NEW! Novica & Invited Guest Contributors Tips & Product Reviews Pt 5
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Research showed the $4.99 range did really well. Don't ask me where I got that, but it was an extended study. And yes, about $10 or less was the best selling range. :)
I must say, I am VERY excited about that, Novica. I grew up loving novels AND comics. And I've been wondering if illustrated novels might have a market beyond the elementary school reading levels.
I did a post several years ago that you might want to read that covers what I'm about to say in much more depth, so here's the link: New KDP List Price Requirements
There are two royalty rates you can choose when publishing to KDP, 30% or 70%. The main difference that is relative to what we're talking about here is that at the 30% royalty you are not charged any download fees by Amazon, regardless of how large the delivered file is. And even when you're only being charged for the smaller file, if it's a really big ebook with - say - 100 images (!) the delivery fee is going to be a lot. So choosing the 30% option in this case will actually earn you more money. And this is what the post I just linked to is all about. At what point is it better to only get 30% royalty instead of 70?
Bear in mind, that in order to get 70% royalty the list price for your book must be between $2.99 and $9.99. Any lower or higher and you can only choose 30%. So what this says is that if your book is really big or really small, You can only charge a certain price for it.
But this also means that if you have a book with a lot of really big images, you can still make a decent profit on it at a lower price.
Yeah, people don't really like to pay more than ten bucks for an ebook. There's an inherent feeling that ebooks don't cost anything to make (i.e. no printing, so shipping, etc), but this is not exactly true. There are bandwidth fees every time a book is downloaded (which can be many times for a single book over the course of years), server storage and maintenance (imagine Amazon's server system!), and it still takes time and effort to write, edit, design, and publish a book, whether it's an ebook or print.
So I know people want to know about images. What exactly do you want me to address in that regard?
I feel like I'm reading the pro's and cons of having my own domain vs a geo-cities page, with this price of publishing bit. lol. At least the prices have gone down a tad from the first days of electronic-books, or have they yet?
Yep, there's no way I can get in that 70% range, because my book series is going to rely heavily on images but not be a children's book per se. It will be middle grades with a lot of text too.
Let me see if I've got this right- instead of embedding text in an image (which I don't personally need) in the interior pages, you use CSS to arrange text placement.
And to get terms straight, because many people who are lurking are not familiar with some of these terms- isn't KF8 fixed format? (vs what is called reflowable.) And just so people are clear, you did mention the font size- and in KF8 you can NOT magnify the font, even if in the metadata file "region magnification" is set to "True" (which in the book it says Kindle Generator does automatically?)
You can embed as many fonts in an ebook as you want, but they do take up room, so I wouldn't put "countless" fonts in there! Also, a good rule of typography is to choose a few select fonts that work together and stick to those throughout your book for the sake of consistency.
There are instances, of course, where you might want a lot of fonts - such as a ransom note made from cut up words, or a story told using hand written letters - but you should probably be fine adding in even as many as thirty or forty different fonts, and the file size would be too big. Again, just like with image size, these are choices you need to make as the author/illustrator.
For images, let's talk about how the different sizes of the Kindles affect what should be done on interior pages. Do you think the 10:16 ratio is the way to go, and use the largest kindle size as a guide? (with 300 dpi)
So if I understand correctly, Kindle will resize my image to fit the device used- what is a good size to render (other than the cover) so I am not spending all day rendering- but have the largest size needed on interior pages so the bigger Kindles won't have to enlarge my image?
One other good point- you mention in the book that the cover image must always be named cover.jpg to validate. Is that still the case? (for Kindle.)
Scot, as 3D artists, many of whom also have high-mastery of photoshop and other post-processing tools, the members of this forum have an awful lot at our disposal.
Texturing, lighting, the staggering possibilities in our color palette, super-high levels of detail are all available, and at quite reasonable costs, too. Even the most basic computers can make the most phenomenal images.
My questions:
Is it too easy to go overboard and make something that actually detracts from the tone and feel being imparted by the text?
How might this apply differently for works of fiction, non-fiction, and comics? (right or wrong, I put comics in its own category, because it has a special place in my head and heart)
Edit: Typo!
Yes, I use CSS with text overlays so that the text is active. You use CSS to position the text just like you do in a web page, giving it left and top position values, and also a width for the text box containing it. All of that is explained with specific examples in the templates and the book
And to be clear, no, KF8 is not necessarily fixed format. It can be either, but it is the only Kindle format that can be used for fixed layouts. The early KF7 was only reflowable. But if someone is talking about KF8, they're almost always talking about fixed formatting, so for all practical purposes KF8 equals fixed layout. But I want to be clear that it isn't necessarily true, just so I don't give out incorrect information.
About the region mag - I'm not totally clear on your question, but I think what you mean is that the reader cannot change the font size. Is that correct? If so, then yes, your are right. In fixed layouts the reader cannot alter the layout or font size. But that is why KF8 fixed layout has region magnification (or "pop-ups" as most people think of them), so that the reader can tap on the text and it will be zoomed into a larger text box, usually at 150% of the base text size. But that is also set by the ebook maker, not the reader.
E-books have come along way from the days of the “Electronic Clipboard” (star trek ref, lol). Dose amazon(distribution house) format the images on there servers for best quality on older devices, or is it dependent on the end device to make due, or must you upload a dozen different versions for color/b&W/etc? (partially answered by Novica)
Okay, last question first - yes, it is still the case that the cover image file must be named cover.jpg - at least for the version you put in the ebook! That is how the Kindle (and the Amazon website as well) knows which image to use for the thumbnail on the bookshelf and the product page (and wherever else it hopefully shows up, like on the "Readers who bought this book, also bought this one!") I was really ecstatic the first time I saw my book show up on a page with Bernard Cornwell as a "Readers also bought.,.." selection. Cool!
And yes, the Kindle devices will automatically resize the page content (all of it, including live text fonts) to fit the screen exactly. So a full page image on a Fire 7" will also be a full page image on an HD 8.9", and the text and any other elements you have laid out, like image overlays, will all be exactly where they should be, only larger or smaller. That is done automatically.
There is a detailed discussion of this in the book when talking about the values you need to entire for the "original resolution" in the metadata file, and it's much to complicated to get into here. But in general, this is how it works - you choose a "default" resolution - which I'll get to in a minute - and that is the size at which you do all your layout work. And because you tell the Kindle this is the correct size, it knows where to place all of the other elements, even if it's on a larger or smaller screen, because it's all basically just math at that point. The HD 8.9 is 50% larger than the HD 7, for example, so the Kindle OS just multiplies all the values you enter in your CSS, and it all comes out just right.
Now, as for what size you should make your images, let me do another post about that...
No, that's what Kindlegen does when you do the conversion. This is what I mean when I'm talking about having low resolution and high resolution files being delivered. You just input your files as you made them and Kindlegen (or KDP if you do it through the upload portal) creates multiple versions of the same ebook, and sends the correct one to the device the reader is using, automatically. So good question, hope that clarified it.
And Subtropic, I'll get to your questions in a minute, because they're really good, but let me finish my last point about images first.
Ahh, see, I was getting confused. I was thinking the font size was enlarged USING region magnification. Sorry 'bout that.
I've read several articles where it has stated readers don't like that font option taken away from them- but is this correct- when fonts are enlarged in a reflowable format, say enlargement- it can move the images and put them on another page? If so, tough stuff readers. I don't want my images for a block of text going poof onto the next page (and mine are going to be single pages, not doubles, so that makes a huge difference.
There was also a code (not the < br / > (and I spaced that out so it would show correctly) to enforce page breaks, if I recall?
Also worth mentioning is the html- breaking up each chapter to be a file, correct?
A couple of articles I bookmarked, while we're waiting on Scot. Shows some trends, albeit 2013. Not prepared for 2014.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremygreenfield/2013/10/30/kindle-most-popular-device-for-ebooks-beating-out-ipad-tablets-on-the-rise/
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/study-ebook-growth-stagnating-in-2013/
I talked in my intro post (or maybe the one I did last night - or maybe both!) about my personal recommendation for image file size, but let me sum up and reiterate it here.
Currently, the highest resolution Kindle is 2560 x 1600 pixels, while the older, lowest resolution devices are only 800 x 600 pixels, and not only that, but to (finally) get to Novica's earlier point, different Kindle devices have different aspect ratios, and this presents a challenge. The newer Kindles all use a 16:10 widescreen ratio, while the original Kindle Fire (both 1st and 2nd generation) use a slightly narrower 17:10, which is a unique size, and one they abandoned with the HD models. Meanwhile, the older eInk devices are not only black and white, but they use a 4:3 aspect ratio like the iPad (only they're really small at 6" diagonal, so not at all great for images).
Which one do you design for? What size and shape is best?
The first thing I would say is that readers have a common conception of what a "book" is, regardless of whether it's digital or print. And while there are a lot of different print sizes for physical books, they all have pretty much the same shape. So the first thing I would ask is, are you planning to ever produce a print edition of your book? Even if you aren't right now, there is the possibility that the book will be successful and there will be enough demand for it. For my formatting guide I never intended to put out a print edition, since it's all about how to make ebooks! Why would you want a print edition of a book about ebooks? But I got a lot of requests for a print edition that people could write in and highlight and set next to their workstation. So I published one.
My advice on format is to choose something like a 6x9 ratio that would work in print, and design to that.
As for image size, as I said before "bigger is always better" when it comes to art. But there is a limit, both for cost reasons, and performance. Larger files take longer to load, so page turns are slower, and response is jerky. Readers don't like that.
What I recommend is a middle ground. First, when you create your images, using 3D rendering or whatever your tool (or tools) of choice, make them really big. Like 4000 x 5000 or even bigger. Obviously this will be partially determined by your system resources. But it's always good to have larger images than you need to start out. Then you can shrink them down to the size you want in the ebook. But if and when device displays get even better, you won't have to go back and start all over if you want to put out a new edition with better graphics. I made the first images (the ones I posted earlier) too small, because at the time they seemed really big! Now I wish they were bigger, but there's nothing I can do about it except redo them.
As far as how big the images should be that you put into the ebook, as I said, I would choose a middle ground. Put in images that are at least as big as the second largest Kindle, and design your page layouts for that. I actually prefer to put in images that are the size of the biggest Kindle out, so that they don't get fuzzy when zoomed on that display. The Kindle OS (and the iPad too) have gotten really good at "interpolating" pixels, which is what they do when an image is zoomed to a larger size than it actually is.
So I would say probably around the size of the HDX 7" is a good size for most projects, which is 1920 x 1200. That's big enough that it will look fine on the larger screen, but keeps the file size down.
You can also compress your images to get the file size down, but I don't generally like to use much compression on my artwork. That's up to you, but remember that when the image is zoomed, any artifacts will be magnified.
Over a decade ago I had seen a B&W book-something in passing, and I have yet to see my brothers more recent Kindle running, so I don't know much about them (sorry). Other devices, like SGA Rodney McKay's tablet (whatever computer that was). Is the e-book content also available for reading on laptops, not just e-books devices?
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/44327/P390/#684900
Scot, can you skip back to this one for Subtropic?
And Jorge's question about series. Your book series- can you discuss a bit about the timing of releasing sequels, how you think series sell compared to individual releases, etc? Any words of wisdom on marketing a series/timing?
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/44327/P375/#684882
There are arguments for and against it. It comes down to whether it's important that the layout remains intact, and how well the design is implemented so that it's legible at all sizes. You'll never please everyone, and there's no way a reader can expect to read a comic book on a 4" phone, so there's no point in trying. But as I said, this is why the text pop-ups were created in the Kindle. In iBooks they chose to go with the pinch and zoom method if you want to see the text bigger, but not in Kindle. You have to make popups.
Which can be a really cool thing, by the way. It basically means the reader gets two versions of your book for one price. For example, you can make full page popups with only text in them, so that it's just like reading a reflowable book, but then you can dismiss it and go back to the full art version of the book. You can even put different art in the popup that shows a closeup of part of the full scene below, along with the larger text. That's a really great value for the buyer. And as I mentioned earlier, you can use the popups to create bilingual editions, where instead of putting in bigger text, you put it in another language. Just make sure the smaller text is really clear if you do this, because you're taking away the zoom function. But for children's books, where there's very little text on each page, and it can be really big, you don't need to magnify the text anyway.
About the page break issue. That only applies to reflowable, of course. Because in fixed layouts the page content is predetermined. But, yes, in reflowable files you can force breaks, and you can also create styles that force a block of text to stay with an image, like a caption. I think you use the "always break before" on the image so that it's always at the top of the page. But there are other ways to do it as well.
And yes, I haven't mentioned it, but just so you all know, every page in a fixed layout ebook is actually a completely separate HTML file. One file per page, and that file contains only what's on that page, just like a website.
Yes, there is a Kindle app for both PC and Mac, and most devices also have an app, like the Nook app, or iBooks (which is only recently available for desktop Macs with iOS 8, if I'm not mistaken - I'm a Windows guy, not a Mac guy).
Good to know. I was thinking chapter for some reason. It's pages. I would have realized that once I started working on them :)
We've been going for 2 and a half hours, so after Scot addresses Subtropics and Jorge's questions, I'd like to have Scot discuss his future plans/next book and wrap it up. And if anyone has any other questions, now is the time to bring them up. And Scot, thank you SOOOOOOO much! :)
Thanks very much, it will take a bit for me to comprehend all that was just downloaded into my pore little mind, lol. I just wish I had more on-topic intelligent questions to ask, and I don't.
The biggest thing here for me, is You brought to light, that the e-book is not a useless for anything except reading pree-1990 resolution digitized-book device. I thought the e-books were 640x480 or less.1600x1200 is phenomenal for a tablet, when I have that on my CAD/DAW workstation in triplicate. I am impressed with the advancement of these devices.
Probably this is true, about going overboard, yes. But that's really an aesthetic opinion to be made by the artist, and enjoyed or not by the reader. You know as an artist that you can put a damn lot of stuff into a scene, like a huge battle, with lots of explosions and action, for example, and at some point it just becomes too much, like in a movie where there's so much going on that you really can't take any of it in. These are really some of the hardest issues for an artist to master in any medium. When is too much too much? There are no rules, really, since it's partially a question of style. Some like minimalism, and some like photo realistic details.
But the point that is really relevant to the ebook medium is whether it adds to the overall presentation, or detracts from it, specifically with respect to the text. I think is mainly why comic book artists have adhered to the traditional dialogue balloons for so long, because it's safe, and easy for the reader to grasp. If you start putting text all over the place it can get messy really fast. This is something I've really been working hard at for this current project, and every page is really a challenge to decide just how much art and how much text, and what colors, and how big and what lighting and how close should the characters be. It's something you'll have to decide for yourself. But the crucial element for art in any book is that it supplements and augments the text and the story, and does not detract the reader's attention.
I've actually been working on creating motion graphics with animated cycles for things like waving grass and hair, or running horses, and whatnot, so the question of how much to use, or will it detract from the reading experience, is something I'm struggling with right now. You'll have to decide whether it works or not when the book comes out!
I'll get to Jorge's question now, just give me a minute...
And don't get me wrong- ya'll can stay on the thread as long as you want to- I'm just cognizant of the fact that you, Scot, have already put in a full work day and may need to take a breather. And you're always welcome on the thread. So it's up to you whatever you want to do.
Some very good information and useful insight there...
Right, indeed!
BTW, since you mentioned that about animations-how DID you do that awesome trailer????? (Your promo on YouTube)
In a lot of ways this is kind of a artist's "style" issue too, because the story should really dictate the form, not the other way around. If a story can be told best in a single book, then it should be. Sometimes stories are drawn out into trilogies (or longer) when really one book was all the story deserved. But sometimes a story world is so huge and there is so much to it that a series is the only way to do it justice. You could never leave Game of Thrones at just one book!
But your point about sales strategy is something I think many authors think about, and rightly so. I know Novica has mentioned it as part of her future marketing strategy. Like she's planning, very often the first book in a series is given away free (or at least sold very cheaply like at 99 cents) to draw readers in and get them hooked. That is a really great marketing tactic. But again, it should not be the reason why you're writing a series. Only write a series if the story demands a sequel.
That said, it takes a lot of really hard work to create new characters and populate a whole new story world with places and customs and costumes and laws. Once you do that, if it's a place readers want to return to, it's not only a great marketing strategy, but it's a really good way for an author to continue working! It's much easier to write new scenes for characters that already exist than to start all over.
But every story has a natural ending point, and stories that just go on and on and on eventually get boring. This is the one thing that is really not handled well in comic series quite often, because they just want to keep milking it for all they can get, and there's never any resolution to the story. This is why trilogies are so popular, because you get an extended story that you can return to, but you also get a good solid ending, which is really important.
And speaking of endings, I think we're nearly there. I'll answer Novica's request for my future plans in the next post...