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BB eBooks Newsletter – February 12, 2013
Dear Friend,
Greetings to our friends around the world. We have some exciting new developments at BB eBooks and please have a look below.
Year of the Snake
It is officially Chinese New Year! We wish everyone a healthy and prosperous year with unstoppable success on eBook sales and constant discoverability for your eBooks and future writing projects. All of Bangkok was painted red over the weekend to keep up with the spirit of auspicious blessing. You can find out more about the Year of the Snake according to the Chinese Zodiac, which consists of 12 different animals.
EPUB 3.0 Support
Back to our latest announcements, BB eBooks is proud to now offer EPUB3-compliant eBooks as part of our regular services. Although the latest standard from the IDPF has been around since 2011, it seems that full support of the standard is far from a reality due to sluggish development from the major platforms. Nonetheless, partial support is made possible by iBooks and the Readium plugin for Chrome. Both of them boast rendering a more sophisticated layout and file formats, including support for audio and video. Our shop is standing by to help you wow your readers with new technology.
The End of the Meatgrinder (Thank God!)
Were you frustrated with Smashwords’ Meatgrinder? BB eBooks sure was! It seems they have realized how much pain they have afflicted upon authors by launching this broken conversion software. Smashwords now allows indie authors and publishers to directly upload EPUB to the server safe and sound without getting into a situation where your eBook turns into a “generic, bland looking block of text.” The unsatisfying production that comes out of the automatic conversion is purely not good enough for your readers. While the Smashwords EPUB Direct platform is still buggy, check out a video we made to help guide you through the process. Contact us if you need to get your EPUB eBook ready for Smashwords.
Cinematic Book Trailers and Other Promotional Tools
If book trailers are one of the essential parts in your promotion strategy, adding a cinematic touch into your trailer will probably help out with your sales pitch to potential fans. On our blog, we discuss how home video can be spiced up to stir your readers’ curiosity. Sample trailers will take your breath away as they have generated likes and comments significantly. Another great sales pitch is signaled by the success of Kindle Single, where the King himself contributes his “pulls-no-punches” essay to propel Amazon’s platform to greater recognition. While we refrain from discussing politics at BB eBooks, Stephen King's activist-themed single is lighting up the charts. Additionally, a business interpretation of eBook success will describe how eReaders continue to remain preferable choice for readers.
Pinterest: Visual Art Lover
Recommended by one of our dear friends, Pinterest has become a viable tool for a holistic marketing strategy. If words on Twitter and Facebook are not enough, you can experiment with pinning your book covers or artwork illustration to attract your fans. After that, you can also create your own board to gather similar information and idea about your topics of interest. This Writing, Blogging, and Book Promotion board, for example, shows how useful information can be endlessly drawn at the tip of your finger.
International Reception of eBooks
International reception of eBooks in Germany and India shows how well readers respond to the new digital paradigm. In Germany, 52% growth rate is reported among 40+ year old readers while Indian students start to embrace digital reading wholeheartedly. However, in Canada, the pricing fluctuation issue seems to paint Amazon as a bad guy that tainted one author’s book with uncontrollable price adjustments.
Guest Post Submissions Now Open
Our blog awaits your penciling fulfillment. Thanks to our Twitter follower, Darlene E. Williams, who discusses the benefit of writing guest posts, we would like to give a call out to submit your posts to BB eBooks to reveal your writing process or success stories. The main reason we want you to participate in this is hopefully the virtual space will serve as a worktable for everyone to share their ideas and tips to develop the independent author’s community. Please contact us if you are interested, and we'll be sure to promote your post through our social media network. If you ask nicely, we can probably swing a discount on your next eBook conversion too.
Thank you for your trust in BB eBooks’ service and we look forward to the brighter future with the full adoption of EPUB 3.0 standard that will hopefully come sooner rather than later.
Yours sincerely,
The BB eBooks Team
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