegen is that it's a command-line interface, which by today's standards seems utter antiquated. But it's really a very simple program, and that, to me, is its greatest asset, and its charm. It is minimalistic, and therefore very easy to use if you know the small handful of commands required. Honestly, no program could be more simple to use.
The main issue, of course, is that there is no visual component to Kindlegen, and this brings us to the point I made way back at the beginning of this long and rambling spiel, which is that there really is no good WYSIWYG editor for fixed layout ebooks. So I prefer to use one that does not pretend to be what it is not.
Kindle Comic Creator (KCC) and Kindle Kids' Book Creator (KBC) are nice in that they can do some drag-and-drop functions for pop-up placement, but their formatting options are limited to just the very basics, making them abysmal as graphic design tools. They will suffice for simple projects, but nothing more. And as I mentioned, the underlying code produced is not editable by a human being not blessed with infinite time and patience.
Conversely, while InDesign can create a beautiful fixed layout page for KF8, it cannot do Kindle pop-ups or magnification regions at all, rendering it only partially useful for the purpose of creating KF8 ebooks.
I have recently done a thorough review of KBC on my blog if you want to know more details, and if you do a search you'll also find the one I did last year for KCC when it came out. I tried to be objective, but I'll tell you up front that neither one is particularly kind to the respective program.
10. My biggie- One thing that I’ve read conflicting details about- how to handle text with images. Should it be done with css (cascading style sheets which is coding that places things, styles the page) or should the image be done in Photoshop
Here we come to an issue that I cannot emphasize enough. The simple answer is that text should never be included as part of the image, and there are many reasons why.
First, one of the key advantages of the ebook format over print is the ability to interact directly with the text, for everything from dictionary definitions to searching Wikipedia. With "live" text layers you can highlight, add notes (and share them), search for other instances of that word/name/phrase throughout the book (for example, to remind yourself just who the hell that character is again), to link index or appendix entries to a word for additional information, or to add footnotes or endnotes, and to include hyperlinks to sites outside the book, such as to your website or the page where the reader can purchase the sequel, to give just a few examples. And you can do this in a fixed layout file with live text layers just like you can in a standard reflowable ebook.
You can do NONE of that with text that is included in an image. Zero. That makes your ebook no better than a PDF, which readers hate, and have vociferously hated for many many years as a reading medium. If people liked reading PDFs, ebooks would have become hugely popular twenty years ago. Did they? No. I rest my case.
More importantly for some readers is the Text-to-Speech functions available on most Kindles and other reading devices (except the Paperwhite and the new Kindle Voyage, which inexplicably have no built-in speakers). This allows visually impaired readers the opportunity to appreciate the exceeding wit and wisdom of your words, if not the utter brilliance of your visual presentation. Text-to-Speech is, of course, only available if there is text that can be read by the OS software, which does not at present, unfortunately, include text that is embedded in an image.
Another argument in favor of live text was pointed out (literally) in an earlier post by zarcondeegrissom (#326), where the blurring of small text embedded in an image is a problem on small or low resolution devices. This is only the case, of course, for text that is a part of the image - text that is live will adjust to the native resolution, which is an inherent function of embedded fonts. Even when the image become blurry, live text will still look sharp and clear at any size on almost any device available today.
And, on the topic of embedded fonts...
11.) Fonts- embedding. Recommended fonts for Kindle
Any font you want, as long as it is legal to embed. Some fonts have rights restricted, so be sure to check the details in the file properties panel. But virtually any font can be embedded in an ebook and will look great. Remember, ebooks are essentially just portable websites, so any font that would look good on the Web should look just as good in an ebook, or even better, since many e-readers now have higher resolution than desktop monitors. A good source for reliable font packages is Google Fonts, all of which are free and can be embedded.
The key to choosing a good font, though, is readability. It must look good and be clear at almost any size. Typography is an art form with a long and illustrious history, and not to be taken lightly (or learned overnight). This is especially true for covers, where the titles can help to sell a book or completely turn the reader off. But for internal text be sure you choose one that has large round openings rather than narrow ones, which tend to collapse at smaller sizes, and has a feel that matches your story. The font I chose for the Ring Saga illustrations posted earlier, for example, has a fairytale quality that leant itself to a mythological story quite nicely. It's legible, but has a certain style that makes the page layout unique. The font is called Booter 5-0, by the way.
12.) Any advice on ipad/iphone publications?
By this I presume you mean iBooks, and not the Kindle for iOS app. The latter is a problem I won't delve into here, but suffice it to say that since Apple and Amazon don't get along, it is not easy to test Kindle devices for the iPad app. For more on that subject, read my book.
I actually learned ebook formatting for iBooks first, before any other format, and as I mentioned, I have a 7-part tutorial on the subject that takes you step-by-step through the entire process. Click the Tutorial tab on my blog (link below my name). I personally feel that iBooks is the best ebook reading software out there, and the iPad is the ideal reading device, since it is the only one with a 4:3 aspect ratio, which emulates that of an open print edition almost perfectly. A two-page spread of a standard 6x9 edition fills up almost the entire screen of the iPad, while on the comparably sized Kindle HD 8.9 it leaves a gap of wasted space on either side and shrinks the book to a size on the order of 20% smaller, even though the two devices are almost exactly the same width. This is because Amazon chose to go with a 16:10 widescreen aspect ratio to promote the Kindle as a portable video device (since movies and tv shows as a whole sell vastly better than comic books), and also more than likely to cut the cost of production by eliminating "unnecessary" real estate. But by cutting the height it essentially made the Kindle only useful as an e-reader in portrait mode. Disappointing, but undeniable nonetheless.
As for creating fixed layout files for iBooks, you have more options than you do for Kindle, since iBooks Author is a vastly superior tool than either of Amazon's efforts. But remember, Apple has been in the business of creating operating systems and applications considerably longer than Amazon, who have only been at it for a handful of years. Both KCC and KBC are first iteration programs that will undoubtedly get better as time goes by. That said, if you do use iBooks Author to produce an ebook file, be aware that by agreeing to the terms of the iBA program, you can only sell that file through the iBookstore. This is not a huge deal, really, since the file only works on iOS devices anyway. But that may change. Apple is a third rate player in the ebook market, even though they have the best device and software, solely because they refuse to let their products (for the most part) be cross-platform compatible. This is why iTunes is such a huge success, and iBooks is not. Just as many people read as listen to music, and yet Apple's music sales exponentially outstrip their ebook sales each year. Not only that, but to publish on the iBookstore you have to own a Mac, so their content is not as diverse as Amazon's either. If Apple were to open up to Windows users they would likely double their sales volume virtually overnight. But I digress. I was supposed to be giving advice on iBooks publication.
My advice? Create ebooks for both iBooks and for Kindle, and don't go exclusive with either one.
Finally, just for fun, I thought I'd share with you my command and control center, where all my ebook work is done. This is actually now out of date, as I have a new computer with an 8-core processor, 32 Gb of RAM, a total of 18 terabytes of external hard drive space, and a three monitor setup. Oh, and I got rid of my Nook, because B&N's ebook division is not long for this world.
Wow- a lot to digest :)
I'm surprised folks haven't jumped on your B&N statement. Maybe tonight we can follow up with that.
One thing when reading this that went through my mind- I'd rather price lower (and yep, read all about the pricing points and what price sells best, I'll have to go look) and I'm aware of the 30% vs 70% from Amazon (to discourage prices too low or too high, Amazon will only give 30%) so what I'm trying to balance is getting a reasonably low price (say $2.99) but that 0.15 download fee would add up pretty fast. Can you clarify Friday night about this- if you have a file that is say, 3MB, and they change it for lower resolution devices, are you charged the 3MB or a lower MB? I think that's what you meant by Amazon changing their rates (and not telling folks.) It's 4:30am and I'm tired so I might not have gotten that right.
A second question I have- at what point do you know how big your file size is, so you can say, "Whoa, I won't make any money at that size," or "I need to change my price on Amazon due to that file size." Which comes first when you are doing your book for sale- the pricing or the info on the file size?
Third question: If someone wants to restrict their first book to Amazon (for 3 months, I believe it is) can they have a second book available elsewhere in the same series?
EDIT: from Amazon site:
Do I have to enroll all my titles in KDP Select? Is there a limitation on the number of titles to enroll?
No. KDP Select is an optional program. If you choose to take advantage of KDP Select, you can enroll a single title, your whole catalog, or anything in between. Titles that are not enrolled in KDP Select do not have to be exclusive to Kindle.
Fourth question: I can't remember, does Amazon assign a free ISBN? (Or do you need one?) I think B&N (Barnes and Noble) gives you a weird number but it's not an ISBN. I am getting these all confused. Maybe it was Apple?
Okay, see you tonight at 8 PM. :)
Cathie
And heads up- I asked about InDesign Creative Cloud for the Kindle Plugin last week, before deciding to build my own code. Thought I'd share this in case some of you were thinking about the InDesign plug-in. (Although as Scot said, there's reasons not to use InDesign, which several other authors from the forums were kind enough to alert me about.) But anyway, FYI:
Received this message from Kindle:
Hello from Amazon Kindle Publishing.
Thanks for writing to us.
I'm so sorry to inform you that, currently We do not support Adobe InDesign CC.
Kindle Plugin for Adobe InDesign supports Adobe InDesign versions CS4, CS5, CS5.5 and CS6.
(etc. Will consider it in the future)
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- Monsterina http://www.daz3d.com/monsterina
- Luxus http://www.daz3d.com/luxus
Yours is just as good as the promo Sasje!!!! Love that subtle, soft lighting.
I just couldn't figure out what those hats are supposed to be used for. The only thing I could think of was kids for Halloween!
So cute, Sasje, and the fur looks so fluffy and soft. Always great to see what you've been working on.
Thank you Novica and Jindi
Going through Scot's book right now- (How To Make Kindle Comics and Children's Books) and just read that XHTML is being replaced by HTML5 because it has better support for audio and video. Kindle Fire already has some elements of it thrown in, but other devices will be transitioning. Interesting!
Also: if you want to read the latest on InDesign, Scot mentions Liz Castro's publications. Here's that link:
http://www.elizabethcastro.com/epub/
InDesign's latest version does have fixed format. It doesn't produce perfect html, there are tweaks needed. That's why Scot mentions doing the html coding by hand and getting it right the first time. I do have InDesign and love the simplicity of use (create frames, put the image and text in there, it is fixed format. Aka, I know my image is going to be with the text I want it to be with.) There are some coding tricks that I read by another author on doing the page breaks and setting them so that if you use a flowable page and the reader changes the size of the text, it will still page break where you want it. I'll look that up.
So I might test InDesign for fun and see how hard it is to "fix" it. Scots book and those download links he gave you (very nice to give that for free, thanks Scot! It's normally a paid-for thing unless you have the book) are for the templates and code- done for you.
I would like to know more about the B&N statement. I have a Nook, as well as Nook for iOS. It has been my primary reader, and I have a couple dozen novels on it. I never got a Kindle, although I have the Kindle app on my iPad.
Thank you to Scot for taking so much of his valuable time to share with us. I have often thought of writing novels and comics, so I am interested to learn more.
Thank you to Novica for making this happen!
How is this going to work tonight...all in this thread? If so, how to keep it from being massively confusing?
You're so welcome. Scot gives AMAZING support behind the scenes. It's so nice to be able to email someone and get a same day reply if you have a question. That's why I wanted to share him, lol.
Scot will be sure to copy/paste the question in his reply. If not, I'll do a gentle poke and ask him to do that. So he can respond to several folks at the same time and as it branches out, that will be okay. So happy to have people participate :)
Hi Cathie. I think it is pretty cool that you are doing this. Wow, Mr Johns is pretty impressive. I went to his website and downloaded the freebie templates and looked at them. Pretty cool. I don't have anything with a touchscreen except my Windows phone and I can't open them on it as that Kindle app is very limited. I am kind of interested in Kindle publishing so will drop by later probably. I will definitely buy his book if and when I move in this direction. Right now my interests are spread out too thin and I end up not finishing much of anything. Anyway, thanks for doing this!
Beautiful render, Sasje!
Thanks for agreeing to answer our questions Scot. And thanks for setting this up Novica.
I was wondering about covers - what is your process for making these? How do you know what size they need to be? Similarly with the fonts. Do you have a specific program that you'd recommend for making covers?
Also I was wondering abou the free ISBN that companies like Amazon give away. Would you lose the ISBN if you left the company? Does it make Amazon the purblisher rather than the author?
Thanks again
Someone just sent me a link to a deal that is ending today. It's a course on Udemy that is $297 and you can get it for $10 with code
GET10DEAL. Go to the dot com and search How To Become A Bestselling Author on Amazon Kindle. By Tom Corson-Knowles. (If you can't find it on the site, try Google. TOS I can't post the link.) And thank you to the person who PMd me.
The marketing part is what I'd like to explore. A lot appears to be repetitive from other things I found on the internet (but I've been researching for weeks.) EDIT: And I am only judging by the content list, I haven't had time to dive in yet. I just got it.)
In case you're confused about what time it is Central time, right now it is 6:50PM. Scot will be with us in 1:10 minutes.
Scot, whenever you are ready. :)
I will start off by mentioning the different Kindle devices and their ratios, along with their ppi (pixel per inch) are interesting. The older Kindles have a 3:4 ratio (the eInk is 600 x 800, the Paperwhite is 758 x 1024-both of those are the 6") with ppi of 167-212. When you get to the Kindle Fire, you're varying from a 6:10 ratio to 10:16 ratio. Scot can take it from there and advise you on doing images. But the ppi goes up to 339, which means much better image resolutions :)
Okay, good evening, hello everyone. Good to be here.
It looks like we have a number of questions posted already, or points of clarification that are wanted, so let me start with those before we start to post new ones. Have my coffee, ready to go.
Current topics from what I'm seeing in the posts are:
1. Potential B&N Nook demise
2. ISBN questions
3. Clarification of file size / download fees
4. Creating covers
I'll start with the Nook statement first, as we can get that out of the way fairly quickly.
Barnes & Noble has been losing money hand over fist for nearly three years now, with posted losses of $100-200 million. This year they wrote off $50 million in unsold devices, and another $15 million in losses on devices sold at a discount below cost. Analysts have been expecting them to file bankruptcy at any time.
In June the Nook Media division was split off as a separate company in order to keep the retail store from sharing the losses if and when it does go under.
Last Thursday, the 17th, all of the download buttons were removed from the My Nook section of the website, and a statement released via Twitter that downloaded content onto your computer for sideloading would no longer be supported. Customers were furious. The only way to access your content now is on a Nook device, and there is no way to get books off of the device, since they are locked in a hidden partition. Essentially, you no longer own the books you've bought. If B&N or the Nook division fail, you will simply lose everything you've purchased in the past.
You may notice, by the way, that the latest Nook is called the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook - B&N is no longer even producing their own dedicated devices, but have simply hired Samsung to put their name and software on one of theirs. B&N has stopped innovating, while Amazon continues to improve both hardware and software with each update.
For more official info on the Nook decline, here are some links giving specific financial statistics:
Wall Street Journal - Barnes & Noble's Nook Falls Behind (Feb 2013)
New York Times - Barnes & Noble Nook Unit Continues to Sputter (Feb 2014)
Digital Book World - Nook Continues Decline... (Feb 2014)
Novica, thank you for the heads' up on Udemy. I found the course but could not find anything on how to create an account or even to buy the course, haha! That's okay, I know all of these online education sites have TONS of sales. I think they learned that from DAZ. :cheese:
I'm off to get a cup of coffee before the festivities begin...
Thank you for the Nook news, Scot. Depressing, but then the truth often is, just as it is necessary for us to hear it.
If anyone has any further comments or questions on the Nook issue I'll respond to them, but meanwhile let me write up a replay to the ISBN question.
Well, I am following here in Brazil!
Goodnight scotjohns
Anyone who can't find it, PM me. I am on and will send you the info. I can't do it in this thread. I have PM'd you. You have to get it tonight, it ends today.
Scot- thanks for sharing that re: B&N. It's amazing. And sad.