For this exercise I selected two file converters and used them to convert two different PDF files to an eBook format (ePub and Mobi had nearly identical results). One PDF was a highly illustrated PDF eBook from Hubspot.com. The second was a mostly text book of sermons by Mark Feldmeir. I compared the same sections of each book. Be sure to scroll to the bottom for my assessment.

2epub.com’s free online conversion tool is a great resource depending on your needs and the type of document you need converted. It can ingest doc, docx, epub, fb2, html, lit, lrf, mobi, odt, pdb, pdf, prc, rtf and txt files and output epub, fb2, lit, lrf and mobi (the Kindle format). It is very easy to use and does not require registration.

Calibre is similar in both what it can ingest and output except you get more controls and it installs on your local hard drive. That can be good or bad depending on your needs.

This is one page from the original Hubspot PDF.

This is the same Hubspot page but converted to ePub/mobi* using 2epub.com

This is that same Hubspot page converted to ePub/mobi* file but using Calibre

This is one page from the PDF of Testimony for the Exiles

This is the same “Testimony” file converted to ePub/mobi* file using 2epub.com

This is the same “Testimony” file converted to ePub/mobi* file using Calibre

* both ePub and mobi were nearly identical so only one result is shown here.

A Few Observations

1. Image–heavy files do not convert well. Consider deleting the images before converting or contact a professional conversion services firm.

2. Text files on the other hand looked pretty good. Both programs did a better job here but you still need to watch for extra lines being inserted and other odd problems.

3. Quite a bit of text from the image files converted into capital letters. Look at the titles of the original PDFs.

4. I thought 2epub.com output looked better than Calibre’s. At least there were spaces between paragraphs which made the document easier to read.

5. The Calibre converter allows you to modify the metadata (like title and author name) which can be important.

Bottom Line

While either program does an adequate job creating files for personal use neither program was capable of producing the kind of ePub or Mobi eBook that should be sold to the public. There were just too many formatting inconsistencies. In that case convert the PDF to Word (or similar), format, and convert that file to ePub and or Mobi.

We always knew that some books were better viewed on a color device—children’s books and travel books come to mind—but surveys are now reporting that color tablets are taking market share from dedicated reading devices.

What does this mean for publishers? Three things:

1. A color tablet can detract from immersive reading. These multi-function computers can play games, surf the web, play music, play videos and be used to create and edit documents, presentations and spreadsheets. That is quite a long list of reading distractions. Read what Kelly Gallagher, vice president of publishing services at Bowker Market Research said after reviewing their February 2012 survey results:

“Tablets will adversely affect the e-book business in that the tablet is a multifunction device and will therefore draw the reader into non-book activities and therefore cause them to consume books slower and therefore buy fewer books versus a single function e-reading device.”

The competition for an author’s books is time, not other books.

2. Maybe they have your book but they are not engaged with it. Free or cheap books encourage collecting and grazing. No one feels guilt for not finishing a book when they get the book free or for just a couple dollars. Readers know they can fill their time with an app or website just as easily as reading an eBook.

It is more important than ever to hook your reader early in the story. For non-fiction this might mean publishing a shorter book, or perhaps including more useful resources and links to your website.

Engagement and relevance are the keys because readers give you only so much time.

3. A memorable cover is now as important post-sale as it was in getting the book discovered. Until color devices came along many eBook publishers were treating the cover as an afterthought or worse yet, ignoring it altogether. The “shelf” on the E-Ink screen is simply a list of books.

But a color device displays the book, cover facing out. Covers are like icons that serve as memory-joggers to bring the reader back to the material. They often remind the reader why they bought the book in the first place.

Color tablets have made great covers cool again.

I got my Fire in December of 2011. At first I continued to do long-form reading on my Kindle 2 because it is lighter and easier to read. But the more I used the tablet for other tasks the more I began to read on it. Now I use the Kindle 2 only when I am concerned about battery life, reading in sunlight, or reading in my Jacuzzi.

I also discovered I had a lot more books on my bookshelf than I realized.

Do you prefer a color tablet or a dedicated eReader like a Kindle?

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 your book and the benefits of reading it.
• It serves as a “time stamp” on your efforts. Once indexed by the search engines it becomes part of what is called “the long tail”.
• It is a marketing tool. It might get read by someone in the news media or a potential book buyer.

In fact I think you should write the release as soon as you have a clear idea how to present the book to the public. Why not make it part of the cover design process and then hold it until the book is ready for release?

News releases are not just for media outlets anymore.

It is also important to note that press releases have become quite popular as a way to build website traffic and general awareness, especially with the public. Many companies feature “newsrooms” on their website where you will find a large collection of what seem more like announcements.

Publishers benefit from this same approach. Your release may be newsworthy to a news editor but it is also there to build awareness with readers. Keep in mind you are writing to two audiences and be sure to post it on your own website. If you have engaged a publicist this is something he or she will help you with.

No publicist? Here is my advice:

To get started you should follow certain generally accepted guidelines.

Begin by writing your release based on the advice of these three articles.

1. Publicity Insider has been around for years and has advice about this topic as well as several other publicity topics. I like it because they show a nice visual to help guide you along with specific do’s and don’ts.

2. This Wikihow article is useful because it is open to regular input and correction by a large community. That means it reflects current thinking about what works and doesn’t work.

3. I think it also helpful to study how the large publishers present their books and authors. Not that you should emulate them but you might find some good ideas. Click here to visit the newsroom for Random House.

Now a few tips about writing and formatting your release.

If you plan to send your release with one of the many online release services you should create a few other elements ahead of time.

A Summary: this is different than the first paragraph of your release. Write this after you write the release and be sure to include important keywords. I suggest no more than 250 characters in length.

Keywords: use the free Google Keyword finder to help write the title, summary and first paragraph of your release. Using the Keyword tool will help you identify phrases that may be more popular than the phrases you thought were important.

Distribute your release.

If you are writing and sending the release yourself you will use one of the free or paid services. But that is a passive effort where you hope someone sees it and decides to contact you. The real reward comes from proactively pitching your book to relevant news media. If your publicist is handling this, which of course is ideal, he or she will be sending the release to key media outlets and following up to try to get them to write a story or do an interview. If you do not have a publicist the job will fall to you. The most obvious targets are your hometown media and/or media whose audience would find your book’s subject matter of interest. (This obviously requires some homework because it depends on your subject.)

Note: your budget is going to dictate how you distribute. If you can afford it, and your release is truly newsworthy, you really should invest (cash) in one of these programs.

1. For free releases I like 24-7pressrelease.com. They also have paid plans but for several of my releases this works just fine. Just about all the release distributors work the same way: pay a little more and get faster service, better monitoring, wider distribution, etc.

2. Bostick Communications specializes in book releases and is fee-based. My colleague highly recommends their service.

3. The pioneer in online press release distribution is PRWeb.com, now known as Vocus.com. This is probably the most expensive but it is also one of the most respected which means journalists pay attention to their releases. They do a lot of marketing so keep an eye out for discounts (however, their customer service is spotty in my experience).

What works for you?

With all these free tools, education and distribution there is no excuse for not issuing a press release. Invest the time and if at all possible, the money to do it right.

By the way, got a good tip or a better distribution option than what I listed here? Send it along in the comments box.

Like a website, an eBook can also be visually rich and beautifully illustrated but you need to follow certain rules and best practices. With eBooks it is often function over form as certain design and layout desires take a back seat to the benefits of using eBooks.

Those benefits include:

• Easy scaling of information so that it looks as good on a mobile device screen as it does on a large computer screen.
• Annotation friendly features like highlighting and note taking.
• Search friendly features: you can look-up words within the text using Wikipedia, the Web, or search inside the book.
• Linking to relevant websites from within the eBook (not all PDFs allow this when transferred to a mobile device)

This added functionality could be important for the right application.

So how does one decide when it is worth the effort to publish their material as an eBook? As yourself these 3 questions:

#1. How do my readers like to read my content? Are they printing it out to read, or do they want to read it on their Smartphone while on-the-go?

#2. Is linking to or interaction with the Internet important? Will my content have the same value if those links do not work?

#3. Is it about reading text or looking at images? Sometimes the textual content is enhanced by the images, sometimes the images are the content. If the images involve detail or benefit from a larger viewing screen, a PDF may make more sense.

Recent research findings indicate that people are reading more than ever on mobile devices. If that is true for your readers, and Internet connectivity is important, we recommend creating versions of your information to satisfy these emerging reading habits.

The good news is that new workflows and tools are making this dual publishing track easier. In the meantime think about your audience from the outset and design your content accordingly.

So what do you do if you don’t already know a designer, or you want to get some education before you hire one? Here is an eclectic collection of resources to get you started.

Begin with some inspiration. I think it is helpful to begin by looking at lots of covers to get ideas of what you like or don’t like. The Book Cover Archive is a blog dedicated to book cover design and resources and it will do just that.

Like the cover, images are critical and often expensive. Here are 3 sources for public domain images (you must still review copyright restrictions).

1. Library of Congress

2. Wikipedia has a great resource page

3. Compfight is relatively new site also worth exploring.

Two Tools for DIY

Bucketlabs makes the Phoster App for iOS devices. Then be sure to read this tutorial about using Phoster to create your cover.

This collection of templates and training materials is less than $8. Using Photoshop or the free Gimp image tool you can create pretty nice, albeit cookie cutter covers.

Cover Design As a Web-based Service

If you do not know someone and you are prepared to pay a (what I consider) fair rate of $200 to $400 these three services are worth looking into. These sites specialize in cover design. You may want to engage them with a few ideas in mind before you begin but be sure to let them do their job too.

99 Designs offers a contest-like solution. Multiple designers complete by showing you a design and you buy the one you like.

BookBaby offers publishers two packages.

Amazon’s CreateSpace has several different options.

Got your own favorite resources? Know a great cover designer you want to plug. Let me know in the comments section below.

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 box on Linkedin then search for marketing on amazon. Or click here for more information.

Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East

Beautifully illustrated, this is a collection of four Nagishkin folktales in which the Siberian tiger is closely associated with the main characters. The Siberian tiger is a native species of the Southeastern region of the Russian Far East, and an essential neighbor of the aboriginal people. Visit Amazon. Visit Barnes & Noble.

Allies in Wartime. The Alaska-Siberia Airway During World War II

This book is a moving testimonial to what peace-seeking nations can achieve when they cooperate in the face of a common enemy. In the three years of the Alaska-Siberia Lend-Lease Airway, thousands of Americans worked with Soviets on the cooperative program. At its height, up to 600 Soviet pilots and other personnel served in Great Falls, Montana; and Fairbanks, Galena and Nome, Alaska. Visit Amazon. Visit Barnes & Noble.

Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska

A compilation of several traditional oral stories of the aboriginal peoples of the Russian and North American Far North and includes two new literary stories created in the spirit of those traditions. Visit Amazon. Visit Barnes & Noble.

Sellbox is proud to bring these books to life as eBooks so that they may be enjoyed by eReaders everywhere. Versions available for Kindle, Nook, iPad, iPhone, PC, Mac and Android mobile devices including the Kindle Fire.

Image Search

Here is a quick run down of five great tools to use every time you have to come up with a book title, marketing program or simply have to stay connected. Note that in some cases you will need a Google account.

Bookmark them today while you are thinking about it or bookmark this post.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

This tool is intended to help advertisers understand what people are searching for so they can use those words in an ad campaign. But you’ll want to use this to help you choose a good book title, or write a press release. Because your title and press release will be indexed by Google you want to make sure the words you use are the words your customers are using.

This information is very current and can change over time. That’s why you should also know about:

Google Insights for Search [pictured]

This tool allows you to compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and types of searches. It’s actually quite fun to play with. I typed in Kindle, iPad and Nook and checked U.S. searches for these terms during the past 12 months. Here’s what I learned:

• People in Iowa do fewer searches for iPad than people in any other state.
• Folks in Wyoming do the most Kindle searches of all states.
• North and South Dakotans do more searches for Nook than any of the other 48 states.

Google Alerts

I use Alerts every day to help me “listen” for specific words and phrases I’m interested in. It might be a book title, someone’s name, my company name—you’d be surprised what you learn. It’s like the old fashioned clipping services, only free and faster.

Google Trends

Trends is a little like the Keyword tool and Insights for Search only simpler. Use it to compare phrases or words over time. It graphs the results by both search volume and news references for your terms. It also gives you a list of links that may be relevant news items.

Google Ngram Viewer

Ngram graphs phrases used in all the books Google has scanned. This is a big-picture look at phrases you might wish to study.

Some books date back to 1500. To quote Google: “When you enter phrases into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books (e.g., “British English”, “English Fiction”, “French”) over the selected years.”

These Google tools are yet another fun way to kill a couple hours instead of writing.

What’s your favorite Google Tool? Add it to the comments below.

Author Solutions, the large self-publisher services provider seemed to be everywhere with nine booths for author signings and one to promote their services. There were a number of other publishing services providers there such as writer support groups, printers and an eBook service company. I was also pleased to see Small Demons there. They are nearly ready to publically launch their book discover tool.

I spent some extra time in the Kobo (eReader) booth to talk to them about their new self-publishing platform (similar to KDP and Pubit). I was told it would be out relatively soon (weeks or months, not late this year). He also reminded me that Kobo Pulse, a collection of social reading features, is integrated with Facebook in an exclusive arrangement.

From the Facebook site: Today you can share what you’re reading, your favourite passages and even your Reading Life awards with friends and family on Facebook and Twitter.

Sounds like a killer feature for readers and authors alike.

The highlight was the panel featuring Go the F**k to Sleep author Adam Mansbach, illustrator Ricardo Cortes and Akashic Books publisher Johnny Temple. Here are a few of the nuggets from one of the more enjoyable panel discussions I’ve ever heard.

• Adam was asked how long it took to write the book. He said it took about a half day. He went on to say that authors like to give just the writing time without mentioning the time spent on revisions and re-writes. “They do a disservice by obscuring the process”.
• This is one tight business relationship, a real team. Adam made clear that there was an enormous amount of trust between them which came in handy when far larger publishers tried to convince them to ditch Johnny.
• Grandmothers and Facebook were key marketing factors. When discussions (about the content) got out of hand it seemed like it was a grandmother that stepped in to add perspective and settle things down. A woman in Australia posted the entire book on her Facebook page. Adam called to ask her to remove it in return for some signed books. She said she would oblige but that she had already sent more than 400 people to buy it online. He said never mind, it was okay.

This might have started off as a joke but more than a million units sold later, they are still having fun.

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 book in the PDF file format that you’d like to convert to an eBook? Perhaps a content marketing document used for lead generation or a customer resource guide.

Here are three questions to help you decide if it is worth the effort.

1. Does the PDF eBook design lend itself to an eBook format? i.e. how important is it to maintain design consistency?

2. Is the book long enough to warrant the effort?

3. Why do you want to convert it?

Let’s take each one individually beginning with design.

What makes the eBook format so great for use on so many different screen sizes is what makes it less than desirable as a format for highly designed PDFs. In time it will be as easy to create an eBook as it is a PDF but we’re not there yet. Ideally you want to use graphics judiciously and keep in mind that information flows with images depending on the size of the text your reader is using—something you as the publisher can’t control.

Each content element should have a purpose. Screens can be quite small so viewing lots of detailed images could become tedious, just like with a PDF. Readers want information which means text is king when it comes to eReading.

What about length? I’ve done eBooks that are five pages in length all the way up to hundreds of pages with scores of images. However, many PDF eBooks are in the ten to 40 page range. My advice is that any size is fine if you don’t plan to sell your eBook. But if you do plan to sell it make sure the textual content is valuable and worth your reader’s investment (in terms of both money and attention). As always, put yourself in the shoes of your reader and ask yourself whether you’d be happy buying your information product.

What is your motivation for converting it? Any product you plan to sell is a reflection on your brand. So if you are charging you want to make sure it has sufficient value and conforms to best practices in terms of quality. It should we well edited, make use of linking–especi

The good news is that you won’t raise expectations if you are providing a free version of an existing customer guide. In fact in this case you are doing your customers a favor by giving them something of value.

Questions? Send me a link to your PDF eBook and/or comment below and I’ll give you my recommendation.