From Manuscript to (e)Book: Your Self-Publishing Adventure Guide

EBooks Compiler, Google eBookstore

December 10, 2010 By 2 Comments

A couple of quick items:

First, I took a look at the eBooks Compiler at http://www.ebookscompiler.com because someone asked about it on one of the self-publishing lists. I’m only mentioning it in case anyone is wondering about it. If you’re interested in producing eBooks for the popular eReaders, this isn’t the application for you. It generates eBooks as executables and is suited for those who want to produce information products to sell from their websites. It doesn’t produce Kindle books, nook books, PDFs, or anything else that an eReader can handle.

Second, I haven’t said anything about Google’s entry into the eBook marketplace because I’m a Canadian publisher. I’m currently not eligible to use Google’s store, as a publisher or consumer. I did visit it, though, and left with the impression that it’s not user-friendly. I suspect it was rushed out—maybe in the hope that Google would cash in on holiday spending—so I expect it to improve over time. I’m hoping that Smashwords will work out a deal with Google. I’d much prefer to distribute to Google’s store through Smashwords than directly. Google isn’t known for its customer service. Smashwords will have more clout than me.

If you’re selling your books through Google’s store, I’d love to hear about your experience so far.

Filed Under: Book Distribution, Book Publishing Tagged With: ,

ePub Maker: Word to ePub

November 9, 2010 By 2 Comments

Eping Wang of Epingsoft was kind enough to provide me with a license for his ePub Maker application, so I could try it out. ePub Maker converts Word documents to ePub books. I used my fantasy novel as a test case. I converted the Word file that I uploaded to Smashwords.

Pros

  • It’s easy to use. You load your Word document into ePub Maker, press “Make ePub,” and voila, you have an ePub file
  • It has a friendly user interface
  • All formatting is preserved
  • It has an option for starting chapters on a new page and generates a linked Table of Contents. To take advantage of the auto-chapter split feature, you have to mark each chapter as a new section in Word, but it took me literally five minutes to go through my Word file and mark each chapter
  • You can include a book cover

Cons

  • The licensed version costs $39. If you don’t buy a license, you can still generate ePub files, but an ePub Maker advertisement is inserted after each chapter
  • The generated ePub file doesn’t pass epubcheck, a program that checks ePub files for compliance with the ePub standard
  • I didn’t see an option for saving a project, so you have to re-enter book information every time you want to regenerate an epub

Caveat

  • As I mentioned, I tried the product with a fantasy novel—straight text, no fancy formatting beyond italics, no images. If you have an image-heavy book, a lot of mathematical equations, or other special formatting requirements, the generated ePub may or may not be formatted as well. You’ll have to download the trial version and try it out.

If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to convert Word files so you can read them on your eReader, ePub Maker might be for you. But if you’re a self-publisher wanting to convert your Word files so you can submit them to the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, and other stores that require ePub files, ePub Maker isn’t ready. Places like Apple will reject files that fail epubcheck.

There’s also the $39 price tag. But hey, if you’re not tech-savvy and you’d have to hire someone to convert your books for you, ePub Maker is a bargain (once the epubcheck problem has been fixed). It will cost you at least $50 (probably more) for someone to convert ONE book. In that light, $39 for ePub Maker could save you a lot of money in the long run.

But unfortunately I can’t recommend it for self-publishers until the epubcheck problem is fixed. I reported the problem to Eping Wang. At first he said that he wasn’t planning to do anything about it, since the epubcheck messages aren’t serious and the generated files can still be read on eReaders. That’s all true. But…

I responded that if he hopes to target the self-publishing market, the generated ePub files have to be compliant; otherwise they’re useless to those hoping to submit them to online bookstores. He wasn’t aware that bookstores are strict about compliance and use epubcheck as part of their validation process. Now that he is, he’s planning to work on the problem.

This is definitely a tool worth watching.

Filed Under: Book Publishing Tagged With: , ,

Amazon Releases Kindle Plugin for InDesign

October 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Amazon just released a plugin for InDesign that allows you to generate Kindle books from your InDesign files. Coincidentally, I’m in the process of proofing a fantasy novel that I typeset using InDesign, and I’ll be creating the Kindle version of the novel next week. So when Amazon’s press release arrived in my inbox, I thought, “Perfect timing! Maybe I can generate the Kindle book from within InDesign, instead of using eCub.”

I downloaded and installed the plugin, and then generated the Kindle book. It’s easy—you just select “Export to Kindle,” specify whether to include the Table of Contents you’ve built in InDesign (if you have one), provide the cover image, and fill in the title. Press OK, and voila—you have a .mobi file.

Well, things are never that simple. The plugin is currently in the beta state, and it clearly needs more work. My title, copyright, dedication, and acknowledgement pages were all squished together with no blank lines between them. Worse, none of my paragraphs were indented. The text was all left-justified, making it really difficult to tell where one paragraph or line of dialogue ends and another begins. If there was a blank line between each paragraph, that would be okay, but there isn’t.

So I guess I’ll be using eCub next week after all.

It’s a promising start, though, so perhaps I’ll use Amazon’s InDesign plugin for future books. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

Update: My fantasy novel is organized as an InDesign book, so each chapter is in a different file. When I saved to Kindle, I saved using the item on the Book menu. I just tried saving an individual chapter to Kindle using the menu item on the File menu, and that went much better. My paragraphs were indented (yay!), but my chapter heading wasn’t centred. Still, that’s not the end of the world

Conclusion: how your book is organized may make a difference. If you’re saving a single file, the generated .mobi looks okay. If you’re saving an InDesign book, the generated .mobi might not look so great.

Filed Under: Book Publishing Tagged With: , ,