Indie Aisle » Writing

Ebook-ready writing apps

Ovi Demetrian Jr — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:47:26 +0000

Since pen and paper, new tools have come along the way to help the writing process. The ultimate tool, the computer not only allows you write, but brings additional options that for the modern author to publish on their own and make their work available to the world via the web.

Here are some of the best writing apps I’ve come across that make it easy to export your manuscript to standard ebook formats:

Pandamian – a new web app dedicated to writing and publishing to standard ebook formats
WordPress - originally a web app for blogging, has become a great tool for writing and publishing on the web and has an ePub ebook export plugin
OpenOffice - free word processing app that has an ePub ebook export plugin you can add on
Apple Pages - for the Mac only, has a built in option to save out to ePub
Calibre – converts to various ebook formats including ePub and Mobi for Kindle
Sigil – open source app for fine tuning ePub ebook options

Indie Aisle launches!

Ovi Demetrian Jr — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 23:33:46 +0000

After about a year and half, from concept to interface design to development, Indie Aisle makes its debut today. You can now sign up for your own account, customize your profile page, interact with others (currently a few dedicated early adopters), and of course, publish and sell your eBook. And it’s just the beginning! Now that the core pieces are in place, we’ll be able to focus our attention on regularly adding new features that will greatly expand what you can do with Indie Aisle.

This month is also National Novel Writing Month which seems like an appropriate time to launch. As I followed some of the tweets from indie writers during their efforts for NaNoWriMo, it made me think about how my experience making the Indie Aisle web app could be a similar experience to writing a novel. Organizing ideas, getting it materialized bit by bit, revising, editing, revising, editing… I also realized that if it took me this long to get this thing done, I don’t think I would ever be able to write my own novel in just a month!

Anyway, it’s now good and ready so go get your indieaisle.com/name reserved by signing up. If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo, you’ve now got a place to publish your work, so be sure to do so and we’ll all have something to read over the holidays!

Indie Aisle is telling a story in various forms

Ovi Demetrian Jr — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:19:03 +0000

Going along with the previous post on the kinds of stories you can expect to see on Indie Aisle, this time I’ll talk about how the tool will allow you to publish your story. While mainly focused on digital stories, Indie Aisle is designed to ultimately let you decide the form you want your story to be in:

eBook – Upload your file and it is converted to a number of standard formats, set your own price for purchase through the website and earn 85% of all digital sales
Physical Book – Use various service providers for print versions of your story
Work in Progress – Post information on a story before you release it with options for fans to follow your updates on when it becomes available
Series – Ability to add multiple eBooks or physical books under the same story

Additionally, stories will also be categorized based on content format:

Primarily Text – Basic text formatting with or without accompanying illustrations
Styled Layout – Mainly text but with specific formatting and illustrations
Illustration-based – Full-page artwork with text being layed out around it
Comics – Artwork with specific areas for text

With each format there will be tips for how to lay out your story for outputting it as an eBook. It will also allow Indie Aisle to figure out how your story can be distributed and promoted in other venues outside the site. I will talk more about how that will be done in a future post!

Being indie means figuring out your own process

Ovi Demetrian Jr — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:24:57 +0000

As we all know being a successful writer means more than just writing. People have to also be made aware of your work. There are many factors typically involved in publishing a successful book, including:

Writing Process – Write and revise, work with an editor for polish and get feedback from people you know
Illustration – Work with a graphic designer for a good cover and/or a more stylized layout, and/or an illustrator for accompanying visuals
Publishing – Work with someone to meet certain technical preparations required for printing and digital output
Sales and Distribution – Work with brick and mortar book shops for print, and online marketplaces for eBooks
Promotion – Work with someone knowledgeable of marketing, get reviewed by professional critics and get interviewed in various publications

Besides the writing part, it’s everything else that can make going with a traditional publisher still a viable choice. However, technology and the internet have given us tools that change the entire process. It’s paved the way for the independent self-published writer. But going the indie route isn’t necessarily about doing it all yourself. Even though you could, collaborating with other people can give you an edge to compete with books still published by big companies. In fact there are services available that offer different approaches to doing this.

But beyond all the tools, the one greatest asset, the internet, allows you to choose how you want to do things every step of the way. As companies try to reinvent the publishing model, ultimately it’ll be the writers that will be in control of the process. Because that’s the best part of being indie, doing things your own way!