Epublishing with Lulu, Amazon, Nook, iBookstore, PDF, Print-on-demand
Posted: Friday, November 18, 2011
by Jennifer Stewart
Stepping out of History
Oh heavens, I’m so behind with everything, WryteStuff, emails, sleep, reading, piano, singing, you name it! I think I’ve been eating but I can’t be sure. At the end of every day I look at the backlog and groan. Tomorrow… But we all know about that wretched phenomenon and it’s reluctance to ever arrive.
This e-publishing thing isn’t as simple as I thought! It’s much more exciting and interesting than I expected, though, so that’s compensation enough for me. But it’s time consuming, learning something from scratch. You never know when you start what lies ahead, what obstacles are going to rudely interrupt your day and your night and steal all your time away from you. Of course you don’t - well I don’t anyway, and it’s a good thing. If I did I’d never start anything.
In the past week or so (couple of weeks? I don’t know, time has gone awol also, or my registration of it, anyway) I’ve learned how to format for Lulu.com using styles and headings, how to create an active table of contents, how to not have a nervous breakdown when word disobeys me or the epub converter says “oops, something’s wrong” but doesn’t explain adequately how to fix it.
I’ve also learned how to ask questions on forums that elicit answers I can occasionally understand, hah! Now there’s progress. What else? Well, I’ve discovered that it’s best to epublish on as many fronts as possible, so now I’ve cracked Amazon’s epublishing system, formatting Word and saving it as html and stuffing the whole thing through MobiPocket so Kindle readers can download it.
What’s more, I don’t have a Kindle, but I now have Kindle for PC, which is pretty much the same thing. Free download, too. Amazon is definitely the best. They’ve got fantastic instructions, and brilliant support who actually answer your questions exactly and using baby-talk. They also charge 30% and take off 30% for tax which I resent immensely - not because I don’t want to pay American tax, I’m fine with that. Anything I can do to help, guys. No, I’m resentful because it doesn’t allow me to vote for Obama.
Getting off track here. I’ve learned how to convert a Word doc into a pdf - yes I know, that’s not such a great achievement since you just choose the convert to pdf option! But I was scared I wouldn’t know how to do it before I did it, so I’m adding it to my list of things I’m feeling proud about. I’ve also improved my tantrum skills. Today my book became available on Nook and iBookstore! I’d been told it would be months. But alas I had to revise it and so I’ve got to go through the whole submission process again. Gaahhh.
Notwithstanding which, the upshot of all of it is that I’m feeling pretty empowered. I’ll have my book available on for Adobe Digital Editions, Nook, iBookstore, Amazon, Lulu.com, and pretty soon I’ll have print-on-demand on Lulu as well. I’ll also have it available as a PDF and people will be able to pay me for that directly through Paypal. I didn’t know how to do any of it before I started. Learning is such an exciting thing, when you actually crack it! Wow. That’s when I can say truthfully that I just love those challenges…
Compare that to finishing your book and feeling triumphant then sending it off to a million publishers and getting a bunch of “we’ll get back to you within 6 months”. Deflation city. No, this way is much more fun. I haven’t started any marketing yet, because I’m waiting until I have the whole caboodle sorted out. Then, da da da daaa… I read somewhere that Mark Twain sold The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn door to door at first. I’m not sure if it’s true, because I couldn’t verify it, but it’s a nice idea. Start small. Believe in yourself and your work. Never give up. Do whatever you have to do to get your baby into the world.
The thing is, whatever the outcome, I’ll at least have the fulfillment of doing something I'm passionate about and am having fun with, and putting everything I’ve got into it.
In the past week or so (couple of weeks? I don’t know, time has gone awol also, or my registration of it, anyway) I’ve learned how to format for Lulu.com using styles and headings, how to create an active table of contents, how to not have a nervous breakdown when word disobeys me or the epub converter says “oops, something’s wrong” but doesn’t explain adequately how to fix it.
I’ve also learned how to ask questions on forums that elicit answers I can occasionally understand, hah! Now there’s progress. What else? Well, I’ve discovered that it’s best to epublish on as many fronts as possible, so now I’ve cracked Amazon’s epublishing system, formatting Word and saving it as html and stuffing the whole thing through MobiPocket so Kindle readers can download it.
What’s more, I don’t have a Kindle, but I now have Kindle for PC, which is pretty much the same thing. Free download, too. Amazon is definitely the best. They’ve got fantastic instructions, and brilliant support who actually answer your questions exactly and using baby-talk. They also charge 30% and take off 30% for tax which I resent immensely - not because I don’t want to pay American tax, I’m fine with that. Anything I can do to help, guys. No, I’m resentful because it doesn’t allow me to vote for Obama.
Getting off track here. I’ve learned how to convert a Word doc into a pdf - yes I know, that’s not such a great achievement since you just choose the convert to pdf option! But I was scared I wouldn’t know how to do it before I did it, so I’m adding it to my list of things I’m feeling proud about. I’ve also improved my tantrum skills. Today my book became available on Nook and iBookstore! I’d been told it would be months. But alas I had to revise it and so I’ve got to go through the whole submission process again. Gaahhh.
Notwithstanding which, the upshot of all of it is that I’m feeling pretty empowered. I’ll have my book available on for Adobe Digital Editions, Nook, iBookstore, Amazon, Lulu.com, and pretty soon I’ll have print-on-demand on Lulu as well. I’ll also have it available as a PDF and people will be able to pay me for that directly through Paypal. I didn’t know how to do any of it before I started. Learning is such an exciting thing, when you actually crack it! Wow. That’s when I can say truthfully that I just love those challenges…
Compare that to finishing your book and feeling triumphant then sending it off to a million publishers and getting a bunch of “we’ll get back to you within 6 months”. Deflation city. No, this way is much more fun. I haven’t started any marketing yet, because I’m waiting until I have the whole caboodle sorted out. Then, da da da daaa… I read somewhere that Mark Twain sold The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn door to door at first. I’m not sure if it’s true, because I couldn’t verify it, but it’s a nice idea. Start small. Believe in yourself and your work. Never give up. Do whatever you have to do to get your baby into the world.
The thing is, whatever the outcome, I’ll at least have the fulfillment of doing something I'm passionate about and am having fun with, and putting everything I’ve got into it.
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)Jennifer, I always know you can do the things you want to do, it's only a matter of time and there, you have done it. So, learning about the e things really is exciting and challenging. May your books sell like hot cakes and a big CONGRATULATION to you.
Hilda, reading your comment brought a big smile to my face! Your faith in me has helped me hugely :)
Such fun to walk this journey along with you. Thanks for sharing your learning with everyone.It's so amazing to have you walk with me! :) At some point I'm going to write a how-to epublish for people who don't know much about the internet.
Hilda, I have been working with the Lulu program for a while now. In that period of time, I published three books written by some of my friends and, let me tell you, it was quite a challenge. I am publishing another book now and the main problem that I continue to have is that when I upload the files to Lulu, they do not appear as they appear in the template provided by Lulu. So, I need to make changes in terms of spacing using my imagination. That is very time consuming and, many times, frustrating. Still, when you have the final product, it is such an incredible satisfaction. Keep up the work, Hilda!!!Nestor, thanks for commenting. Congratulations on the three books. It's wonderful to read that somebody else knows exactly what I'm talking about!
p.s. I'm Jennifer, not Hilda!
Well here you are! Hold on to your self and be the great writer and doer that you are.Mmm, hold on to your self, I love that. I'm feeling it really strongly at the moment.
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