1. What happens in print stays in print.
You spent lots of time with us making sure your chapter header was that fancy font, and your text looked this way and that . You were real specific about paragraph indents and spacing too. Maybe we suggested some fancy scene dividers. Now its time to give all that up. Your ebook will look whack! If you feel that your ebook has to look exactly the same as your print version, its time to stop right now. You’ll have very bare-boned (read non-existent) design left.
2. Weird formatting and odd characters
The first ebook I read was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I had the print version as well. The ebook layout (if that’s what you’d call it) is just nasty and, well, Microsoft Word-looking. By my third book, I found stuff that the publisher didn’t even bother to try and figure out or fix. Check out the odd characters here. (sorry about the plot spoiler!) Other people noticed this too, so it wasn’t just my fancy new IPad, and posted comments right on Amazon.
If we had printed this same thing here at selfpublishing.com, you, the customer, would be screaming that we reprint or want your money back!
Amazon Kindle also includes things “to enhance my reading experience” like how many readers thought a bit of the book was interesting.
I personally don’t care how many people highlighted something. It makes me feel like I’m reading a used book, with someone else’s highlighter marks in it. This is my book, and want to have my experience, not 74 other people’s!
Kiss the Cover Goodbye
Yep – it might look something like your front cover – or not. Here’s a book I bought last night. Now this book is published by Harmony Books, imprint of Crown Publishing Group / Random House / Bertelsmann = doesn’t get any bigger. Thank goodness they’re still doing print versions or as a designer I’d be out of job! (Left: book on Amazon and print version. Right: how the cover comes up in the ebook version – welcome to design high school.)
Ebook or PDF
Ebooks have been around for a while. Apple has just upped the ante however. With IPad, the whole reader equation has changed. You currently need to go through some conversion process to change your PDF or layout to epub, or similar format. But wait – Apple has now announced that Ibooks (on IPad) can directly import and read PDFs. And it works. Well, sort of. If you’ve bookmarked chapters etc, that doesn’t work on the IPad. Yet. I’m thinking that in this very fluid environment it’s only days before this does all work. So do we even actually need an epub or ebook version? The jury is out.
Do you own an IPad, a Kindle, a Nook, a Kobo or other Ereader?
I’m amazed how many of our current customers asking for ebook conversion don’t even own a device they can read it on. Sure, you can read it on your computer, but why? Are your customer’s asking for it?
You might think you’re going to save a lot of money by only doing an ebook version. What are you going to do when your local library says, “Sure – we’ll take one” and your local bookstore says “Well, you’re a local author, so yes – we’ll pencil you in for a book reading.”? You’re going to turn up with your Kindle? You’re going to tell your friends and family that if they don’t have an ebook reader they can still read it (not a PDF version) on their computer? Ever read an entire book on your computer? I sure haven’t, and I wouldn’t want to.
Let’s go back to our Steig Larsson book, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. This – plus the other two books in the series – have sold a combined 20 million copies (as of early July). You think the publishers might consider skipping the print version and go all ebook? They’re going to tell the book-buying world. “We’re so cutting edge, we’ve cut the print run altogether!”? Not on you nelly, those sales figures speak for themselves.
If you’re not confident that you can sell even 100 copies of your book to family, friends and acquaintances, then perhaps you should research a different business model for your time and money!
Ebooks and the hard work
So you think that if you have an ebook lots more people will see it. Every World Cup game starts with a lovely new soccer ball – just like a new ebook. All those games, however, have two teams of highly-skilled players ready to do something with that ball. It’s not just sitting in the middle of the field for 90 minutes. What’s my point? You’re like those players, and you need to be out there driving where that ball – the ebook — goes. You want to win the World Cup? Then you’ve got to train, train, train, until you can’t do it any more. You’ve got to talk about your book everywhere. You’ve got to blog – post replies on other blogs. You’ve got more chance of having someone notice your ebook by opening our 12th floor window and shouting about it than converting to ebook and just listing on Amazon. Nobody even got into the World Cup without incredible amounts of hard work, and that’s what it will take to turn your book into a good seller.
Think carefully about your market, think about the sheer pleasure and satisfaction of having printed books in hand, and think long and hard about getting to the ebook world. Weigh every option and then go for it!
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