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BB eBooks Newsletter – May 10, 2013
Dear Friend,
Hope you are gearing up for the weekend and that the upcoming summer will allow you more time to write. Here’s some tips to get you going.
Hybrid Authors
For those of you who still cannot decide which publishing road to pursue, hybrid authoring is not such a bad choice according to Michael J. Sullivan. How can we be positive about that? Crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter has unlocked author’s limited budget and allowed backers to handle financial support to launch a writing project. Apart from Kickstarter, tweens and teenagers are the shining determiners of literary consumption.
Rumors of Rumors – China and Elsewhere
The week of rumors reveals how Amazon might parade to China very soon when the domain name has been taken off the shelf. Meaning: Chinese consumers will be blessed with Kindle eBooks in their native language very soon if the rumor becomes reality. Luckily BB eBooks can do Chinese eBooks, so we will be well equipped to help you “chase the dragon” so to speak. On a separate note, E-Ink inventors are nominated for European Inventor Award. Their creation has revolutionized the way we read eBooks. Things do not look well for CourseSmart, the digital textbook provider. Their server crashed during the exam when students needed them the most but they utilized social media to report repairing progress. Textbooks as eBooks seems to be adopted a little slower than expected, and this type of whale-fail moment does not help matters.
An Old Print Book to an eBook? (It’s Possible!)
We get many queries from authors whether we can convert a scanned book into a perfect eBook. Although the answer is yes, there are a few steps you can DIY before sending the file to us. Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to scan the book can help recognize the texts pretty efficiently. You can pay external service like 1DollarScan to do the manual work for you. Please let us know how we can help, and we provided a few tips on what to look out for when copyediting a scanned book that used OCR.
Extra! Extra! DRM Stinks
Tor Books officially parts way with DRM, as they officially announce on their website. It’s been a year without the protection system and everyone seems happy without DRM. Although there is a split opinion to support and object to the concept, it seems the naysayers will stay away from DRM as much as possible. The Digital Reader names it the ‘‘bugaboo of this digital reader’. Apart from DRM, eBook growth hits a new high in UK. According to the Telegraph, publishers have begun to see growth of digital content that compensates the declining sales of print books. With eBooks, it is a few clicks away for readers to make a buying decision.
How to Change Your eBook (Careful Trying This at Home)
Making changes in your eBook is very common. We get that many times. Please inform us of the new changes and we will do the magic trick to make that happen without costing you a fortune. Although there might be a speculation that we are a vanity press, we would like to make ourselves clear that we’re just a contractor (call us the plumbers). We professionally design your eBook but take no royalties portion or secretly stab you from behind by adding hidden fees like Author Solutions. We will do our best to deliver the eBook to you as fast as possible. Paul wrote a few tips on how you can edit your eBook yourself, but we really only recommend if everyone at BB eBooks gets hit by a bus. With Bangkok's nutty traffic, it is certainly in the realm of possibility.
Writers’ Day in Bangkok
Joining Writers’ Day hosted by Writers’ Association of Thailand early this month was a fun activity to watch and a feast for my craving stomach. More than 100 writers and authors enjoyed generous dinner and Thai traditional dance (ram wong). In the picture, Prapassorn Sevikul—famous author of countless classics and National Artist of Thailand of 2011—was giving an interview to a local TV channel, TPBS.
Self-Publishing Tips
Digital publication is changing fast and indie authors must always be aware of useful promotional tools. Although free tools are hard to come by these days, you can spend less money on sites like Kindle Daily Nation, Pixel of Ink, or ebookbuster.com However, never underestimate the gravitational force KDP Select still has. Barry Eisler writes in The Guardian how he perceives digital publication as the positive change. Formerly, paper medium was so powerful and successful traditional author can pose with big smile. Today, traditional publication has become less relevant when indie authors earn higher royalties on “push-button à la carte service” from online retailers. Period.
Also, please have a look at a new Smashwords study that looks at trends of top-selling eBooks. One of the big takeaways is to keep those titles short and keep the word count high. Proust would have made a killing in today's market if he were still alive.
Yours sincerely,
The BB eBooks Team
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