CNET Review of Self E-Publishers
Editors' note: Updated November 9, 2010
A while back I wrote a column entitled "Self-Publishing: 25 things you need to know," which was mostly about how to create and sell your own paper book. Since then a lot of folks have asked me to do something similar for e-books, so I have.
I begin with one caveat: The whole e-book market is rapidly evolving, and a lot of self-publishing companies are offering e-book deals bundled into their print book publishing packages, which makes them harder to break out and evaluate. It's all quite complicated, and in an effort to sort through the confusion, I've decided to offer a few basic tips and present what I think are some of the best options out there for creating an e-book quickly and easily. As things change--and they will--I'll do my best to keep this column up to date.
Tips
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It's gotta be good: The same rule applies to self-published e-books as it does to print books. You have to start with a good product if you have any hope of selling it.
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Create an arresting cover: When it comes to e-books, everything starts with the cover image. Creating an eye-catching, professional-looking cover that also looks good small (it has to stand out as a thumbnail image, since it's being sold online) is easier said than done, but it can really make a difference in terms of sales. If you can, try to get input from a real graphic designer who has some experience creating book covers. From a production standpoint, an e-book cover is easier to create than a cover for a print book (you just need a JPEG with decent resolution), but it shouldn't look out of place among traditionally published e-books. I can't tell you how many bad self-published covers are out there.
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Price your e-book cheaply: You should sell your e-book for less than $4.99. Most successful e-book authors are finding the greatest success in the $0.99-to-$2.99 range (it's important to note that Amazon's 70 percent royalty for authors only applies to Kindle books priced between $2.99 and $9.99; otherwise, the rate kicks down to 35 percent). When I self-published on the Kindle, I priced my book at $3.99 and it worked very well. However, since then, many more self-published books have flooded the market at lower prices.
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Avoid any outfits that don't let you set the price: This is one of the cardinal rules of self-publishing an e-book. You must be able to control the pricing of your e-book. If you want to sell it for $0.99, then you should be able to sell it for $0.99.
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Marketing is all about creating awareness for your e-book: I don't have any secret marketing tips to offer, but what I can say is that you can't sell a book if no one knows it exists. Most of book marketing is simply about creating awareness and you need to do that however you can, whether it's through social media or blogging or passing out fliers on a street corner. (I made a business card for my book, which I pass out if someone seems interested in hearing more about it.)
E-book publishing options
Here are the three big questions to bear in mind with e-book creation: first, what is the easiest and most cost-efficient way to produce an e-book? Second, where will it be distributed? And third, how much of a cut do you get? With those in mind, let's take a look at some of the more high-profile options available currently. I'm limiting it to these options because I want to keep this as simple as possible.
Amazon Digital Text Platform (DTP)
This is Amazon's e-book publishing platform and if you think you're going to sell a lot of e-books, you should figure out a way to upload your file (book) directly to DTP and avoid using any sort of middleman or e-book "aggregator" that takes a cut of the profits. If you're a true DIY person, you can create your own cover and format your e-book from a Word file using free software tools such as Mobipocket eBook Creator or Calibre. Mobipocket Creator allows you to create an e-book with a table of contents and convert it into Amazon's proprietary e-book format, AZW (MOBI, the file output by the program, is the same as AZW). You can start with a Word file, which then gets converted to HTML, then MOBI. (Check out the Mobipocket eBook Creator guide at the company's Web site).
Amazon DTP
(Credit: Amazon)
If you don't want to go the total DIY route, you can pay someone a few hundred dollars to format your e-book for you, but you'll still need to come up with a cover. J.A. Konrath, who's had a lot of success in the self-published e-book space and has written an excellent primer called "How to Make Money on eBooks," recommends Rob Siders at www.52novels.com. You can also try Ray Fowler at rayfowler.org. (If you're someone who formats e-books, contact me, as I'll be adding other names to the list.)
Amazon has upped its royalty to 70 percent for authors, but some rules apply (see the complete list of terms). This is the same royalty that Apple offers iPhone/iPad app developers and authors who sell e-books via its iBookstore store. However, you currently have to use an "aggregator" like Smashwords or Lulu to get into iBookstore (see the complete list of "approved" iBookstore aggregators). Even though the iPad supports all of the leading e-book stores (Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook, Borders/Kobo), getting onto iBooks is becoming increasingly important; the iPad is selling incredibly well, is already one of the leading e-readers on the market, and it will only gain.
Smashwords
Smashwords, one of the e-book pioneers, is very much a DIY operation. You bring your Word file and cover image, upload it into the company's "meatgrinder" tool, and in a matter of minutes, you create your e-book in just about every format you'd want. You can then sell that e-book on Smashwords.com or have the company aggregate it out to most of the major e-book sellers, including Barnes & Noble's eBookstore, Apple's iBooks, Sony, Kobo, and Stanza. Smashwords says it will soon have a deal in place for the Kindle.
Smashwords is an Apple-approved aggregator.
(Credit: Smashwords)
Smashwords offers a free style guide for formatting your e-book and focuses on keeping things simple. I created an acceptable-looking e-book in about 30 minutes after making some tweaks (usually they involve spacing between chapter breaks) and reprocessing my file three times. You don't get a table of contents, which some people care about and others don't. Your e-book will not look exactly like an e-book from a traditional publisher, but if you follow Smashwords' guidelines, you can end up with an e-book that looks decent and will satisfy most readers.
Smashwords prides itself on not charging you for creating your e-book and taking only a small cut of author's royalties (see Smashwords' overview ). Though the cut is small, it's still a cut, but that's the price you're paying for the convenience of having your book distributed on a wide array of platforms. You also have the option of acquiring your own "premium" ISBN. I'm not going to get into a full on discussion of ISBN, which is "a unique identifier associated with your e-book, but most companies provide a free ISBN for your e-book or roll the price up into a package. Smashwords has a good quick guide to e-book ISBNs that you should take a look at.
As you might imagine, when you have a middleman taking a cut, it becomes harder to figure out just how much you're taking home from every sale of your e-book. I asked Smashwords' CEO Mark Coker how much an author stood to make on an e-book priced at $2.99. Here's what he had to say:
* A $2.99 Smashwords book on Apple's iBookstore earns $1.794 (60 percent of the retail price). Smashwords takes 10 percent of the retail price or $.299.
* At Barnes & Noble's eBookstore, a Smashwords author earns 42.5 percent of the suggested list price set by the author, so a $2.99 book = $1.27 to the author and $.22425 to Smashwords. This equals 85 percent of the net to author.
* At Kobo, which also powers Borders eBookstore, an author earns 46.7 percent of the suggested list price, so $2.99 = $1.39 to author and 25 cents to Smashwords.
Lulu
When you publish a print book at Lulu--and a lot of people do--you also have the option of just publishing an e-book. Lulu e-books are distributed to Apple's iBookstore and Lulu.com. Lulu charges from $99.99 to $299 for conversion if the author needs it.
Lulu is also an approved Apple aggregator.
The main benefit Lulu offers in the e-book realm is that it's one of the designated aggregators for Apple's iBookstore. When you look at Lulu's iBookstore terms at its Web site, you will see that the wording is be a bit confusing: "Apple retains 30 percent of all revenue from sales on the iBookstore. The author receives 80 percent of the remaining revenue and Lulu receives only 20 percent. So, when an eBook sells for $19.99 on the iBookstore, the author receives $11.20."
What this really means is that the author receives 56 percent of the retail price for a book sold at Apple (versus 60 percent at Smashwords) and Lulu takes 14 percent (versus 10 percent Smashwords). For e-books sold on Lulu.com, Lulu charges a "production fee" of $1.49 per book sold, in addition to taking 20 percent of the sale price. But that's only if you have Lulu set-up the e-book for you. A company rep told us, "Authors are free to create and publish an ePub of their own using one of the many free conversion programs available, which we list in our help section and on our blog." (Click here to check out Lulu's e-book creation options).
FastPencil
FastPencil has several self-publishing packages, including ones that offer combo print and e-book publishing or just e-book publishing. Its system is template-based, so you chop up your Word file and cut and paste it into a template for formatting (you can also upload a formatted, print-ready PDF if you want). Some people find this Wizard-based system appealing, but FastPencil does charge an upfront fee of $149 for its basic e-publishing package that includes "wide" distribution. You have to import your own cover image, and you don't get any design help for that $149.
FastPencil has an e-book only package.
(Credit: FastPencil)
What you do get is distribution in Barnes & Noble's eBookstore (Nook), Apple's iBookstore (iPhone/iPad), the Kindle Store, Sony Readers, and Ingram's Digital network that feeds your book other ebookstores. (Technically, FastPencil isn't an approved Apple aggregator, but it appears to use Ingram for distribution in the iBookstore.)
Once you sort through the numbers, the royalty rates seem similar to Lulu's, which means they're not quite as good as Smashwords. If you sell your e-book in Apple's iBookstore, FastPencil takes 14 percent of the sales price versus 10 percent of the sales price for Smashwords.
I asked FastPencil how much I'd earn if I sold a $2.99 e-book in the iBookstore. The answer I got was:
* A 56 percent royalty rate, or $1.68.
In other words, you currently make 11 cents less than Smashwords.
You'd have to sell a lot of e-books for those 11 cents per book to really start turning into significant dollars, but I'm just putting the numbers out there so you know what you're dealing with (again, Fast Pencil does have an upfront fee of $149 for "wide distribution"). In fairness, it's worth pointing out that FastPencil does offer a free option for trying out its e-book creation system. You can choose to create your e-book and keep it private or offer it up for sale on FastPencil's site for a one-time $9.99 fee (see pricing options).
Publish Green
We're seeing a few hybrid e-book publishing companies start to crop up and we expect to see more of these guys proliferate. Publish Green, which is part of the Published.com division of Hillcrest Publishing Group in Minnesota, has some similar attributes to Fast Pencil but touts a more hands-on approach, with "professional human e-book formatting." Taking a jab at Smashwords, its marketing pitch goes like this: "We don't smash your works through a 'meat grinder' like other eBooks converters do. Instead, we format your eBook to look great on eBook readers. What's the point of selling your eBook if it looks terrible on eBook reading devices?"
Publish Green emphasizes a human touch to its e-book formatting.
There's something to be said for that and Publish Green has a number of packages that run anywhere from $299 to $897. With the most basic $299 package, you submit a Word, PDF, or InDesign file, and get back a Kindle compatible e-book file that you then upload yourself (and you have to make your own cover art, of course). In essence, the basic packages are a formatting service and $399 gets your Mobi (Kindle) and ePub versions of your e-book with some customized "themes" from which to choose.
For more money, Publish Green will distribute and manage your e-books for you and according to a company rep, most customers choose this option. "We've found that most authors wish for us to do the distribution," she said, "as many of the retailers we submit to require that the book come directly from a publisher and not the author."
What's a little tricky to deal with is whether you want to pay an extra fee in order to collect 100 percent of your royalties (to get your full royalty, you have to pay $199 extra). With the default distribution packages (no extra fee), you collect a 90 percent royalty, which is similar to what Smashwords offers. Overall, I'm more partial to having direct control over your e-books, with no middleman involved, but folks who aren't technically savvy may choose to pay some extra dough for these types of packages, thought it's important to note that you still have to bring your own cover art. (Note: Publish Green says it's in the process of revising its packages, so expect to see some changes soon).
CreateSpace, iUniverse, Xlibris, AuthorHouse, and other POD self-publishing outfits
Most of the large print-on-demand self-publishing operations offer some sort of e-book conversion service and distribution--and sometimes it gets bundled into a print-publishing package (like Lulu, these companies usually charge a few hundred dollars for converting your e-book). In some cases, this can work out OK for authors who don't care about extracting as much money as they can from each sale and don't want to work with a separate company to create an e-book once they've uploaded their PDF file for their print book. For those who don't think they'll end up selling a lot of copies of their e-book, this can be a fine arrangement, but just beware that in many cases you can't set your own price and more money is being taken out of your net profits than should be. Again, you should strongly consider avoiding companies that don't let you set your own price.
Scribd
Scribd.com offers one of the fastest and easiest ways to get an e-book or even a short story up on the Internet. After you create an account, you simply create a PDF of your book with the cover image embedded in the first page of the PDF and upload the PDF to Scribd.
Scribd is trying to become the YouTube for documents.
(Credit: Scribd)
Its online software quickly converts your document into a file that can be viewed on a PC, iPad, or other portable devices. You can also choose to allow people to download your file for viewing.
Recently, Scribd has added HTML5 coding, so your document can easily be read on the iPad via the Safari browser (this allows you to use Apple's finger-based, pinch-and-spread touch zoom controls). Currently, the majority of documents posted to Scribd are free to view or download (it's a great way to post samples of your work), but you can sell your work on Scribd as well. (If you want to see an example, I posted a free excerpt of my own book to Scribd. Alas, I should have made my cover larger so it didn't have a white border, but so it goes).
PubIt! is now live.
(Credit: Barnes & Noble)
Barnes & Noble's Pub-It
Barnes & Noble's Pub-It self-publishing operation launched in October and offers similar features to Amazon's DTP, but the two platforms do have their differences. Barnes & Noble has set the PubIt royalty rate for authors at 65 percent of the sale price for titles priced $2.99 and higher. The rate falls to 40 percent if you choose to go lower than $2.99 or higher than $9.99, with B&N setting $.99 as the lowest allowable price and $199.99 as the highest.
That rate is close to Amazon's 70 percent royalty, but not quite as high (Amazon also has pricing restriction to get its highest rate). However, PubIt includes a free conversion tool that takes your Microsoft Word, TXT, HTML, or RTF files and automatically converts it to an ePub file, which you then upload to Barnes & Noble's eBookstore (alternatively, of course, if your e-book is already an ePub file, you can just upload it directly through PubIt). Barnes & Noble aloows you to preview how your content will look on one of Barnes & Noble's eReading devices using the Nook emulator. Currently, Amazon doesn't offer a conversion tool.
Barnes & Noble says that going forward it will offer some unique features and is looking for ways to tie-in the Nook's in-store Wi-Fi streaming features and feature local self-published authors in stores specific to each location. For reference, here's a look at the Pub-It! FAQ page.
In sum
To be clear, there are other ways to go about self-publishing your e-book. For example, I haven't talked about such outfits as Ingram Digital, Overdrive, or LibreDigital, because they're geared toward larger publishing or self-publishing operations rather than individuals. To help focus your decision-making process, I've tried to stick to what I consider the important players right now.
I should also say that everybody comes to the self-publishing process with a different agenda--and a different book--and some e-book self-publishing options will appeal to you based on the type of book you have (for the record, this article is slanted to publishing more text-based e-books rather than books with lots of illustrations or graphic images, such as children's books). For those who are publishing an e-book as an experiment or "just to get it out there" and who are less concerned with making money and extracting every last dime out of a sale, aggregators offer a convenient solution to get your book in a variety of e-bookstores and roll up your sales into one single record that you can easily track (most companies pay out earnings from e-books within 60-90 days; Amazon is 60).
It's also worth noting that you can mix and match and go direct with Amazon (DTP), uploading your own file and managing your account, and then use an aggregator for additional distribution to other e-bookstores. At this point there are no hard and set rules and, as I said in the beginning, the e-book market is very fluid, seeing significant changes almost every month. As always, please feel free to post your opinion in the comments section, particularly if you've had experience publishing your e-book already and can share your observations with others. And remember, Google is your best friend for the finer parts of self-publishing, such as converting a Word file to a PDF.
Hunkered down in New York City, Executive Editor David Carnoy covers the gamut of gadgets and writes his Fully Equipped column, which carries the tag line "The electronics you lust for." He's also the author of "Knife Music," a novel that's available at Amazon, barnesandnoble.com, and as a Kindle or Nook e-book.
by lizcastro1 July 28, 2010 12:51 PM PDT
If you're interested in creating EPUB versions of your books, you might try my brand new book, "EPUB Straight to the Point: Creating ebooks for the Apple iPad and other ereaders". It explains how to take your existing documents in Word, InDesign, or a text editor, and create a beautiful book that can be read by any ereader that supports the standard EPUB format. See http://www.elizabethcastro.com/epub for more details.
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