9/6/13

How To E-Book: Things You Didn't Think About

Now that the e-book of Those Who Trespass is out, I can give you a little insight into the process of creating an e-book for Kindle! I wish I could do long, drawn-out posts, but those are a bit dull to read...and I don't exactly have the time to write them. So instead of meals, we're going to have snacks. :) Good, appetizer snacks. I thought about having something fancy today, but then Aimee mentioned cheesy goodness in a comment, and I thought: Cheetos {don't judge me}. You know how they have bottomless ice tea at some restaurants? We have a never-ending bowl of Cheetos.

Things To Do {That You Didn't Think About}
You wrote your book. You formatted your book for Kindle. You're done, right?

Well, you could be. But I doubt you'd have many sales. Because there's a few things to do and think about that aren't actually part of the book writing process.
  • How much of a percentage do you want from your e-book? 70% or 35%? There are benefits to the 35% choice, but none of them seemed worth it for fledgling authors. {But that's just me, though. You are responsible for your own money-making research and decisions.}
  • What's your e-book's price? Kindle requires you to pick something within $2.99 and $9.99 {that may be specific to the 70% choice, I'm not sure}. Too little, and you lose value. Too much, and you lose customers. Good luck.
  • The description. You need a blurb. {See this post for more on blurb creation.} Which is to say, you need to weave less than 150 words together to tell people what your book is about...and entice them to read it.
    • But wait, you're not done! Got any reviews or accolades or contest winnings? You need to gather those together and put them in the same piece of text! {I recommend having at least one--but please, no more than 3 or 4--review. Get a friend to do it if you don't know anyone with "titles" that has read your book. It just feels better for a reader if someone else has read the story.}
    • You may or may not want to take this opportunity to HTML format this piece of text {summary, accolades, etc...}. Find an online "html generator" {those are your Google search keywords, you're welcome} that will do it for you, if you can't. I can't say that the Kindle version will be formatted like this, but the CreateSpace version will, so you'll have to do it sometime.
    • One more thing: if you plan on having an age limit disclaimer sort of thing, this is where that goes.
  • Cover. Make sure it's legible in thumbnail size and comparable to other books in your genre.
What about sample pages/Look Inside? Do I have to plan those? No. Amazon does that on its own without your input.
What about an ISBN? This deserves its own post, and will probably get one, but the short answer is that for Kindle {this is Kindle-specific advice, not for Smashwords or anything else like that}, you don't necessarily need an ISBN and can get away without one.

Whew! That's a lot! I'm trying to keep these brief, for my own sake as well as yours, haha. Expect more on covers and the ISBN dilemma soon.

Oh, look, Cheetos!! {My fingers are orange...}

Posts in the How-To E-Book Series
Things You Didn't Think About: Pricing, Percentages, Descriptions, Sample Pages {this post}
Formatting Tips: Hard Returns, Paragraph Indentions, More Paragraph Spacing
Formatting Tips: Margins, Fonts, Justification, Paragraph Spacing, Tabs
Formatting Tips: Heading Styles

1 comment:

Lydia Kang said...

So informative, thank you!