Your eBook Survival Kit!

Let’s deal with ten key myths first:

1. An eBook is an eBook is an eBook

It isn’t. eBooks come in all shapes and sizes. eBooks can be text on its own, or it can conspire with images, sound, animation and even interactivity. What you can do with your eBook is limited only by your imagination. Or, if you plan to publish yourself, by your technical expertise.

2 One eBook Reader is much the same as another

Some are, some aren’t. eBook Readers (i.e. reading devices) come in all shapes and sizes. The Kindle and iPad and a few others are relatively BIG. Smartphones like the iPhone are small.

They have varying amounts of real estate on their screens for displaying your content. Some can display landscape (wide) as well as in portrait (tall) format. So, if you like to create wide content, you may have problems displaying it on a portrait Reader. Or, it may display but be unreadable except for those with 100/100 vision (something like 20/20 but much more powerful!)

Some can display colour, others only black and white.

Some are excellent at displaying images, others aren’t much better at that than a fax machine.

Some can play audio and even movies, or connect to the internet, while others do only static stuff and connect to the internet just to take your money when you buy a book.

3. Once you create a pdf, you have an eBook

What’s a pdf? How much time do you have? Simply, it’s a cross-platform file format that lets your reader see your work just as you see it before it’s published. In other words what you see is what they get.

It would be nice if all eBook Readers accepted eBooks for publication in pdf format, but they don’t. In fact fewer do than don’t. And even those that do may require that you send them a special kind of pdf for their Reader.

Truth is, there are almost as many kinds of formats for Readers as there are Readers. This is because certain companies – not to mention names – want to keep you hooked on their Readers by ensuring that the books you buy only work on their Reader.

This means if you want your book to work on ALL Readers, you’ll have to find a way to send the distributors your content in a file format that will work on each Reader.

And you thought it was going to be easy? Or at least not this complicated!

4. Conversion is a religious experience

You may invoke God’s name in vain while creating your eBook, but the conversion process has little to do with having your head dipped into water.

It means starting with an original master file and converting this into a format very close to what the Reader requires for displaying the fruit of your labour (or loins, if you’re male).

Unlike the religious experience, eBook file conversion takes time, often as much time as producing the original master. You also have to test the file either on the Reader or via emulator software that pretends to be the Reader somewhere else, usually on your computer screen.

Like the religious version, eBook conversion is not for the faint-hearted, i.e. the technology-challenged people out there for whom using a remote control becomes an IQ test.

There may be a reason for priests, after all.

5. Anyone can publish an eBook

True, but you need to get at the Myth behind the Myth. Anyone can publish an eBook, but the trick is to do it well.

Years ago, after personal computers were invented, everyone suddenly had access to 301 fonts and used each of them to create and publish a book. Soon we nearly ran out of ISBNs and the World was no better off for the extra books that had been published. Edit became a four-letter word and proofreading was something you hoped your best friend had done for your book before telling you it was the best thing since sliced cheese.

Hundreds of thousands of books are available for the Kindle right now, but how many are worth reading?

We have a moral obligation to our National Library archives and time capsules everywhere to ensure that quality standards are kept up, so you must still lay your draft at the feet of an editor for advice, and a proofreader at the end of it all, before making an eBook of it.

6. You design an eBook in much the same way as a print book

Up to a point, yes, but there are many twists and turns along the way. You’ve already learned that the pdf file you prepare for print won’t work on most Readers. You need to know what won’t work in the Reader you’re aiming to publish on.

For example, of the 301+ fonts available to you on your computer only a handful will display on many Readers. You need to know what these Reader-friendly fonts are and what size to use in your original to ensure a proper display on the Reader. A 36 point title font will send most Readers ducking for cover.

Automatic features like page numbering, hyphenation and text placed in headers and footers will create special effects on many Readers, few of which you’ll like. Extra line breaks and spacing between words in your original will cause chronic fatigue effects on most Readers.

7. It costs less to publish an eBook than a print book

Yes, once you reach the print stage. With eBooks there are no upfront printing costs, no transport charges, no hassle with Customs if you print overseas, no warehousing, no physical distributors – and any other costs associated with a physical product.

But pre-publication costs of an eBook can be greater than a physical book, especially if you want to distribute your eBook via a wide range of Readers. See Myth 4.

With a print book you have ONE master file to check, perfect and send to print. With an eBook, you will likely have several versions, each of which has to be checked, perfected, tested offline and online and then uploaded to a server where it may come out as you intended it.

Just because a process is handled by a computer doesn’t make it idiot-proof. Sometimes, quite the opposite is true, especially if we become complacent.

8. One size fits all

There are companies out there that will promise to do everything for you for free and get your eBook onto every type of Reader from a single file you send them. Yes, but what will you get out the other end?

eBook Packagers like that may be well-intentioned, but none of them are charities. They depend on pushing large volumes of content through their system and getting it out there with a minimum of fuss. They may well have a “muncher” that accepts any file type under the sun and then spits it out in multiple formats. But what it will look like at the other end is anyone’s guess.

If you read the small print, or ask the right questions, you’ll find out that the formats they produce through this automated process will work on most but not all Readers, and certain types of content may not work at all, e.g. colour books and books in landscape format.

Never forget that you are the publisher and that you must take responsibility for what ultimately displays – or doesn’t display – on the target Reader.

9. Once you publish an eBook, you just sit back and wait for the royalty cheques to roll in

If you’ve ever published a print book, you know what a myth this is, so why should it be any different for eBooks?

Nothing’s changed. You still have to get your book noticed, reviewed, blogged about. You also have to chat it up online, get interviewed. You have to send out email circulars, make sure it’s listed on the key databases and high up on the search engines. Think in terms of a campaign not a launch. Keeping your powder dry over several months.

If anything, it’s more challenging promoting an eBook. The world is just waking up to the eBook as a valid alternative to the printed book. People still like their physical books, even prefer them to eBooks. You’ll need to persuade them not only to buy your book, but to accept it in digital wrapping.

Your audience will be well beyond your neighbourhood. They may not even speak your language. They are busier, more easily distracted, more constantly bombarded with distractions than readers have ever been. How will you meet them, introduce yourself and your work? Or convince them to buy?

You can be sure that no one else will do it for you – unless your work is the one in a million that prompts word of mouth.

10. eBook contracts will work pretty much like print book contracts

In some ways, yes. In many other areas, no. Conventional contracts are based on the notion of territories. You essentially lease your property to a publisher for a specified time and then have the right to take it back and lease it to someone else. If your work is commercial enough, you may be able to lease it to several publishers in several territories elsewhere in the world and make money from them as well as the original publisher.

But with eBooks, the notion of territory is out the window. eBooks are global rather than limited by geography. Their very existence undermines the territorial sanctity assigned to their physical counterparts.

Further, once published, eBooks have a half life approaching radioactive elements. It’s hard enough to take down a physical book once it’s on Amazon and outlets all over the world are offering it new and used at various price points. Can you imagine how hard it will be to dismantle once it’s up on multiple Readers. Or to cut off supply, if the hackers get into it and disable the digital rights protections?

The lawyers are working to counter that now. But the pace of legal evolution to meet the challenges of digital copyright and piracy will make Bleak House look like a sprint. In the meantime all parties concerned will have to be on guard. Very much on guard!

Find out more about how IP can help you break into the eBook market via our industry leading Digital Publishing Centre.