Anyone with epub publishing experience out there on the green ?
June 2, 2011 2:43 AM Subscribe
Anyone with epub publishing experience willing to share the rookie-mistakes to avoid ?
I've read this and this but I still feel nervous about releasing (for free) some old text that never got dead-tree-published.
I'm think this would be a risk-free way of dipping a toe in the e-book waters.
Still, I'd like some feedback from early pioneers, mostly focused on the tools to use (winXP or Os X 10.4) and the business/financial rookie-mistakes to avoid.
To sum up : what mistakes did you make in your first ebook publishing (and how to avoid them) ?
I've read this and this but I still feel nervous about releasing (for free) some old text that never got dead-tree-published.
I'm think this would be a risk-free way of dipping a toe in the e-book waters.
Still, I'd like some feedback from early pioneers, mostly focused on the tools to use (winXP or Os X 10.4) and the business/financial rookie-mistakes to avoid.
To sum up : what mistakes did you make in your first ebook publishing (and how to avoid them) ?
I learned how to publish to Kindle and other formats yesterday on a course - would be happy to chat about it if you want to mefimail me!
posted by LyzzyBee at 11:10 AM on June 2, 2011
posted by LyzzyBee at 11:10 AM on June 2, 2011
I just got my first ePub in the iBookstore. I've learned tons on ePub creation. I basically googled the heck out of ePub and bought the one book on the subject I could find.
It's not really super hard. If you think of the ePub as a self-contained website and the e-reader as a web browser. You have to declare every file in the container. You have to assign an ID to every files as well. Only the things in the spine show up in the eReader table of contents.
I am working on creating a base ePub template. I found many example files out there, but none of them had decent covers, or styles.
I would also suggest signing up for an itunesconnect account: https://itunesconnect.apple.com Apple publishes a great "asset guide." It give some very good rules to follow (and some weird ones). Like they say you cover must be at least 600 X 600. When's the last time you saw a square cover in the iBookstore? Why not juts say what the dimensions should be?
posted by cjorgensen at 7:46 PM on July 21, 2011
It's not really super hard. If you think of the ePub as a self-contained website and the e-reader as a web browser. You have to declare every file in the container. You have to assign an ID to every files as well. Only the things in the spine show up in the eReader table of contents.
I am working on creating a base ePub template. I found many example files out there, but none of them had decent covers, or styles.
I would also suggest signing up for an itunesconnect account: https://itunesconnect.apple.com Apple publishes a great "asset guide." It give some very good rules to follow (and some weird ones). Like they say you cover must be at least 600 X 600. When's the last time you saw a square cover in the iBookstore? Why not juts say what the dimensions should be?
posted by cjorgensen at 7:46 PM on July 21, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
She speaks to the technical and business aspects of what she's chosen to do. Also, I can say that her novella was formatted perfectly and that I've seen stuff from traditional publishers that didn't look as nice.
She also did interviews this week on Dear Author and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books with some more of her thoughts on the business side.
posted by sugarfish at 5:15 AM on June 2, 2011