This is a bit out of date, but for the most part, all the info is still good.
Know Your Long-Term Potential for Growth
Once a niche market, ebooks are now essentially required for every book that is published. In order of sales volume, Amazon is first, the iTunes, then Barnes & Noble and everyone else.
E-Book Market Projected Sales
Ebook sales are currently (early 2025) about 21% of total book sales, around $2.4 billion. Digital audio accounted for $2.3 billion.
Ebook readers tend to be book lovers with a lot more choices. They’re usually buying 20% more books than the average book buyer AND purchasing about 20% more units when they have the reading device. Overall, iPad owners tend to be younger, male, and highly educated, while Kindle owners tend to be older. Kindle is loved by both male and female readers.
Bottom line: there are more digital reading devices out there, AND the people who own them are purchasing 20% more books. The market is BIG.
The Long Tail
According to Chris Anderson, in The Long Tail, computers have changed the way people make purchases. Old merchandise models emphasized the bestselling items. Think of how Wal-Mart merchandises music: they have perhaps 1000 of the hottest CDs, and that’s all they carry. Compare that with iTunes that carries millions and millions of songs. Virtual stores don’t have to consider shelf space when they “stock” their stores – they can have thousands or millions of items available for sale. What’s even cooler is that almost all of these items sell at least a few units per month. The small sales add up, cumulatively outperforming the bestselling items.
Digital and print on demand sales clear the playing field for authors and publishers. Books no longer have to go out of print due to slow sales – they can just sit on their virtual “shelf,” costing little or nothing in overhead, and creating revenue when they sell. Now it makes sense to build a massive catalog of bestsellers and slow sellers, knowing that your slow sellers cumulatively will carry their weight. The future in “publishing?” – have a massive catalog of digital-only books that a publisher can watch for spikes in sales. If a book spikes in ebook form, it’s guaranteed to spike in print form as well. It’s a low cost – and foolproof – test market.
The Future in E-Books and How to Prepare for It
Readers today expect to see the book they want, when they want it, where they’re shopping. If they don’t, they will find another book to read. You cannot afford to lose sales, just because you’re not online.
If you are a publisher, begin to develop your books NOW with ebooks in mind. Specifically, if you’re using InDesign for typeset, build your files with paragraph and character styles so they’ll export cleanly to ePub. You’ll still have to do some formatting once it’s in ePub, but at least you’ll be saving some time. Be sure to explicitly mention digital rights in your contracts going forward. If you are planning a digital initiative, let your authors know your timeline and get them excited about the process. Your statements need to show separate line items for digital sales, and be sure to combine all the book versions if you’re calculating royalties based on sales levels.
If you’re an author, you need to own your digital rights. Talk with your publisher to find out if they have a digital initiative or are planning one in the future. Check your contract to see if you have the digital rights. You might consider adding an addendum to the contract if your digital rights are not explicitly mentioned. If your publisher is not interested in pursuing a digital program, you might be able to get your digital rights and you can pursue it on your own.
Bottom line for preparation: you want your books online yesterday! If you’re not online now, start getting your books in the ePub format. Research potential outlets – the best candidates are ones you can manage yourself: iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. All of them have online signup and management.
Be encouraged: the conversion of an ebook is essentially the only direct cost for the product. Unlike a print book, you have basically a zero cost per sale on a digital product. Once it’s done, it’s done.
Know Your Formats
Ebooks that are converted well sell much, much better than the ones that go through the simple online conversion process. People who read ebooks will skip over messy conversions – they’re not willing to hassle with a book that’s too hard to read. Sometimes, they’ll even return them. Apparently, Amazon is pulling books from sale if too many customers complain about a bad conversion. A good conversion is well worth the time and effort.
Best Source Formats
The best source formats are – from best to worst:
- InDesign
- Word
- Pages
- Text
- Hard copy scanned
InDesign has a decent export to ePub. It can get strange when it tries to embed fonts (deselect this option) and when it tries to apply local formatting (deselect this too). For some reason, Adobe still tries to speak in pixels when it should be speaking in em’s. Much of the formatting cues in InDesign apply to the printed page. Since ePub is not the printed page, most of these cues are useless and must be removed.
Word export to HTML can be messy. On export, be sure to select the “web page, filtered” option. That will remove a lot of formatting so that you don’t have to remove it later.
Text – ok to use, but it does take time to reapply formatting that is missing. Images and graphs need to be added back in as well.
PDF is one of the worst formats to start with. There’s a lot of excessive formatting, it grabs unneeded headers and footers, and doesn’t differentiate between a paragraph or a page break. Random spaces (or lack of spaces) may appear in words.
Hardcopy scanned is the worst possible input format. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is used to convert a page stored as an image to text. Obvious errors occur – a 1 turns into an “i” for instance – sometimes rendering the text unreadable. People will return books out of spite when they see that no one has bothered to proof the book. Someone must correct OCR errors with this type of conversion for quality control.
Best Output Formats
ePub is the best output format to have and to use. An ePub is not much more than a zip file renamed with an ePub extension. It consists of a container file that holds all the ebook elements: the HTML files, image files, and metadata. Think website.
Mobi was the other major file type, until Amazon discontinued its use. Thank goodness, because it wasn’t as cool and versatile as ePub. Think Notepad. There is no longer a reason to convert files to mobi. Just skip it.
Know What Makes a Great E-Book
A quality ebook has several important features:
- Small file size
- Working table of contents
- Working links
- Consistent formatting
- Properly sized images
- Validated to work on all platforms
Quality vs. Quantity
When I started converting my company’s backlist in April 2010, I made a conscious decision to create quality ebooks. There are a lot of software programs and online services out there that take a source file and “crunch” it into an ebook. There’s a major problem with this: the software isn’t as smart as a person. It can’t understand textboxes, charts, headers, or most lists. The software produces a very messy file that people will not enjoy reading. As I mentioned earlier, people will actually return books based on crummy formatting.
Build a small file
Small file size is important. Amazon charges the content provider a delivery fee based on file size. The smaller the file, the cheaper it is to deliver. Also, ereaders, while they have great capacity, will fill up at some point. Files should be only as large as they need to be. Any unused elements should be eliminated.
Consistent Formatting
The reader shouldn’t be distracted by inconsistent formatting in their books. Sometimes the only way to get consistent formatting is to go through the entire book and apply the formatting in the code.
Software & Tools
Sigil is a great epub editor, offering book view and code view. Some HTML and CSS experience is needed to use Sigil. Use Calibre to view epub files (http://calibre-ebook.com/download).
Why You Should Consider Outsourcing
You probably don’t have someone in-house who can dedicate hours to learning how to do a great ebook conversion or the additional hours to actually convert the books. If you do, you may not want to pay them for 6-8 hours per book at programmer rates. It can be much more cost-effective to outsource this work, plus you’re guaranteed a high-quality conversion performed by ebook experts. There are a lot of conversion houses out there, but we hope you’ll choose Book 2 Bestseller for high-quality professional-looking ebooks.
Validation
Your files need to be validated before they’ll work on ereaders. The best validator is online at: https://www.ebookit.com/tools/bp/Bo/eBookIt/epub-validator. If you use a conversion service, they’ll do this for you before you get your files back.
Know Your Sales Channels
Be sure to research royalties and terms when you sign up to sell on each website. Each offers Digital Rights Management (DRM) that you can control for your files. DRM allows you to determine if your files can be copied from one device to another, or opened by a non-approved user. Readers dislike DRM, while content owners love it. DRM is easy to remove from a file so don’t get too excited about using it. It’s a mixed bag.
Amazon
Amazon is still the industry leader in ebooks. They’ve been around the longest and have the best book selection. Be sure to check pricing and terms when you sign up so you know what you have to agree to in order to get the highest royalty (70%). Amazon has the easiest sign up. It’s all online. Pay particular attention to the Kindle Select program to see if it is something you’d like to try. If it is, you’ll want to hold off before setting up any other online accounts.
Amazon’s digital platform is located here: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin
iTunes
Things to know: be sure, absolutely sure, how you want to set up your account when you apply. If you have a business tax id and a personal tax id, know which one you want to use and BE CONSISTENT in using it. You can’t change this after your account is set up. You’ll be applying for an account first. Once you get approval for your account, you’ll need to go back in and set up your contract, banking, and tax info. BE SURE you’re uploading the correct ISBN (ask me how I know this!). Apple no longer requires an ISBN to include books in the iBookstore. ePubs must be validated (which a good conversion house will do for you). Cover files need to be at least 1400 px on the smallest side. iTunes royalty is 70% – worth the trouble!
iTunes Content Provider application is here: https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/wa/apply
Barnes & Noble
B&N’s online interface is very similar to Amazon’s. They do not require an ISBN. They do require an ePub, and the book cover files must be at least 1500 pixels wide. The most difficult part of signing up with B&N is the tax id information. Apparently they validate it with the IRS, and you are not able to sell your book until it’s exactly right.
NookPress is located here: https://press.barnesandnoble.com/sign-in?return=/projects
Kobo
Kobo is not device specific like Amazon, iTunes, or Barnes & Noble, although they do offer a branded ereader. They have updated their online portal to make it super-easy to set up your account and add files. They’re also international, which makes their setup worth it.
Kobo: http://www.kobo.com/writinglife
Know Your Strategy
Your digital strategy is as important as your print strategy. It’s almost as important as your content!
Who You Want to Sell Your E-book
If you are an international author, you’re going to find that you can’t sell your book on all the ebook websites. Amazon, iTunes, and Kobo are set up for international authors, if they have stores in the author’s country. You can still work with B&N if you have a U.S. address and bank account. If you can, we recommend at minimum that you work with Amazon.
Using the Right Technology to Prepare Going Forward
Use InDesign if you have it, Word if you don’t. Both of these programs have decent exports to ePub friendly formats. Take advantage of paragraph and character styles from within InDesign.
Only Frontlist, Only Backlist, or All Books? In What Order?
With the “Long Tail” in full effect, at some point you should offer every book that you have rights to in digital form. That said, you probably will not be able to get them all converted quickly enough. We suggest doing a little triage: start with your bestsellers and frontlist, then go into your backlist, as you have time. This gives you the best possible sales in the least amount of time. Remember, you might have multiple print formats of the same book: perhaps you have a hardback and a paperback. If your text is the same for both formats, you only need one digital version.
There has been some talk about releasing the print version of a book and then releasing the digital version months later. Some authors think the digital book will cannibalize hardback or paperback sales. We take a different approach: why not capitalize on publicity and marketing dollars and launch the ebook at the same time as your print book? Readers need to see your book everywhere. Sometimes they’ll see it multiple times before they make the decision to purchase. This excitement and momentum will be gone if you wait to release the ebook. Offer your book in whatever format your readers want it in!
Other authors have decided to just sell print editions of their current list, and then offer their out of print books as digital books. That might make financial sense from a cost perspective, but it makes zero sense from a revenue perspective. Why limit your ebook sales to only the ones that have proven they don’t sell well? Your bestsellers in print format will be your bestsellers in ebook format. If you leave the bestsellers out, you’re leaving money on the table. Someone else will snatch it up!
Pricing strategies
This is a tricky area. Amazon and iTunes have effectively tied people into a pricing plan. The big publishers have their own agreements, but the rest of us have to do what they say. Amazon and iTunes both require you to keep pricing the same across all vendors.
Amazon will pay a better royalty (70% less delivery fees) if your book is priced between $2.99 and $9.99. If you go over $9.99 or under $2.99, they will pay only 35%. So, your retail price really needs to stay within this range. They also require you to price it at the lowest version price – so if your paperback sells for less than the ebook price, they will adjust the ebook price downward. Incidentally, they control the discount on the paperback, so they have some control over the ebook price as well.
If you’re already using Amazon’s $9.99 cap, then guess what, that’s the maximum you can charge on iTunes too.
If you’re selling fiction, a magic price point is .99, as is 1.99 and 2.99 (and the “magic” royalty rate starts happening at 2.99). Think about using a lower price for a limited time to increase sales momentum. An even more magical price is FREE – check out the Kindle Select program to see if it’s right for you.
E-book Specific Marketing Copy and Special Features
Metadata – especially book descriptions – are hugely important in differentiating your book from the competition. Now that almost anyone can be their own publisher, readers make their buying decisions based on a great book cover and a great book description. More information is better than less. Consider listing your entire table of contents. Be sure to have a robust book description.
Outsourcing & Why it Makes $$ Sense
The learning curve to create an ebook can be pretty steep. Not only do you need to know how to code HTML and CSS, you also need to know how the book looks on ereaders and how to compile the book so that it works. A good HTML coder could take 6-8 hours of coding time to create a more complex ebook. If you have an inhouse programmer, you might be tempted to add this to their list of responsibilities. However, this could cost quite a bit more than outsourcing your files. If you outsource, you’re guaranteed to get a high-quality file, created by professional ebook designers in one to two weeks. These designers know what each format can and cannot do, and are experts in maximizing the files for difficult formats like Kindle. They know how to handle images so they take up the least amount of space possible, and how to consistently show charts. They can handle textboxes, lists, and complex formatting. You could take hours to learn all of these technologies, or you could pay an expert to do it for you and get back to what you really love: CREATING YOUR NEXT BESTSELLER!