Fighting Copyright Infringement

Jan 17th, 2012 by

No, this isn’t a post about SOPA. ;) Morris Rosenthal has just published a Kindle book about how publishers and webmasters can protect their content. Rosenthal is the author of the highly regarded book Print-on-Demand Book Publishing: A New Approach To Printing And Marketing Books For Publishers And Self-Publishing Authors, one of the earliest books about POD self-publishing.

His latest book An Author’s Guide to Fighting Internet Copyright Infringements is available for free for 5 days, after which he hopes to convince Amazon to make it permanently free. Rosenthal talks about the book on his blog here. Grab it while it’s free!

While we’re on the subject, I’m about three-quarters of the way through Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back, a fascinating read that’s particularly relevant today with all the proposed copyright-related bills on the table in several countries. Recommended reading.

Share

Tags:

Posted in Copyright | Leave a comment »

Claim Your URL at Amazon Author Central

Dec 3rd, 2011 by

If you have at least one book available at Amazon, you can request an author page through Amazon Author Central. When customers click on your name on one of your Amazon pages, they’re taken to your author page, where you can add a biography, your books, video, your blog’s feed, and other information. You can also track where, geographically, your print books are selling. Through Author Central, you can also update the information on your books’ pages. Go to Amazon Author Central to set up your page.

Once you have your page, you can request a customized URL, just as you can with Facebook fan pages. Amazon just introduced this feature, so if you’re setting up your page for the first time, it might ask you for a URL as part of the setup process. If it doesn’t, or if you already have an author page, do the following to get your customized URL:

  1. Sign into Amazon Author Central.
  2. Click on the Profile link at the top.
  3. At the top of the right column, you should see something that says Author Page URL. Click on Add Link.
  4. Specify the URL you want and click Save. You can’t change the URL later, so choose wisely.

It takes up to half an hour for your customized URL to start working. Then you’ll have a short, readable URL that you can use on your website and other promotional materials.

My customized URL is https://www.amazon.com/author/sarahettritch.

 

Share

Tags: ,

Posted in Amazon, Book Promotion | 6 Comments »

Two Notes: eBookIt and Improved Smashwords Reporting

Nov 21st, 2011 by

Since I posted a few times about Smashwords and BookBaby, I thought I’d also mention another formatting and distribution service: eBookIt.com. For $149 ($249 if your source file is a PDF), eBookIt will convert your file and distribute it to the usual places. Of course, it will also take a cut of each sale, 15% of net. That’s actually a better deal than Smashwords for some retailers.

The site offers other services, such as audiobook creation, promotion (this appears to be press releases), and eBook cover creation.

A few folks in the Yahoo self-publishing groups seem happy with eBookIt. If you’re using eBookIt, how is it? Would you recommend the service?

While we’re on this subject, Smashwords has improved its sales reporting from third party retailers. You used to have to wait 3-4 months for sales data. Not anymore; the wait has been significantly reduced. For example, Barnes & Noble sales through early November have already been reported. If you were staying away from Smashwords because of the slow sales reporting, you might want to have another look at it.

Share

Tags: ,

Posted in eBooks, Smashwords | Leave a comment »

Convert Word to MOBI, ePub, Smashwords

Oct 13th, 2011 by

Many writers want to get in on the eBook revolution, but they don’t know how to convert a Word file to an eBook, or how to format a file so that Amazon and Smashwords won’t horribly mangle it during their conversion processes. If they want to upload to a venue that only accepts ePub files, that’s another format to worry about. I’ve written several posts about eBook formatting because there’s a lot of confusion out there.

If you’re wondering how to do any of this, then run, don’t walk, to Amazon, and pick up How to Format Your eBook for Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, and Everything Else by Paul Salvette. At $2.99, this book is an absolute steal! As one of the reviewers said, buy it before the author raises
the price. You don’t need a Kindle to read the book. I read Kindle books using Kindle for PC, and there’s a free Kindle reading app for just about every platform out there.

Salvetti’s book covers everything you need to know to format your book for the Kindle, Smashwords, and venues that accept ePub files, like Barnes & Noble. Even if you’re an old hand at this, you might pick up a couple of things.

Want to convert your Word file to MOBI or ePub? The book walks you through how to create clean XHTML from your Word file, and how to run that XHTML through Calibre. Now, there’s plenty of free information around the Net about this, but, as usual, it’s in bits and pieces. For $2.99, you can get a detailed guide in one place that leads you through the steps.

Want to upload your Word file to Smashwords? Follow the steps in the book and you shouldn’t have a problem with the meat grinder or having your book approved for the premium catalog.

I like that the book has a chapter on basic XHTML. It’s great to tell people to do the conversion using Calibre, but what happens if the end result has formatting problems? What do you do then? If you don’t understand some basic XHTML, you won’t be able to tweak the formatting. Having said that, following the steps in this book means that you probably won’t encounter that problem in the first place.

I’ve formatted four books for the Kindle and Smashwords, and I’ve still learned from this book. For example, I didn’t know how to preserve formatting like italics and bold when I prepare my Word file for Smashwords. After nuking all the formatting, I’d go in and manually add the italics back. Salvetti explains how to use Word’s Replace feature to add back the italics in a second. Just that one tip will save me about two hours every time I prepare a Word file for Smashwords.

The book contains tons of images, and links to a bunch of video tutorials recorded by the author. Seriously, spending $2.99 on this book will save you time and, if you were planning to hire someone to format your eBook, money.

And yes, the book is impeccably formatted.

How to Format Your eBook for Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, and Everything Else

Share

Tags: , , ,

Posted in ePub, Kindle, Smashwords | 6 Comments »

Kindlegraph: Sign Your Kindle Books (or any book with an ASIN)

Oct 9th, 2011 by

Former Amazon developer Evan Jacobs has created a site that allows authors to sign Kindle books. Kindlegraph is another way to connect with your readers. If you only have print books available at Amazon, no problem. You can use Kindlegraph, too.

How does it work?

  1. You sign up at Kindlegraph and choose a “signature” style you like. I chose one that looked the most like my handwriting.
  2. You add your books. They must be available at Amazon.
  3. When a reader requests your Kindlegraph, you’ll receive an email.
  4. You log into Kindlegraph, write a personalized message, and attach your signature to it.
  5. The Kindlegraph is sent to the reader’s Kindle. At the Kindlegraph site, there’s an example of what the reader will receive.

The Kindlegraph doesn’t become part of the Kindle book. It’s a separate page. In fact, people don’t have to own your book to request your Kindlegraph.

Minor drawbacks:

As I mentioned, anyone can request your Kindlegraph; they don’t even have to own a Kindle. A Kindlegraph is a PDF file, so it can be sent as an attachment to an email address.

If a person doesn’t own your book, the Kindlegraph could lead to a sale. On the other hand, if this really catches on and folks start to collect Kindlegraphs for the sake of collecting them, authors could spend a significant amount of time “signing” Kindle books for people who aren’t interested in their books. This will only be a problem if Kindlegraphs really take off.

Signing up requires a Twitter account. Not a big deal. I’ve never tweeted, but I have an account.

If you haven’t signed up at Kindlegraph and you have books up at Amazon, check it out.

Share

Posted in Kindle | Leave a comment »

Older Posts »