Anyone who has tried to read a PDF on a tiny smartphone screen has probably wondered if there was a way to convert the PDF to an eReader format. Such a format—ePub and Mobi are the most popular—presents information as “flowable text”, that is, the information is one continuous page rather than discrete pages like [...]
Whether you are self-publishing your first fiction novel or the fifth book in your series on American cuisine, writing a press release is an important, must-do task. Why bother? It forces you to think objectively about your book as a news item. Writing the release gives you a chance to develop key talking points about [...]
Like a “coffee table book”, a PDF can be a visually rich and beautifully illustrated document: lots of images and text can be placed in precise locations. Paper and PDF documents are blank canvases, perfect for designers. Like a website, an eBook can also be visually rich and beautifully illustrated but you need to follow [...]
There is simply no excuse for publishing an eBook without a decent cover. You might have gotten away with it early on but now that the market is being flooded with eBooks you will look cheap and “self-published” if you don’t make the effort. If you care anything at all about your writing, invest in [...]
Amazon commands a large percentage of the market for both print and eBooks. It is almost like a “Google for information products”. We thought it was time to create a dedicated Linkedin community around marketing on Amazon. A place where people could network and learn from each other. Click here to visit the group search [...]
We are proud to announce that three Alaska-Siberia Research Center books are now available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble in eBook format as well as print. The Alaska-Siberia Research Center (AKSRC) is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan educational and research institution for thought and opinion on Alaska-Siberia affairs and cultures. The Center’s mission is to conduct, [...]
We’ve all heard of or used Google tools like Gmail, YouTube, Picasa, perhaps even Picknick and Image Search. But how much time do you spend using the Ngram Viewer, Trends or Insights for Search? Perhaps the answer is not as much as you should. Here is a quick run down of five great tools to [...]
This year’s Festival of Books, number 17 and the second year at USC was terrific with an estimated 100,000+ attendees. The book industry’s Book Expo America should take a page from this (no pun intended) and open BEA to the public for at least a day. Author Solutions, the large self-publisher services provider seemed to [...]
As readers and audiences know from my talks I use two criteria to define an eBook: 1. Can you read it—without “pinching & panning”—on a mobile device? 2. Is it possible to sell it on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com? If the answer is yes to both, it is an eBook. So what if you have a [...]
How Color Tablets Are Impacting Publishing-3 Things Publishers Should Know
Popular opinion prior to the release of the Kindle Fire was that the iPad, Smartphones, and Android tablets were not ideal reading devices. Serious readers chose dedicated eReaders—E-Ink (black & white) devices like Kindle, Nook and Kobo. Color didn’t/doesn’t matter for these applications, or so we thought. We always knew that some books were better [...]