There’s another new tablet, this time from Amazon, the Kindle Fire. This doesn’t appear to be a typical tablet though. It doesn’t have a camera, or all the extra hardware features other tablet makers are competing on. The thing that sets it apart is what it has on it and what you would use it for: media. Amazon has been building a platform of digital media throughout the years and it turns out books were just the beginning.
So what does this mean for indie publishers? It means storytelling in all forms of media, is opening up even more potential for independent publishing and distribution:
For authors who are currently selling in the Amazon marketplace, this expands readership
If you’re a comic book creator who’s been hesitant about the Amazon marketplace because the Kindle doesn’t do color, then this is your answer
For independent filmmakers, this could be a sign that Amazon will start including independent films in its streaming library, the way Netflix currently does
For video game makers and interactive storytellers, this is a new marketplace to sell on along with all other Android-based tablets and smartphones
As the original Kindle changed distribution for independent authors to sell in the Amazon marketplace, so will this version of the Kindle, going beyond books to comics, movies and interactive games.
However, you may notice that this appears to be a closed platform similar to Apple’s iTunes. But there is an additional feature the tablet has that I think is a glimpse into the true potential for indie publishing and distribution: the web. Amazon has created their own enhanced web browser, called Silk, dedicated to being fast and playing media well. And this is where it opens up to any indie publishers to provide access to their work since in a web browser, access to anything online is a link away.
Computer software developers have been moving to exclusively develop web apps because of ‘cloud’ capabilities. And as companies implement more cloud-based features into their devices, having your ebooks and media work using the web browser as a reader is the way to go. Not to mention that it’s also the best way to provide new forms of storytelling using multimedia and interactivity. The web will become the primary method for providing content for the future of distribution: web-based digital devices.
Indie Aisle attended it’s first convention this past weekend, the Phoenix Comicon. It was a great event and I talked to a lot of people about reading digitally including how comics fit into the various options that are available. I also did a panel, Indie Publishing for E-Reading, that talked about the process of authors and artists making their own work available as eBooks. Below are my notes from it.
eBooks and e-reading devices – Available through various platforms like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Comixology, etc. and via digital files downloaded to devices like Kindle, Nook, iPad, tablets, smartphones, and PCs. A newer option is to also read online – no e-reading software required except a web browser available on most devices.
Traditional publishing vs digital ePublishing – Traditional publishing requires printing and delivery. Digital makes the process easier, with the internet for distribution and delivery made straight to e-reading devices. Even the payment process is easier for both the seller and buyer.
Going the self-publishing route – Because the distribution and delivery to devices can be made the same way, it’s essentially a level playing field for publishing companies and those doing it on their own.
What to use when writing your story – Apple’s Pages and Scrivener for Mac, OpenOffice with ePub extension for PC, Photoshop for comics to scan clean and export as JPEGs.
Converting to eBook formats – Use Sigil to manually format ePub files, then Calibre to convert to Kindle, and Adobe Acrobat for PDF files. Files require certain software to read, but there is a lot out there to use.
Publishing platforms/online stores – Amazon and Kindle device, Barnes & Noble and Nook, Smashwords, Comixology for comics. Platforms typically lock readers into having to use their software to read eBooks. Or they provide files that are encoded by DRM which can only be viewed by certain reading devices and software.
Promoting – Both traditional publishers and going indie still requires promotion. But even that’s simpler with tools on the web. Including Indie Aisle.
Since the launch of Indie Aisle, we’ve been getting a lot of feedback. Our recent improvements to the tool have been made with that feedback in mind. And today we’re announcing a feature we think will be a perfect tool for authors to get their eBooks to their fans. Our new eBook download widget allows an author to post a button for anyone to download their eBook, directly on their own website. Indie Aisle takes care of the rest, making the order process quick and easy.
You can see an example of the widget in action on the right. There is also a square size available as an option. The eBook Widget is now available in the account area under ‘My Stories’ and the title of the eBook you’ve published.
If you’re interested about some of the other updates we’ve made, here’s a brief overview:
Whole lotta fixin’ and tweakin’ – functionality is cleaner and more responsive, including on the online Reader for reading stories across mobile devices
Improved interface – layout adjustments, a simplified download/order process
Upgraded publishing process – option to convert your ePub to Mobi/Kindle and PDF automatically or to upload only specific file types
Easier to sign up – You can use your Twitter or Facebook accounts to sign up
While authors have come to take publishing their story as an eBook more seriously, there’s still confusion about how to go about putting together the actual digital format. That’s why there’s a new role we’re going to be seeing more of in the future of publishing, the eBook developer. Their role will be to format and code eBooks to work across the number of devices becoming available and implement interactive features and media like video.
And since Indie Aisle’s mission is to help authors with the digital publishing process, we’ve decided to offer such a service. With an Indie Aisle account you are already able to uploaded your doc and have it automatically converted in standard eBook formats. It’s not a perfect system however, as it leaves out certain capabilities that specific eBook formats allow for. So we’ve put together a ‘Handcrafted eBook Conversion‘ package that takes the additional features of eBook formats into account. This includes written works as well as comics. And for a short time we’re offering to do first-time submissions at no charge. For details on the service and the offer, click here.
It shouldn’t be that complicated to find someone who wants to read your book, but because there’s an industry based around the process of finding people to read books they publish, it can seem like a daunting, complicated process. But does the traditional publishing process really work?
The way traditional publishing companies find people to read their books is based on flooding the market for a certain time period. They get the book in a bunch of bookstores and push marketing strategies for it, trying to grab for people’s attention and reach as wide an audience as possible from the get-go. It however depends on the publisher deciding what makes a good book. They have to predict how a book would sell to a certain group of people. Because this is so hard to do with any degree of accuracy, it essentially becomes a guessing game. It also singles out a lot of books that may not fit well into predefined categories.
Image Source: Google Code
So how about finding an audience by focusing on one person at a time. The internet is the perfect environment for doing just that. We’ve all heard about viral videos that spread online. The concept of being viral is just passing on something from one person to the next, branching out to a potentially large audience. Let’s take a book you’ve just published as an example. Your initial first few readers like your story, some of them tell someone else about it. Some of them Tweet about it. One of them may be a blogger with their own followers who posts a review of your story. At this point you have people talking about it and more reviews get posted in different forms. Eventually, depending on who it reaches and who the story connects with, who knows where it can go from there.
This may seem like an oversimplified example, but the process is becoming more common. With the internet becoming a bigger part of people’s everyday lives it’s turning into the standard way to decide how people spend their free-time. Which includes what book to read. Is yours available?
Below are notes from my recent Ignite Phoenix presentation.
We all enjoy stories. Stories come in many different forms and media, you can see some of them here (refer to slides).
Growing up, I loved reading comics and watching movies. After I finished high school, I also rediscovered reading books as I was able to read ones I wanted, not based on a school reading list! They were a great form of entertainment but they also offered ideas that I never would have thought about before the same way had it not been in the context of a narrative. The more I got into books, comics and movies, I started to see how they impacted and sort of guided my outlook on everything. They helped me learn about myself and my goals in life. I soon realized how important storytelling is to all of us and how it plays a big part of how we think and figure things out for ourselves.
Different forms of storytelling are all around us and as we’ve advanced technology, we’ve also developed various creative ways to tell stories. Let’s go through a little history. At the beginning, we would sit around the campfire talking about our day of hunting and gathering. We soon figure out how to draw on caves which eventually turns into symbols and a written language. From there we develop writing stories in a packaged form on paper and we are able to pass them on to others to read. We also put on live performances for audiences and develop the performing arts. And as modes of transportation evolve, the delivery of both of these forms of storytelling also expands.
Soon comes the revolution of the printing press and we are able to distribute written stories on a mass scale in forms of books and newspapers allowing us to learn about the world around us easier and quicker than ever before. Additional technology soon gives us the ability to take photographs that accompany written stories and are able to even tell their own stories.
And in the further evolution of packaging stories, recorded sound and eventually video creates its own art form for telling stories and brings us to our modern times of film and television. Storytelling with sight and sound makes enjoying a story more accessible, who doesn’t enjoy a good movie or TV show? And with everyone having a TV in their home, the audience is bigger than ever before. It also gives us a greater amount of choice in the kinds of stories we enjoy and has even lead to a form of interactive storytelling through video games.
As technology shapes the way we tell stories, it really seems like our need for storytelling is what develops these technologies. Now we are going through the biggest technology shift that affects nearly all previous forms of media for telling stories before it. With digital media and the Internet, nearly all forms of packaged storytelling before now are all available in an instant, at your fingertips. From reading news and books, listening to audio broadcasts, watching movies and TV shows, and so on. It’s all available on our computers, our TVs, our mobile phones or new forms of devices we’re inventing, like a Kindle or an iPad.
Tools for creating and sharing stories are also becoming easier to use. Anyone can tell their stories online and share them with the world very easily. Either on their own personal website, a blog or on Twitter. Everyone is now their own publisher. And with everything being digital, there’s new potential creative ways of storytelling like mixed media storytelling where, for example, a written story can now have videos you can play that go along with it. It’s already being done and will no doubt go even further in the future.
So all of this has lead me to developing Indie Aisle, a platform specifically designed for storytelling in the digital / internet age. Authors publish and promote their stories using various tools and the sales and distribution is all handled online. And all of us that enjoy new original stories can read them on various devices.
I’ve been working on the project for about a year and half now and it’s almost ready for release this November. For more info, visit indieaisle.com. And sign up for the beta if you’re interested in indie publishing by going to indieaisle.com/signup.
We’ve gone over the focus on the narrative and the forms stories come in, now let’s talk about sharing stories on Indie Aisle. One of the things that makes the internet so great is how we are able to communicate in a variety of ways and quickly share ideas with other people. Indie Aisle has been designed with this in mind, by offering two ways to connect with people:
Find and follow
Authors can keep their fans updated, and everyone can find and keep track of great indie authors on Indie Aisle. This is done by posting short updates and choosing to follow other people’s updates. Additionally, you can keep a personalized library of stories and let people get an idea of the kinds of stories you enjoy as well as see what other people are reading.
Share with the web
To take the experience even further, Indie Aisle integrates with the openness of the web by allowing you to share with other web services that you’re already familiar with by connecting them with Indie Aisle. Starting with Twitter and Facebook, in the future they’ll be many different services to pick from with different options for how to integrate each into your Indie Aisle profile.
The combination of the people you connect with, the stories you share, and how you customize your settings, makes your Indie Aisle profile unique to your personality. And how you interact with the tool allows you to connect with people from across the web and across the world!
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!
While the topic of eBook formats seems complicated and usually leads to getting into confusing tech jargon, I’m going to try and make it as easy to understand as possible. Let’s start by looking at the most widely-used electronic formats and how they are currently supported:
Adobe PDF – Most common for reading on your computer, originally designed for portable electronic documents, has some limitations when it comes to reading on eReaders or mobile devices
MobiPocket – Originally designed specifically for mobile devices, most modern devices have switched away from it, the biggest current supporter is the Amazon Kindle device
RTF (Rich Text Format) and TXT (Plain Text) – Have wide support but very limited formatting options
ePub – Works virtually all eReading devices, except Amazon’s Kindle
The ePub format is the one to keep an eye on since it could well be the universal format used across all platforms. The reason it works so well is because it is essentially developed the same way as the webpage you’re reading right now. And since most mobile devices and even eReaders come with internet browsers, it makes it a no-brainer to support it.
Another big advantage is that ePub allows for multiple types of books. From primarily text-based to more stylized layouts, to even comic books. You can start with practically any word processing software, or with something like Adobe InDesign for more specific styling and layout, or Photoshop for your comics and either export it out directly to ePub or use one of the many tools available for doing so.
One caveat with ePub is that it does not use any DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection. But if we’ve learned anything from the music industry and MP3s, no DRM is a good thing as it’s ultimately unnecessary.
Update: Thanks to Liza Daly who pointed out that there is in fact ability to add DRM to ePub files. I still feel that it is unnecessary, but the option is there.
People are reading comics now more than ever and as people get used to reading eBooks on different devices, comic books will certainly become a part of their reading. Comics have actually already gone digital even before eBooks gained ground through online comic strips. I’ve been reading them for years and the idea of a device like the iPad brings new potential to how comics can be enjoyed. It also means that there is now a new platform for indie comic creators to expand their audience.
A great article I came across recently at Digital Book World talks about how the iPad and eBooks medium can be used for comics even when having to compete with a big publisher like Marvel or DC. I’ve highlighted a few good points that the author makes about how comics will be read digitally:
“A lot of people read comics digitally, but not enough on any single device to make digital distribution viable unless you’re able to make your content available on multiple platforms.”
“Breaking barriers and reinventing comics as a primarily digital art form is the only way to get beyond Marvel and DC’s stranglehold on the market.”
“Instead of multiple pages of panels read left-to-right, a comic can be a single page PDF one panel wide and hundreds of panels long scrolled down on your phone. It can be a slide show watched on a TV screen. Stories can be told from three different character points of view that you can toggle back and forth from. None of this is easily or cost-effectively possible with novels or video. Only comics seem to have this level of flexibility.”
“Text can be converted to tagged XML metadata files, which in turn can then easily be converted to any number of eBook formats, from Mobi to ePub. Metadata can be tagged to maximize web search capabilities; digital files for typical books can built in such a way as to facilitate easy and efficient ‘chunking’ and repurposing.”
Be sure to read the two-part article titled “Digital Comics: Level the Playing Field” for more: Part I | Part II
The Indie Aisle blog offers tips on publishing and promoting stories in the digital age of storytelling and includes updates on the Indie Aisle web app. Subscribe to Blog
Indie Aisle allows you to publish and sell your story on your own. There is no cost to sign up and get started.
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There’s another new tablet, this time from Amazon, the Kindle Fire. This doesn’t appear to be a typical tablet though. It doesn’t have a camera, or all the extra hardware features other tablet makers are competing on. The thing that sets it apart is what it has on it and what you would use it for: media. Amazon has been building a platform of digital media throughout the years and it turns out books were just the beginning.
Adobe PDF – Most common for reading on your computer, originally designed for portable electronic documents, has some limitations when it comes to reading on eReaders or mobile devices