Formatting Services for Smashwords and Amazon

Do you have a book you're writing or planning to write? Do you want to publish it online as an ebook?

I have successfully uploaded six books to Smashwords.com and gotten distributed to several online bookstores like Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple iBookstore, Scribd, Baker & Taylor, and more. I've also successfully uploaded three of my books to Amazon.

It's easy to upload a book to Smashwords and Amazon but it's not easy to format the book so it will be acceptable to them. This is where I come in.

I am offering formatting services for writers who want to get into Smashwords and/or Amazon. Prices start from $10 for a 10,000 word book to $50 for a 150,000 word book. The price will differ if you want me to proofread your book.

Send me a PM on my facebook page at  https://www.facebook.com/dejmarcelo

Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale

Smashwords, the largest distributor of indie, or self-published, books is having their annual summer/winter sale this July 2017. Many books are on sale at 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% off!

This sale is only until July 31, 2017 and only comes once a year. Scan through their catalog for your choice.

Smashwords.com Summer/Winter Sale

The Changing Rules of Publishing

'Was talking to the wife about Zach Sobiech, the guy who sang "Clouds" on YouTube and garnered millions of views, tens of thousands of likes, and sold hundreds of thousands of copies of the song on iTunes. The song was not being promoted by any recording studio, he just went up and posted the video and it just took off from there. There's a lesson in that story.

The rules of the game are changing these days. Years back, if you wanted to become a singer, you had to audition and impress somebody enough to take a chance on you. If even one of them liked you, you got a recording contract. If not, you took other options...but not the one you wanted in the first place. Today, you can record a video and post it on YouTube and, if you're really good, you can become a successful singer on your own right. People like Justin Bieber and Alyssa Bernal come to mind.

The rules for authors is changing as well.

In the past, an author would have to type up a manuscript, send it to a publisher or agent, and wait for a message saying his/her manuscript was accepted and could they please come to the office to talk. For most authors, the answer is usually, no. For every author's book you see in a bookstore, there are probably tens, or maybe hundreds, of other authors who have received a rejection letter. Some are brokenhearted and, maybe, never write another book. Others persevere until someone decides to give them a shot. An example would be Kathryn Stockett, who was rejected 60 times before agent Susan Ramer agreed to represent her and her book, The Help. That book became a best seller on The New Times Best Seller List and stayed there for 100 weeks. One wonders how the other agents could have made such a mistake as rejecting her.

But that's only true in print publishing. The internet has been the game changer for the publishing world just as it did for the world of singers. You only need to go to the websites of iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and others, to find books from thousands of authors who decided to self-publish their books. Ebooks, as they are known, are the electronic versions of print books and you can buy them at a cheaper price than the paper version. If you don't want to spend anything, free ebooks are available too!

So, if today's authors are self-publishing, where does that leave the traditional print publishers? They're still here but I don't know for how long. The feeling of having a paper-type book with your name on it is still one of the reasons why authors go for them. After my own book was rejected, I decided to print it on smaller, book-sized paper, just to get that feeling. It was a waste of paper, however. When I saw my book on Smashword's website, I had the same feeling I got when I held that little book in my hands. It wasn't the feeling of touching the book, but the fact that I had a book out there for people to read.

Ebooks may be cheaper and that's good for the readers. For the authors, self-publishing is providing a way to get better deals out of writing a book. A print publisher will give you between 5 to 15% royalty for each book that is sold. On Smashwords, at least, you get about 45 to 80% royalty.

As with anything, you have to be good at what you do. Good singers make it on YouTube. Good writers make it on the internet's bookstores.

Note: I wish to send my condolences to the family and friends of Zach Sobiech, who died last 20 May 2013. You will be missed.

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."

The Challenge of Proofreading

If you're a financially challenged indie-author like me, you probably do your own proofreading. My English is passable but the occasional typo and punctuation error does creep in.

So, how did I do my own proofreading?

My book started as a series of Facebook notes which I then copy-pasted into MS Word 2003. Then I rewrote the whole book, adding more stories and changing some passages to make it more readable or fun to read. When I decided that the book was finished, I began proofreading.

I went through the whole book, correcting as I went. I used no aids, just trusting in my own abilities. Not surprisingly, I found a lot of typos. I also found errors in punctuation and, on one instance, a missing period. I made several proofreading passes through the book and found something to fix each time. I lost count of how many times I went through the book before I decided that it was well and truly finished and then uploaded it into Smashwords. About a month or so later, I had to download a copy from the website after I accidentally deleted my own copy in my computer. I reread it again and, imagine my chagrin when I found a couple of errors. Where had they been hiding? I thought I'd found all of them.

I am going back through the book again but I've had to revise my methods of proofreading to do a better job of it.

Lesson 1: Use the MS Word spell checker

Did I hear a gasp? I've read dozens of articles or warnings never to use this tool. The spell checker, however, is great for finding misspelled words. The problem with this tool is that it won't catch misused words. If your sentence is:

I will bee seeing you.

The spell checker will not consider "bee" as a misspelled word because the word "bee" can be found in an English dictionary and it is correctly spelled. Your eyes are better at finding these types of errors.

MS Word also has a grammar checker, which I use sparingly. I tend to use passive sentences occasionally if I think it works better than an active one but I do take its advice sometimes.

Lesson 2: Don't run a marathon

No, I don't mean don't run before proofreading. What I mean is, don't go through the whole book or document in one go or in a few sittings. Take frequent rest stops to keep yourself alert. If you keep proofreading for several hours, you'll get fatigued and might miss a lot of mistakes. If you have to go to the bathroom, go now; don't wait until you're bursting because your mind will concentrate on the discomfort rather than on the words.

Lesson 3: Read each word

This runs counter to a tip one former teacher taught my classmates and me. When you read, don't look at one word, look at two or more words. You'll finish faster and understand better. That's fine when you're studying or reading silently but not when you're proofreading. You have to look at each word. A variation on this method is to read aloud. I've caught a lot of errors with this one. It also helped me to revise certain sentences that "didn't sound right."

Lesson 4: Have a dictionary handy

If you use a word that you're not familiar with or sense that your spelling is not correct, there's a chance that it really is misspelled. Look it up in the dictionary. You might even discover that it didn't mean what you thought it meant. I have a dictionary in my computer but I also have a large paper dictionary. You can also use online dictionaries on the Internet.

Proofreading isn't a job for the impatient. I've read several ebooks that I banished into the recycle bin in my computer because of the quantity of errors. A book full of errors is not going to make a good impression and readers might tend to avoid the authors of those books.

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.