Publishing and promoting stories in the digital age of storytelling

Besides a great story of course, what’s involved in producing a good ebook? Here’s what I think the right components are and how we built Indie Aisle around them.

Proper formatting - ensuring ebook readers display your writing correctly can be more complicated than it needs to be for what’s essentially text and images. We built the visual editor so it’s as easy as possible to format. It also includes extra ebook functionality like a Table of Contents, custom margins and automated image compression.

Good meta info - metadata catalogs your ebook in a way for people to find it in their ebook reader’s library as well as for online sellers to list your ebook. It is saved along with your ebook files. We show you the essential info you need to include and let you make the changes you need.

The right file formats - as ebooks continue to evolve, their formats will continue to change, making it difficult to keep up with all of them. We’ve got you covered with all the standard ebook formats for online retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks and Smashwords. We automatically convert to the files you need with the right formatting and metadata to go along with them. And we follow all the latest requirements for each format so you don’t have to.

Available for readers to buy - make it simple for your readers to buy and access your ebook. Make sure it’s available on various online sellers, especially ones people are familiar with like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iBooks. And as an indie author doing your own promotion, also give them the option to buy from you directly. We give you the ability to do that with your own sales/info page. We handle the payment processing and give your readers the option to read online or to send files to their ebook reader of choice.

We’re happy to announce the only ebook Editor you’ll ever need to format your stories. No programming required, it’s a simple interface that shows you what your ebook looks like and will look like on reading devices. And it let’s you add the necessary components ebook formats support, from metadata to content break points.

Once you’ve formatted your story, you have the option to convert it to standard ebook files: EPUB for Nook and iBooks, MOBI for Amazon’s Kindle, PDF for PC and Mac. And for digital comics, CBR and CBZ. You can be sure your story is converted accurately because the editor is based on the same formatting language used in most of the ebook formats themselves.

The ebook Editor is a web app which means you don’t have to install any software and your ebook files are stored in the cloud, accessible from any computer with a web browser.

For more info, have a look at an overview of all the features.

To get started, sign up for your free account.

We’ve been working on our biggest feature yet, the Indie Aisle eBook Editor. It’s a visual formatting tool that allows you to make sure your story is properly formatted and has the right components for ebook form. The editor allows you to convert to standard ebook formats including EPUB, Kindle MOBI and PDF.

Most ebooks are based on a standard formatting language: HTML. Because the eBook Editor is built for the web browser, it works natively with HTML. So when you export, you know your story is going to convert as you intended.

All you have to do is import your file or just paste your text into the editor and upload any images you may have. It works across all modern browsers so you can use it from different computers, no need to download or install any extra software.

We’re still putting the finishing touches on it. The launch is November 1st and will be free to use. Sign up to get notified as soon as it’s ready.

ebooks have been around since the beginning of personal computers. Part of the reason people are now reading ebooks is because of devices available to read them on like Amazon’s Kindle. (If you’re interested in a short history regarding this, check out my Tumblr post). But there are now more devices specifically for ebook reading: the Nook from Barnes & Noble, Kobo Reader, iPad with its iBookstore, and Google Books on Android devices and tablets like the Nexus 7. The ebook market is expanding. How can indie authors continue to adapt? And what happens to fans of their work with all the devices available?

One way to handle the different platforms is to use a distribution service like Smashwords.com where they send your ebook to many different online retailers. This seems like a good way to go, but because of the middle man, the royalty rate for the author gets cut to as much as 50% or less. It’s also questionable if it’s even worth distributing to any other retailers besides Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple which you could just do on your own. By going to select retailers on your own, you have more control over how you market for certain audiences and spend time focusing on the ones that you’re really getting sales on.

Trying to keep up with all the devices and retailers also creates fragmentation of your work, making it hard to develop a fanbase. Which is why I think the best approach is to make yourself the source for your fans. You can offer your fans a hub to get your work directly from you and give them options of alternative retailers they may prefer. But by becoming the source, you develop a connection with your fans, allowing them to come back to you instead of the retailer or device.

At this year’s Phoenix Comicon, when I wasn’t at the booth, I decided to check out some of the many panels. One of them was Self-publishing from the Pros where veteran self-published authors shared their perspectives on being a successful independent author. The panel consisted of Michael A Stackpole, James A. Owen, and Jordan Summers. It was great hearing from authors with such a long history of self-publishing. Below are some of the insights I managed to jot down.

• Making money with ebooks: Don’t assume it’s a goldrush. The reason Amanda Hocking was so successful isn’t a fluke, it’s because she posted on message boards like crazy.
• Pricing an ebook: A fair cost is in the $4-7 range, with occasional promotions with price cuts.
• Promoting within your book: Be sure to include a chapter from your next book or some other kind of preview. Or share samples of other author’s work and get yours in their books.
• Piracy concerns: Piracy happens when the cost is higher than the perceived value. If you have a fair price people will pay it, especially when they know they are helping an author directly.
• Being signed with a traditional publisher: You usually get about 2-3 grand as an advance for a book, spend years writing it, and make about 40 cents per $5 sale of it afterward. If it’s not successful (selling at least 8,000 titles), you essentially have to start again from scratch.
• When to go with a traditional publisher: There’s no us vs publishers, both self-publishing and traditional options still work. Traditional publishing is not going away, it’s just changing. There’s potential to get some good deals from a publisher. But make sure you focus on what serves your overall career and your goals, not what you get that moment.

The overall theme that stuck out during the panel is that the only way to make a living as an author is to be consistent in your work and persistent in your efforts. Don’t count on writing a book every ten years, come out with work regularly. Like a show on TV, take advantage of series-based storytelling to build an audience over time. Team up with other authors to get your work out and reach new audiences. Think of your self as a brand and build a tribe/community of people interested in your work.

Self-publishing or traditional publishing is not a goal. The goal is to get a great story out to the world. As an author, you write and collaborate with a team of editors, cover designers, illustrators, marketers, distributors, stores, etc in order to get your story to your readers. Whether it’s through a publishing company or on your own, the same elements are required one way or another. What it really boils down to is managing this process so you have control over your work.

In the traditional publishing model, the publisher has to be very choosy with titles they decide to publish because of the amount of effort and great costs involved in the process of getting a book from the author to the reader. Because of this, the publisher feels they needed to take ownership away from the author in order to effectively run their model for getting books out. With ebooks and print-on-demand, the amount of effort and costs plummet. And since the investment is so low, authors no longer need to give the rights to their work away to the publisher. It’s the key factor to why authors are going indie now more than ever before. They realize the traditional model is broken and that they can take care of many of the aspects involved in publishing a book themselves for total control over their own work.

The best approach to publishing a book is to treat the process much like its own business startup. When a product is invented, its creation, manufacturing and consumption goes through the process of starting and managing a business. The writing, publishing and reading of a book works essentially the same way. It’s in fact how a different form of storytelling, Hollywood films, are made. Each production legally forms a company and hires people to fill different positions.

Being an indie author means having an entrepreneurial mindset and becoming a publishing empire of one. It means understanding the process and making it work your way instead of going by someone else’s model. Tools like Indie Aisle are available to help you accomplish this by giving you full control over how you get your story out to the world. It’s the future of how all of publishing will work, the shift in control from the publisher to the author.

Our new Promo Codes feature will allow you to send out custom codes for discounts and generate one-time use codes for giveaways and review copies. It’s been one of our most-requested features and we think we’ve figured out a great way to use it.

Under your published story options, you’ll now see a tab for ‘Promo Codes’.

The first option, Discount Codes, allows you to set a code phrase along with the amount of the discount to apply and a date for when the code should expire. Once a code is added, it shows up in a list showing live data on when it gets used and how much time left until it expires. Expired codes will be archived at the bottom of the list.

The second option, Free Copies, lets you provide individual copies with a secure, generated code that expires within 30 days of activation or if canceled manually. These codes can be used to send out review/galley copies of your ebook or for free giveaways.

These new options are an extension of our goal to help authors better promote their ebooks and reach new readers.

There’s no doubt ebooks are changing the way we enjoy our books, so of course publishing, the process by which an author gets their work to their readers, is completely changing as well. If the term ‘self-publish’ means essentially having control over all aspects of the publishing process, then it’s never been more accurate than with digital publishing. Let’s look at what’s involved in the publishing process and how you can handle it on your own as an indie author using the same methods as traditional big publishing companies:

1. Get funding upfront – big publishers provide this when you sign the rights to your book away to them, you can essentially do it on your own using your circle of friends and ‘crowdsource’ your funding with tools like Kickstarter and RocketHub
2. Package your story – either in print or digitally, you have to figure out the proper way to format and output your work; this includes having someone edit it and someone to design a good cover; the way big publishers do it is they find and outsource to freelance agencies and individuals; you can do the same with sites like Elance and Behance
3. Build a reputation – as companies, big publishers develop a presence; you can do it with your own online presence by using social networks and various community-based platforms like GoodReads and LibraryThing
4. Market your story – as you build your reputation, leverage your social networks, plan out a tour by finding and contacting venues to do readings at, send out review copies, get a table at a convention; the web is a great communication tool for finding these opportunities the same way a big publisher would do it
5. Sell – make sure you have a proper site setup where people can buy your book; big publishers usually outsource this to someone else and you can do the same; you can also use the same online marketplaces big publishers use like Amazon and Barnes & Noble; or get a better cut with Smashwords and Indie Aisle

Start small and build up little by little, repeat the write and promote cycle with every story you release and you’ll get better at it along the way. The publishing process used to be so complex only a big company could handle all its moving parts, but with new tools and communication methods that the web has brought and continues to bring, it’s now possible to do it on your own, and become your own publishing empire.