Book Review - The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success

The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success is a collection of tips on how indie authors can give their books the best chance of success. Success can have several meanings for authors. For some, making tons of ebook sales is what counts. Others may be satisfied just having people read their books. For others, just the act of actually putting a book out there is reward enough. Except for the last type, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success can help you get your book into the hands of more readers.

The author, Mark Coker, is the founder of Smashwords, a website that helps authors publish their works as ebooks. He's been named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the "Eight Stars of Self-publishing" and he's also a contributing columnist for The Huffington Post. An author himself, Mark put together results of research, experiments, and experiences of other successful authors into a 36,000+ word book and offered it to readers for free. Uh huh, you read that right, the book is free. So, is the book any good? Let's find out.

Content-wise, Mark gave 28 "secrets." Some of them are pretty obvious to anyone but a few seem to run counter to common sense. For instance, he advises authors to give some of their books away for free. It would seem strange for anyone who wants to make money selling books to give away a title or two. Experience, however, shows that it can work. If you write a great book (that's another secret, by the way), marking it free makes it easier for readers to discover you. Once they know you're a good writer, there's a better chance they will pay to get your next books.

The book is written in a conversational style and it's easy to understand and digest. Personally though, I think 28 secrets is too many. I'm not saying that some of the secrets aren't valid. I just think some of them could have been lumped together. When I was  learning public speaking, one of the lessons we were taught was to limit your discussion points to between three and five. The reason was that most people won't remember more than those numbers. Maybe that "rule" doesn't apply to the written word but I still believe the book could have been simpler.

Is there anything wrong about the book? Not anymore, at least none that I can see. When I first downloaded the book, it had a lot of errors. I got the impression the book had been pushed into publication without proper or not enough proofreading. It seemed Mark had slipped with one of his own pieces of advice.

However, one of the nice things about publishing your work as an ebook is that you can make corrections easily. I downloaded Mark's book again recently and found that a lot of the errors have been corrected. You can't afford to do that with a traditionally published book. If you make an error in printing or editing, you may need to reprint them. If the error's really bad, you may have to recall the books from the bookstores and that is going to be very expensive. With ebooks, you just upload a new version.

In conclusion, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success is a good resource for indie authors. It's a great adjunct to another of Mark's free books, the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide. No matter what success means to you, you can't go wrong with following these "secrets."

Publish in Print or on the 'Net? Part 5

I didn't sign up with Smashwords right away. Their website mentioned that the story needed to be in Microsoft Word and it needed to be formatted in a very specific way. I decided that the best way to do this was to format the book, sign up with Smashwords, upload the document and cross my fingers.

The title of my book is Travel Mashups and Mishaps. It started out as a series of Facebook notes. As the series progressed, I began to have a few dedicated followers who my wife jokingly referred to as my "fan club." Soon, however, it became apparent that these few fans were just the vocal ones. More of my friends were actually reading the stories though they never posted any comments. The seed of an idea had been sown and by the time the series ended, the plant was fully grown. I was going to convert the series into a book.

I tried print publishers first but was rejected because my book didn't fit their publishing lines. It seemed no one wanted to take a risk on a non-fiction book from a new and unknown author. After about two years, I thought of self-publishing. I was just about to send off manuscripts for copyright application and also register with the Department of Trade and Industry as a publisher when I learned about Smashwords.

They have a free, downloadable Style Guide written by Smashwords founder Mark Coker. I read through it first and then opened my document. The way I went about this was to open both files next to each other using a feature in Windows called, "Tile Windows Vertically." This opened both files right next to each other on the screen. This allowed me to read the Style Guide and do what it said to do on the document. It was better than alternately minimizing and maximizing windows.

Allow me to digress for a moment because I want to talk about dual-monitor workstations.

If you can afford it, get two monitors for your PC. This way you can open the Style Guide on one monitor and your document on the other monitor and you'll have two full screen sized documents in view. It'll make things so much easier. Since I have only one monitor, I had to use the previous technique. This technique also works well for other jobs which I'll let you discover for yourself.

Okay, back to the topic.

The Style Guide was easy enough to follow though it could have been written better. A new and better version is out but, at the time, the old version was all that was available. It described how to format the book, but it also said why it should be formatted that way which made it easier to accept and understand. Fortunately, I was already using most of the formatting methods described in the guide so adapting the book was easy for me.

Formatting took about five days—couldn't devote a lot of time to it—and I began thinking about what kind of cover I would like to put on the book. Originally, I had thought of a restaurant scene where I would be seated holding up a napkin with a kid's drawing of a cow and a cabbage. Included in the picture would be a waitress with a surprised or incredulous expression. I was undecided if she was going to be young and slim or middle-aged and slightly stout. (",)

Scanning old photos one day, I spotted an old photograph. It was a picture of a small plane—eight or ten seater—and several people were posing beside it, myself included. One of the stories in the book was about this particular plane and its pilots. I thought it would be good enough.

I uploaded the book and cover to Smashwords and waited for a message. It took just a few minutes. There were no errors. That was it, I was a published author. I'd done it! My first customer bought a copy about a week later. Approximately two months later, the book was admitted into the Premium Catalog which meant it was going to be distributed to the Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Apple, Diesel and Scrollmotion, all ebook retailers.

There's another free book from Smashwords, Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, which tells you how to market your book. Selling isn't my favorite pastime but if I want my book to sell, I'll have to do something. Just putting the book on the shelf isn't going to cut it. This is going to be a steep learning curve but it's got to be done.

I'm already working on my next books...yes, it's plural. I've got two books in the works, one that I've been working on and off for several months and another, shorter one which I intend to offer for free. Uh huh, it's going to be free. You can actually put your book on Smashwords for free distribution. If you want to know why people would do this, read the FAQ on pricing.

I still haven't quite given up getting my book published on paper. I once tried printing a book, making a cover and binding it, all by hand, and I must say, a physical book still has a certain charm over a book in a reader.