BB eBooks - Blog

Table of Contents in the Back Okayed by Amazon

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 10:09:28 +0700

Some Controversy

When Amazon changed KDP Select to a pay-per-page-read model in July of 2015, it was inevitable that some scammers would try to game the system. There were a group of wise guys with a remarkably unsophisticated scheme of publishing books through KDP Select filled with random content pulled from the internet. In the front they would have a link to a “contest” that would be an internal hyperlink to the back of the book. Amazon would then count the entire book as “pages read” and subsequently pay out as royalties via KDP Select. Selena Kitt has all the details of the scam.

In February 2016, Amazon adjusted the algorithm used to tabulate pages read and total page count of an eBook with KENCP 2.0. This apparently did not defeat this scam. Last week, Amazon took the strange approach of flagging eBooks with Table of Contents in the back as implicitly taking part in this scam. Many authors who had Table of Contents in the rear were served the dreaded Amazon quality notices and others even had their buy buttons removed. Waaaatttt? David Guaghran has a great write-up of all this.

Where Should a Table of Contents Go?

While Table of Contents (ToC) aren’t normally present in the print editions of novels, they have long been required for eBooks (both HTML, NCX, and a nav ToC if EPUB3). Jaye Manus talks in great detail about the importance of the ToC. BB eBooks tends to follow the Chicago Manual of Style convention for front/back matter practices and places the HTML Table of Contents in the front matter. However, many authors prefer to place the HTML ToC in the back matter to avoid taking up too much space in the free eBook samples that many vendors offer. For clients, BB eBooks is happy to place the HTML Table of Contents anywhere preferred: about 15% of our clients prefer the Table of Contents in the back of the eBook. Many heavy-hitters in the Indie community recommend the ToC be placed in the back to improve sampling.

Technically, the requirement to place the Table of Contents in the front has always been part of the Kindle Publishing Guidelines (at least since 2011 when I started out). However, it had never been enforced until last week. From the Kindle Publishing Guidelines 5.1 [pdf]:

Place the HTML TOC towards the beginning of the book and not at the end of the book. This ensures that a customer paging through the book from the beginning encounters the TOC naturally. Incorrect placement of the TOC affects the accuracy of the “Last Page Read” feature. Correct placement ensures that the TOC appears in sample downloads of the book.

The Great Zon Speaketh

We received numerous emails from clients rightfully concerned about having their Table of Contents in back. However, none of our clients had their eBook quality noticed (luckily). After some pressure from the indie publishing community, Amazon finally responded about this issue—believe it or not. The post from KDP is here:

In many cases, putting a book’s Table of Contents (TOC) at the end of a book can create a poor experience for readers, and in general we suggest authors locate TOCs to the beginning of a book. If the formatting of a book results in a poor experience or genuine reader confusion, or is designed to unnaturally inflate sales or pages read, we will take action to remove titles and protect readers. That said, absent any other issues of quality, locating the TOC at the end of a book is not in itself outside of our guidelines.

Thankfully, it looks like Amazon will no longer be removing eBooks that have its Table of Contents in the rear; however, we will continue to monitor.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

KENPC 2.0 Page Counts

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 02:36:28 +0700

Declining Revenue

Kindle Unlimited is a program created by Amazon in July 2014 to compete in the subscription eBook market. For independent publishers, it required that they enroll their book in KDP Select, which means the eBook can only be published at Amazon. The ethical implications of Amazon being the only channel to sell an eBook have been much discussed. The subscription service appears to be doing well and some authors have had tremendous success under the KU model. Additionally, the main competitor in the subscription eBook model, Oyster, has gone out of business.

In July of 2015, Amazon adjusted the royalty payout for eBooks enrolled in Kindle Unlimited from a per-book to a per-page basis. This was a good deal for authors who write longer novels and enroll them in Kindle Unlimited, but a bad deal for authors who pen novellas and short stories. The payout-per-page-read started out slightly above half a cent, but declined as 2015 went on. Below is a snapshot of payout-per-page-read for 2015:

July 2015: 0.570 cents/page
Aug 2015: 0.514 cents/page
Sep 2015: 0.507 cents/page
Oct 2015: 0.481 cents/page

Amazon doesn’t release an official payout-per-page, but it appears to be hovering around 0.45 cents/page currently. It is disappointing that this number has declined so much.

Please Note: You can view the KENPC for your eBook under KDP Dashboard > Promote and Advertise.

KENPC 2.0 = Lower Page Counts

As you know, “page count” in an eBook is arbitrary in a reflowable eBook, and can change based on the reader’s preferences (font face, font size, device size, etc.) In July 2015 when Amazon went to a per-page royalty payout, Amazon used an algorithm called KENPC (Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count) to tabulate the page count. The KENPC page count should not be confused with the print page count of a book, which can vary depending on a number of factors. They claimed that the page count was independent of any formatting characteristics, but making the font and line spacing bigger actually did increase the KENPC due to a flaw in the algorithm. The KENPC, under the original algorithm in July 2015 was approximately 170-180 words/page.

In early February 2016, Amazon updated the algorithm to KENPC 2.0. Based on this algorithm, authors are reporting their KENPC dropping, no matter what formatting techniques used in the eBook. Based on some testing, we estimate the new KENPC tabulates ~190-200 words/page. Additionally, the KENPC is capped at 3,000 pages, so large multi-author box sets may not be the big revenue generators they once were. Based on the fact that Amazon is tabulating lower page counts, offers lower payout on pages read, and is clipping back matter with the “Before You Go” page, it is advised that independent authors and small presses seriously consider whether Kindle Unlimited is a good deal for them.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

Amazon’s Dreaded Before You Go page

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 08:07:05 +0700

An Uncontrollable Nuisance

We have discussed before the importance of having promotional back matter as a way to market your other books, newsletter, and social media links to your captive audience. Additionally, you can add affiliate links to earn a few extra bucks when you are linking to online retailers. This is especially important for indie authors who have a large back list so that they can maintain a steady income. Amazon is the world’s largest eBook market, so having promotional back matter in your Kindle edition is crucial toward a viable income.

For quite some time, Amazon would place a “Before You Go” pop-up on certain apps and devices (iPads, Kindle Fires, and Kindle e-ink readers to name a few) that allows the user to click on a review button, see other books from the author, and see recommended reads. This pop-up occurred after the very last bit of content in the eBook. The content in the pop-up is completely controlled by Amazon and not by anything you can choose on your KDP page or during formatting of the eBook. Below is an example from the Kindle iPad app for a book on Buddhism:

Unfortunately, sometime last year, Amazon decided to start placing the “Before You Go” pop-up before the author’s back matter started. The consequence of the premature pop-up is that the reader thinks the book is over and that there is no back matter in the eBook. This has obviously caused widespread loathing among indie authors who depend upon the back matter in their eBooks to generate more sales.

Amazon offers no documentation on the criteria of where they place this annoying pop-up, and angry emails to KDP customer support will not yield satisfactory results.

How to Trick Amazon

BB eBooks cannot control what Amazon does after the MOBI/KF8 file is uploaded through KDP; however, we were able to do some trial and error testing on some of our clients’ books to see what was triggering the pop-up. We discovered the following:

Having a “The End” at the end of the story does not necessarily trigger the pop-up
Having a Table of Contents entry pointing toward the back matter does not necessarily trigger the pop-up
Having a page break after your last Chapter/Epilogue does seem to trigger the pop-up

Jean Brashear was kind enough to let us experiment on her books and we noted the pop-up was appearing after one of the page breaks in the back matter. Below is the page in the back matter where it was popping up and a shot of the pop-up itself. Note: Jean Brashear has been indie for years, but Amazon was showing her old Harlequins in the “More by Jean Brashear” portion.

To correct this, BB eBooks made another one of her Kindle books, with identical back matter, have no page breaks between the end of the book and the entire back matter. Jean re-uploaded through Kindle Direct Publishing and the revised edition did not have the pop-up until the very last page of back matter. Therefore, our conclusion is that not having any page breaks in the back matter will avoid the problem with Amazon forcing the premature pop-up.

Disclaimer: Amazon could change their undocumented criteria anytime on where they place the pop-up, and BB eBooks does not guarantee that the pop-up will appear at the very end without page breaks.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

Tips for Publishing on CreateSpace

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 22:05:10 +0700

Introduction

Print-On-Demand is a technology that has matured over the past decade and allows small presses and indie authors a financially viable option to publish print books. Publishing your print edition on CreateSpace is not a difficult process, but it can be confusing for the first-time publisher. CreateSpace is the leading print-on-demand provider for indie authors, and it is owned by Amazon. Print editions published through CreateSpace will show up as product page on Amazon, and the print book will be distributed to other outlets via the Expanded Distribution option (which is now free). For an in-depth discussion of the pros/cons of CreateSpace vs. Lightning Source, please consult Aaron Shepard’s blog. In this tutorial we’ll do a step-by-step walkthrough of publishing your print edition on CreateSpace.

Prerequisites

To publish on CreateSpace, this tutorial assumes that you have:

A CreateSpace account
A well-formatted PDF file of your book’s interior
A PDF file of your back cover, spine, and cover (more on print covers here)
A blurb and five keywords

Step-By-Step Walkthrough

Log into your CreateSpace account
Go to “Add New Title”

Start Your New Project: Fill out the fields as follows:

Tell us the name of your project: Pick any name you prefer (note: this is just used as an internal reference in your dashboard and not necessarily the title of your book)
Choose which type of project you want to start: Pick “Paperback”
Choose a setup process: Choose “Guided” by clicking on “Get Started”

Title Information

Title (required): Enter the title of your book under “Title” (BB eBooks recommends keeping this short < 5 words)

Subtitle (optional): If you have a subtitle, enter it in the “Subtitle” field. An example of a subtitle would be A Thorough Discussion for a book titled Manos The Hands of Fate, A Thorough Discussion.

Primary Author (required): Enter the author name. Do not enter the author’s name in ALL CAPS.

Add Contributors (optional): Unlike KDP, you do not need to add the author name here. You add it in the “Primary Author” field above. You can add additional authors, illustrators, designers, and many other contributors if you like. Do not enter any contributor’s name in ALL CAPS.

This book is part of a series (optional): If you book is part of a series, check on the check box for “This book is part of a series”, otherwise ignore. If your book is part of a series, add the series name under “Series Title” and the series number in the “Volume” field. The volume should be a number only, like “1”, “2”, etc. rather than “Book 1”, “Book 2”, etc.

Edition number (optional): If this is a second or subsequent edition, you can enter “2” in the “Edition number” field. Be sure to enter numbers only, not “second”.

Language: Be sure to select the correct language from the drop down menu.

Publication Date: BB eBooks recommends using the current date.

Click “Save & Continue”

ISBN

All print books must have an ISBN. This ISBN must be different from the eBook ISBN, if you chose to use an ISBN for your eBook edition. You have four options with regards to securing an ISBN at CreateSpace. There are more details on ISBNs from CreateSpace here.

Option #1 CreateSpace-Assigned ISBN [Free]: CreateSpace can give you a free 13-digit ISBN. This allows distribution of your print book through all their expanded distribution channels, including libraries. The downside is it registers “CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform” as the publisher in the ISBN system.

Option #2 Custom ISBN [$10]: CreateSpace can give you a 13-digit ISBN that allows you to list your imprint as the publisher (so BB eBooks Publishing as an example). The downside is you cannot distribute through all of CreateSpace’s distribution channels (notably it will not be distributed through libraries). Note: you can only use this ISBN at CreateSpace. If you are also publishing at Lightning Source or an off-set printer, consider Option #3 or #4 below.

Option #3 Custom Universal ISBN [$99]: CreateSpace can give you a 13-digit ISBN that allows you to list your imprint and you can use the same ISBN if you are printing at other places besides CreateSpace (e.g. Lightning Source, a local printer, etc.) The downside is you cannot distribute through all of CreateSpace’s distribution channels (notably it will not be distributed through libraries).

Option #4 Provide Your Own ISBN [Free]: If you would like to get an ISBN from the ISBN-issuing agency in your country and use this as the 13-digit ISBN, choose this option. The cost of ISBNs vary greatly from country-to-country. In Canada, for example, they are free, but in the USA they are $125! There are more details on getting ISBNs and the ISBN system on the BB eBooks blog.

Interior

Interior Type: Choose “Black & White”, unless you have a color interior. BB eBooks only recommends color books for art/photography books and children’s books with illustrations. They are substantially more expensive to print, and the quality of the color interiors is not as good as Lightning Source.

Paper Color: Choose either “White” or “Cream”. White is considered best for genre-type novels and technical non-fiction, while Cream is considered best for literary-type fiction and non-narrative fiction. These are BB eBooks recommendations only, so be sure to do what’s right for your brand. Please note that regardless of the paper color, the interior PDF will always be white for your formatted interior.

Trim Size: Click on “Choose a Different Size” to pick your trim. The most popular trim sizes for paperbacks are 5x8”, 5.25x8”, 5.5x8.5”, and 6x9”. More on picking the right trim size for your book here.

Most people don’t know this, but you can select any trim size you like at CreateSpace. If you would like to do a custom size (e.g. 4x6.5”), then click on Choose a Different Size > More Sizes > Enter your own trim size, where you can specify any width and height you would like.

Tip: If you cannot remember what trim size and/or page count you have, open your interior PDF with Acrobat Reader and click on File > Properties > Description. The page size (aka the trim size) will be on the bottom-left of the display window, and page count will be on the bottom-right.

Click on “Upload your Book File” and browse your computer for the PDF interior.

Bleed: Be sure to check “Ends before the edge of the page” unless you have a book where illustrations run to the very edge of the page like a magazine does. Please note: BB eBooks does not make full-bleed print interiors.

Interior Reviewer: Make sure to check the box to allow CreateSpace to run the automated print checks. This will also automatically load the interior reviewer once the upload and processing is complete.

Click on the “Save” button in the bottom right and the upload will commence followed by the CreateSpace print check. This can take about 5–10 minutes, so it’s a good time to grab a coffee, snack, smoke, and/or Yoga break depending on your lifestyle preferences. Once it’s done, the interior previewer should pop up and CreateSpace will notify you with any issues. Clients of BB eBooks should never have any formatting issues—unless something broke with CreateSpace or we really messed up. If you’re not a client, please make sure to fix any formatting issues and redo the PDF interior. Otherwise, CreateSpace may not publish it.

On the interior previewer you’ll notice a dotted gray box around both pages. Don’t worry! The dotted boxes won’t actually show up in your print book. This box is the “safe zone” and all text elements should be inside it (unless you have a full-bleed interior). You’ll notice that the inner margins facing the book binding (aka the gutter margins) are bigger. This takes into account that there should be a bit more margin around the book’s binding because the paper will have some curvature to it. Running text deep into the binding creates a most unpleasant reading experience. You can click through the pages on the interior previewer if you like, but we generally recommend doing testing with Acrobat Reader in two-page mode as it is a bit faster.

Click on “Save and Continue” inside the interior previewer.

If all is well you’ll get the message that “Our automated print check didn’t find any issues”. Your interior is done!

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

Tips for Publishing on Kindle Direct Publishing

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 06:30:17 +0700

Introduction

Publishing on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is quite a simple process, but it can be intimidating for the first-time publisher. In this tutorial we’ll do a step-by-step walkthrough of publishing your eBook on Amazon.

Prerequisites

To publish on KDP, this tutorial assumes that you have:

A well-formatted MOBI eBook or Docx file of your book
A Cover in JPG format (2500px on the height)
A blurb and seven keywords

Step-By-Step Walkthrough

Log into KDP
Go to “Your Bookshelf”
Click on “Create New Title”

KDP Select: Click on “Enroll this book in KDP Select” if you would like to be in Kindle Unlimited. To KU or not to KU is a controversial subject beyond the scope of this post. However, if you do go through KU, please keep in mind that your book cannot be published anywhere else—even your own website.

Step 1. Enter Your Book Details

Book name: Enter the title of your book under “Book name” (BB eBooks recommends keeping this short < 5 words)

This book is part of a series: If you book is part of a series, check on the check box for “This book is part of a series”, otherwise ignore. If your book is part of a series, add the series name under “Series Title” and the series number in the “Volume” field. The volume should be a number only, like “1”, “2”, etc. rather than “Book 1”, “Book 2”, etc.

Edition number (optional): If this is a second or subsequent edition, you can enter “2” in the “Edition number” field. Be sure to enter numbers only, not “second”.

Publisher (optional): Enter the name of your publishing company in “Publisher” or your name if you are indie publishing. Alternatively, you can make up a name for your company if you like. Amazon does not verify that you are a LLC or organizational entity.

Description: The “Description” is what shows up on your product page. This is very important so please make sure the blurb is as good as you can get it. You can alter this later on, but it will have to go through Amazon’s approval process again. For advanced users, you can actually add HTML tags to include formatting elements like bold, italics, and underline. The supported tags are listed here. For example, if you wanted to render: The New York Times bestselling author Jane Doe is back with…, the HTML you would place in the description would be The New York Times bestselling author Jane Doe is back with…. Be sure to wrap every paragraph in opening and closing paragraph tags if you are doing an HTML description …. There is more discussion of HTML descriptions on Book Marketing Tools.

Book Contributors: Be sure to add the author to the contributors (required). You can also add other contributors like the illustrator. Please note there is no option to add the formatter, but thank you for thinking of us!

Language: Be sure to select the correct language from the drop down menu.

ISBN: If you are using an ISBN, please be sure to enter the 13-digit ISBN here. Do not enter the print edition ISBN, as it must be different from the digital edition. If you do not have an ISBN, leave blank.

Step 2. Verify Your Publishing Rights

Verify Your Publishing Rights: Be sure to check “ This is not a public domain work and I hold the necessary publishing rights”.

Step 3. Target Your Book to Customers

Add Categories: Make sure to select two categories that best describe your book. This metadata is important to how Amazon’s algorithms market your book. You may want to consider placing in less competitive categories so you can stand out (this is a good way to position non-fiction books).

Age Range (optional): Only adjust the Age Range if you are targeting your book to children (so children’s books and YA).

U.S. Grade Range (optional): Only adjust the U.S. Grade Range if you are targeting your book to children. For non-American publishers unfamiliar with US education, the age/grade level scale is as follows: Preschool is the little guys (~4 years old) and 12th Grade is right before University-level (~18 years old).

Search keywords: Be sure to pick seven phrases and you can separate with commas. Keywords can be a combination of words (e.g. erotic romance) and Amazon recommends 2-3 words long for each keyword.

Step 4. Select Your Book Release Option

If you are ready to publish immediately, click on the “I am ready to release my book now”. If you would like to do a preorder, you can set the date from 3–90 days out. Amazon will create the product page within 24 hours and the book will be released to the public on midnight of the day you select. Beware: if you are uploading a dummy or placeholder file, you need to make sure you change out your eBook at least 10 days ahead of time. Failure to do so may land you in Jeff Bezos’ Preorder jail where you can’t do the preorder option for another year. More details on preorders here.

Step 5. Upload or Create a Book Cover

Click on “Browse for image” and upload your JPG eBook cover from your computer. BB eBooks recommends a cover that is 2500px in height. Use a professionally made cover and do not use the Cover Creator. More on eBook covers here.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

Our Simplified Formatting Workflow

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Thu, 14 May 2015 23:48:31 +0700

Why Hire a Formatter?

It has recently come to our attention from fellow formatters about comments within the indie community that formatting is easy and should be done yourself. Nothing wrong with this--many people prefer to do things themselves. However, if it weren’t for professional authors hiring out contractors, BB eBooks would be operating a roller-skating disco in Bangkok or something instead of doing formatting work. This attitude has been around since when I started learning formatting in 2011 and I don’t stress about it too much—honestly the loss of author income due to Kindle Unlimited is a much more serious threat to our business model. There is some software on the market (both free and commercial) you can use to make eBooks such as Calibre and Vellum. Some folks, particularly hobbyists looking to publish one novel, prefer the DIY approach, but the fact of the matter is most successful people will hire other people to do work for them due to time constraints and their desire to focus on more important business matters within the industry.

If making eBooks was as simple as a one-click solution, I would have a 4-hour work week instead of an 80-hour one (that would be sweet). Inspired by Jaye Manus’ excellent discussions of workflow, I decided to post a simplified version of what we do in our shop. We’ll examine the intake of a standard novel, written and edited in Word, and the final product will be EPUB and MOBI eBooks for various vendors. Let’s get started!

1. Establishing Structure in the Manuscript

All books, even simple novels, must have some underlying structure. For novels this is typically chapters, plus major headings in the front and back matter (About the Author, Acknowledgments, etc.). For non-fiction, it gets a bit more complex with different levels of subheads. This step is critical and will determine how the final eBook is packaged. Our team goes into Word and properly tags all headings.

2. Locate Specialized Text

Text messages, emails, love letters, and other types of content that must stand out from the narrative are properly tagged in Word by our team. Additionally, if the author wishes to use special fonts on certain types of content, we make sure to tag for further action.

3. Tagging Formatted Inline Text

Using a script we made, we tag all specialized inline text (e.g. italics, strikethrough, bolded, hyperlinked, etc.) to ensure that this is preserved as the author and editor intended in the final eBooks. Hyperlinks are injected with the proper URLs as well.

4. Ripping to a Text Editor

Since word processing and DTP (Desktop publishing) programs are not suitable for properly adding XHTML-type markup, we need to get everything into a text editor. This ensures 100% compliance with our stringent quality control measures and avoids the hidden quirks of word processing and DTP software. Many formatters use programs like Jutoh and Sigil to apply markup, but we go with a text editor because it allows us to run complex scripts on the content.

5. Tidying White Space

Most editors and authors don’t pay too much attention to unnecessary white space—nor should they as writing and editing uses completely different parts of the brain than formatting. However, things like random tabs, double spaces, blank lines (except for section breaks as mentioned below) have got to go since they will wreak havoc on most eBook reading software causing an undesirable reading experience. We use a special script that removes unnecessary white space.

6. Adding Section Breaks

Some authors prefer to use *** as a section break and some prefer just a blank line (done by hitting the enter key twice). Regardless of author’s preference, section breaks must have separate markup applied so they do not appear as regular narrative.

7. Applying Structural Markup

eBooks are based on the web standards of XHTML 1.1 (for EPUB2) and HTML 5.0 (for EPUB3). This means applying heading tags to denote structure. This concept has been around forever in terms of technology (i.e. the 1990s). For novels we usually use h1 for the title on the title page, and h2 for chapter headings. For non-fiction this gets a bit more complicated (going all the way down to h6). This step is crucial so that the eReading software can understand how the book should be displayed to the reader.

8. Applying Specialized Markup

Special content such as emails and love letters need to stand out from the narrative have special markup applied to them. They are later stylized with CSS (see below) based on the author’s preferences, including embedding fonts.

9. Tidying Punctuation

This step involves a series of complex scripts that fix things like turning an ugly double hyphen “--” into a proper em dash “—”. This is also the step where straight up-and-down quotes and apostrophes are turned into the proper “curled” quotes. Straight up-and-down quotes look terrible in an eBook and signifies a certain level of amateurishness in eBook production. Additionally, left-handed singe quotation marks that should be apostrophes are corrected in this step: e.g. love ’em rather than love ’em. Microsoft Word is notorious for making apostrophes face the wrong way.

10. Adding Typographical Elements

In this step, our team applies typographical elements so that the eBook feels like literature rather than an email from a colleague. Many of these “techniques” have a long literary tradition dating back to the Middle Ages, even though eBooks are obviously very new. We commonly use enlarged caps at the beginning of chapters and small caps at both the beginning of chapters and after section breaks. We often add in dingbats/printer’s ornaments to replace section breaks and sometimes around the chapter headings. This is generally done based on the author’s preferences and to complement the cover design.

11. Applying Vendor-Specific Hyperlinks

We can apply vendor-specific links (usually to product pages for the author’s other books) so that the Amazon links will only show up in the Kindle MOBI, Nook links for the Nook EPUB, etc. It is a bit labor-intensive, but adds a lot of value to the eBook since authors can earn affiliate income. The way we do it is make them all in a single source document (along with the entire eBook). This ensures that if a typo needs to be corrected down the road, we only need to change it one place and repackage the eBooks (see below) rather than change each eBook for each vendor.

12. Optimizing Images

Any images (including the cover) are optimized for use in eBooks. It is a terrible misconception that eBook images need to be high-res like print... they do not. Large image assets will cause undesirable lag on eReading devices and can potentially cost the author a fortune due to the dreaded Amazon delivery fee. Our team redoes all images in Gimp to ensure a good balance between quality and size.

13. Adding a Table of Contents

All eBooks require a Table of Contents to be in compliance with industry-standard specifications. We make one in the content itself plus a special “meta” Table of Contents. All hyperlinks are tested to make sure they go to the correct location within the eBook itself. More on the Table of Contents here.

14. Adding Metadata

eBooks are required to have metadata embedded in them, even though all vendors require you to enter your own. We usually get the metadata from the title and copyright page (example the book title, author name, copyright info, cover designer, etc.) More on metadata that goes into an eBook here if you’d like us to add in something specific.

15. Adding Design

The style sheet is what gives your eBook’s interior design a bit of personalization. Here we usually embed fonts for chapter headings, text messages, and the title page. We usually do this using open-license fonts to try and match the cover. However any special requests from the author are also followed.

16. Quality Control

Many businesses strive to provide a consistent and predictable customer experience and BB eBooks is no exception. We have extremely stringent quality control standards that go beyond just making an eBook “work at the different platforms”. By ensuring we maintain these standards, clients receive consistently formatted eBooks that have the exact same design. This is important for authors who write in series and are branding themselves. We use a program that actually checks for a laundry list of potential issues not noticed by authors and editors including punctuation errors (space before a comma), “broken” paragraphs (caused by accidentally hitting enter in between a paragraph on the manuscript), and even Chapters that are numbered incorrectly (e.g. Chapter6 and then Chapter 8). The Chapter order gets messed up a lot, so don’t feel bad if it happens to you.

17. Minimization, Packaging and Validation Checks

The final step is to take all the image assets, fonts (if any), content, and stylesheet and create the eBooks for the different vendors. Many of the different eBook vendors have little “quirks”, so the code is actually slightly different in each eBook. Additionally, we use a minimization algorithm we developed to ensure the source XHTML and CSS is as small as possible to help our authors save money due to Amazon’s dumb delivery fee. We do this with our own proprietary software. The industry-standard EPUBCheck is run on each and every eBook to ensure validation. We have only shipped an invalid EPUB twice by accident (both customers got a discount for our ineptitude!).

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns and thanks so much for reading.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

EPUB File Naming Convention on Google Play

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 06:03:39 +0700

EPUB File Naming Convention on Google Play

Google Partners FAQ in Error

Google has recently updated their Google Books Partners interface for authors and publishers who publish EPUBs for Google Play. A client recently had a frustrating experience with a processing delay of her EPUB and was finally able to resolve it after speaking with a senior member of their customer service. It turns out that the processing error was not due to the EPUB itself or any metadata entered on the interface, but rather the file name of the EPUB that was uploaded. This is contrary to what is on their FAQ, which states that you can name your EPUB anything if it does not have an ISBN.

Walkthrough of Correct File Name for Google Play EPUB

To create your next book to publish go to:

Book Catalog > Add a New Book

If you have an ISBN for your eBook, you can add here (without hyphens). If you do not have an ISBN leave this field blank and tick the box that says you do not have an ISBN. Please see image below:

Google Play will automatically assign a GGKEY. To get the GGKEY, go back to your Book Catalog and the GGKEY will be listed below the cover image. Please see image below:

When you upload your EPUB eBook to Google Play, it should have the following file names depending on whether or not you have an ISBN.

If you have an ISBN for your eBook, the file name should be:

[isbn].epub (e.g. 9780123456789.epub with no hyphens)

If you do not have an ISBN for your eBook the file name should be:

[ggkey].epub (e.g. 1YR40APQ1SL.epub without the GGKEY:)

Having any other file name for your EPUB aside from what is described above may result in processing delays of your book. Thank you to our client for sharing this so the rest of us could avoid unnecessary suffering.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

Using Your Author Newsletter to Boost Sales

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 03:21:31 +0700

Old-Fashioned, but Newsletters Work

With Facebook effectively decreasing the reach of fan pages (unless you pay money for to Boost Post), and the difficulty of getting a Book Bub slot today, your newsletter is more important now than ever. Even though social media gurus make email sound a bit… old-fashioned, the most successful authors agree that the newsletter is still a great way to reach readers. Forget the trendy new social media platforms like Tsu, because email has been around for a long time and almost everyone in the world knows how to use it.

Getting Set Up with an Email Marketing Provider

Due to how badly email has been abused since the dawn of the internet, sending out mass email that doesn’t land in someone’s Spam folder is a technically complex task. Please do not send out the latest news about your big release by BCCing 500 of your subscribers, as this will certainly result in your email account getting flagged as suspicious by the major email clients like Gmail. Additionally, it is best to have a newsletter where people can easily sign up and easily remove themselves from the newsletter (this is required by law in some countries). Unless you’re a crack Python programmer, we recommend signing up with a service that can handle sending out mass emails. Many of these services also have online apps that let you create nice HTML templates with images. Here are the three big email marketing providers where you can easily get set up:

MailChimp is great because it is free up to a certain point, so ideal for new authors getting started building up their newsletter subscribers.

Content of Your Newsletter

Many of the big names in email marketing like Copyblogger and Joel Friedlander send out emails that look almost like a regular email from a work colleague. There are no graphics and no fancy designs, just a clear, concise call to action. This is advantageous compared to how other businesses send out newsletters because you will probably read the email—or at least scan it real quick. My Thai bank sends me a newsletter that is just a big image and you can’t click on anything. This type of newsletter promptly gets deleted from my inbox along with solicitations on where to collect my $18M of UK lotto winnings. For non-fiction writers and small biz owners, you may want to consider sending out your newsletters that rely entirely on content rather than extensive design.

For fiction authors, it’s best to keep things fun. Some nice images and humor can go a long way. The aforementioned email marketing services can help you if you are unfamiliar with the ins and outs of HTML. For both non-fiction and fiction authors, it is important to have some sort of call to action to get the reader to do something. This is an overused cliche in marketing, but you may only have the reader’s attention for a few seconds and it’s important that you communicate clearly what you are asking them to do.

Getting People to Sign Up for Your Newsletter

Rather than just asking nicely, you can entice people to sign up by offering free swag. Many authors try different things: a chance at a $25 Amazon Gift Card, a free sneak peek at the next book, racy underwear, etc. Offer whatever you think would be best to attract the kind of readers you want.

Strategic calls to action on your website to sign up for your newsletter and the creation of Squeeze Pages helps get people to trust you with their email address. Another good way is to use the front matter and back matter of your eBooks to encourage new newsletter subscribers. Asking people to sign up for your newsletter to win prizes is a good way to get people’s attention. You can also use advanced design to really focus on clicking the hyperlink to your newsletter. Here’s a screen shot of a few ideas:

Please contact BB eBooks today for help getting these designs to call people’s attention to your newsletter sign up inside your eBooks.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

Adjusting Page Count for Your Print Edition

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 04:51:36 +0700

Why Page Count Matters

One of the questions we frequently get from cover designers is what the page count is for the print interior for an unformatted manuscript. The short answer is we don’t really know... until we know. The reason is there are many factors that can affect the page count including trim size, line-height, font size, the font used on the body content, and numerous other factors. The page count for your print edition matters because the more pages there are, the more expensive each copy of the book will be. You can get an idea of the production cost per copy on your CreateSpace print edition by using their handy royalty calculator. While it may be tempting to do whatever it takes to get the shortest page count possible, you have to keep in mind that having very thin margins and small fonts may create an unpleasant reading experience. Additionally, if you plan on doing a BookBub ad for your book, they will not accept books that are less than 150 pages on the print edition (for fiction). Let’s explore some of the factors that can affect the page count on the print edition. Beware: some of the charts require a the usage of... math!

Typeface and Font Size

Most print editions use a serif typeface on the body content. For those of you who are not typography nerds, serif fonts are the ones with little “feet” or “strokes” on the end of letters (the most common example being Times New Roman). Most traditional publishing use 11 or 11.5pt serif fonts for the print interior. However, many self-published authors choose a 12 or even a 12.5pt font since they may receive negative reader feedback since smaller fonts are more difficult to read. The font size makes a huge difference in the page count. Below is a chart for a 25,000 word book to give you an idea of the changes for a book set in Adobe Garamond Pro:

11pt = 100 pages (~25,000 words)
11.5pt = 107 pages
12pt = 120 pages
12.5pt = 128 pages

Sans-serif fonts, like Helvetica and Source Sans Pro, are often scaled differently. While setting a fiction book in sans-serif on the body content is rare, you should be aware that the point size is not the same as serif fonts. As an example, Source Sans Pro at 10.5pt is will roughly generate the same number of words per page as 12pt Adobe Garamond Pro.

Line Spacing (aka Leading)

Another huge factor in page count is line spacing, which is occasionally referred to as leading for historical reasons when typesetters would place thin strips of lead in between lines of type. While the difference between each line might be almost unnoticeable to the reader, it has a huge cumulative effect when applied throughout the body content of the entire book. Many of the Adobe typefaces (like Adobe Caslon Pro and Adobe Garamond Pro) already are designed with generous line-spacing, but other serif fonts like Garamond and Times LT require leading adjustment of at least 20% to make the type pleasantly readable. Depending on the author’s preference, leading can be increased to make the content easier to read or decreased to lower the page count. Coming back to our 25,000-word 100 page sample in 11pt Adobe Garamond Pro, here is a chart of how leading affects page count:

11pt /No leading = 88 pages (~25,000 words)
11pt /5% leading = 93 pages
11pt /10% leading = 97 pages
11pt /15% leading = 100 pages
11pt /20% leading = 103 pages

Trim Size

The physical size of the print edition will obviously affect the page count. Most trim sizes for novels vary between 5x8” (the smallest size available at CreateSpace and typical for mass market paperback)s and 6x9” (a good size for long, literary and fantasy works). For a 25,000-word novel at 5x8” trim, here is a chart of how many pages it would be at various trim sizes that are common for print editions:

5x8”: 100 pages (~25,000 words)
5.25x8”: 96 pages
5.5x8.5”: 85 pages
6x9”: 73 pages

As a rule of thumb, you can use the following chart to roughly estimate the page count for your print edition based on the word count of your manuscript:

5x8”: 250 words/page
5.25x8”: 260 words/page
5.5x8.5”: 290 words/page
6x9”: 340 words/page

Margins

The outer margin is one of the other big factors affecting page count in the print edition. Lightning Source requires at least a 0.5” outer margin but CreateSpace lets you go down to 0.25” for novels. We typically don’t recommend going as small as 0.25” on the outer margin since the reader’s thumbs can overlap the type while they are reading. Please note that this does not include the gutter margin (the margins running into the book’s binding). 0.5” outer margins are fairly standard, but the margin can be increased for novellas to get past the 150 page threshold for Book Bub ads. Looking at our 25,000-word 100-page sample, here’s a chart to give you some data. Please note that this sample has a 0.3” gutter margin:

0.5” outer margin: 5x8” 100 pages (~25,000 words)
0.6” outer margin: 5x8” 108 pages
0.75” outer margin: 5x8” 122 pages
0.85” outer margin: 5x8” 133 pages
1” outer margin: 5x8” 158 pages

Here’s a quick diagram of how we are referring to outer and gutter margins for your kind reference:

Large Print Editions

A Large Print edition is the same content as your mass market print edition but catered toward people with seeing disabilities and/or the elderly. Many authors do not take advantage of releasing a Large Print edition along with their regular print edition, but it is quite easy to do on CreateSpace. Under your dashboard go to Description than scroll down and tick on the Large Print checkbox to publish your large print book.

Large print editions should have a font size of at least 16pt and with more generous leading (~50%) for readers who have trouble reading standard type. Typically, large print editions should be 6x9”, but they can be any trim size. A large print edition will have a roughly 50-80% increase in page count than a standard print edition with the same content. Please let BB eBooks know if you need help get your large print edition interior ready.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

How to Use Buy Links in Your eBooks and Affiliate Programs

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 01:26:31 +0700

Buy Links in Your Back Matter

One great advantage of eBooks is that you can load them with promotional back matter to encourage your readers to connect with you, learn more about you, and, most importantly, buy your other books. The tactical use of hyperlinks in your back matter that go to the various vendor product pages can really help increase sales. Additionally, you can use affiliate links at most vendors to make a few extra bucks. We discussed this in detail here; however, there are some pitfalls and technicalities that you should be aware of when using these embedded buy links in your eBooks.

Vendor Limitations on Buy Links

You can use affiliate links and link to your product pages at any eBook vendor. However, you cannot reference other vendors. For example, if in your Nook EPUB, you link to a product page for Amazon, your book might not be allowed for publishing via Nook Press. The most egregious offenders of this policy are Smashwords and iTunes. Therefore, different content is required for your eBook for each different vendor if you would like to use buy links. Let's talk about each different vendor.

Buy Links and Affiliate Program for Amazon

There is some confusion as to whether using affiliate links are allowed at Amazon, but we have seen hundreds of authors use them without incident. You can sign up for the affiliate program here. As an example of the affiliate code to use in the URL, ours is bbeb-20.

For the Kindle app for iPhone/iPad, Apple products will physically block any link to Amazon in your eBook and your readers will get the dreaded "The operation is not currently supported" message. As a workaround to this, you can use a link shortener for your Amazon links like bitly, goo.gl, or Pretty Links.

Product Page Prototype: http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN

Product Page Prototype w/Affiliate: http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN?tag=affiliatecode

Buy Links and Affiliate Program for iTunes

Anyone can sign up for the iTunes affiliate program (even if you don’t own a Mac!) The affiliate code is 6 alphanumerics assigned once you get the account. As an example of the affiliate code to use in the URL, ours is 11lqHd.

iTunes links should not use a link shortening tool like bitly or goo.gl. The reason is if they are native iTunes links (i.e. http://itunes.apple.com…), a nice little pop-up window with the option to buy will appear within the iBooks app when the reader clicks on the link. If you use a link shortening tool, the reader will get punched out of iBooks and taken into the web-browsing app Safari. Please note that many people leave in the country code inside the URL (e.g. us, ca, etc.); however you can remove it if you like.

Product Page Prototype: https://itunes.apple.com/book/some-book/idxxx?mt=11

Product Page Prototype w/Affiliate: https://itunes.apple.com/book/some-book/idxxx?mt=11&uo=4&at=affiliatecode

Buy Links and Affiliate Program for Nook

The Nook affiliate program is run by the Rakuten Affiliate Network. Once you have a Rakuten account, you have to contact the Nook via email to get an affiliate account set up (it explains how to do so within your Rakuten account). Once you get approved as a Nook affiliate, they use a very complicated URL system and you have to get individual affiliate links by plugging in the Nook product page links and getting back the affiliate links.

Apple also blocks all Barnes and Noble links, so you may want to consider using a link shortener.

Product Page Prototype: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/book/id?ean=xxx

Product Page Prototype w/Affiliate: http://click.linksynergy.com…

Buy Links and Affiliate Program for Kobo

Like Nook, the Kobo affiliate program is run by the Rakuten Affiliate Network. Once you have a Rakuten account, you can automatically enroll (you do not have to email them like with Nook). Getting the affiliate code is the same as Nook whereby you have to get the really long click.linksynergy.com links from the Rakuten website and use those.

Kobo once had two hyperlink schemes. One looked like http://store.kobobooks.com/somebook. However, this recently changed and now store.kobobooks.com links route into the http://www.kobobooks.com hyperlink scheme. Please note: the former store.kobobooks.com still work for the time being; they just redirect to the product page on www.kobobooks.com.

Product Page Prototype: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/somebook/xxx/page1.html

Product Page Prototype w/Affiliate: http://click.linksynergy.com…

Buy Links and Affiliate Program for Smashwords

Anyone can sign up for the Smashwords affiliate program and it has a very generous payout of 11% of net price. The affiliate code to use in the URL should be the same as your account name. As an example of the affiliate code to use in the URL, ours is bbebooks.

When publishing at Smashwords, even if you are distributing through Nook, Kobo, etc.; make sure that you only have buy links to Smashwords itself. Since the same EPUB is aggregated to Nook, Kobo, iTunes, and elsewhere, they get snippy if you have any vendor references aside from Smashwords. Many authors choose not to have Smashwords links, since they will show up on iTunes and Kobo for example. In this case, we recommend using your website (see below).

Product Page Prototype: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/xxx

Product Page Prototype w/Affiliate: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/xxx?ref=affiliatecode

Buy Links for Google Play

Google Play suspended its affiliate program a few years ago; however, linking to the product pages is really easy. Based on the country of origin for the reader, Google Play will display local currencies and languages. Please note that this is not based on the embedded URL; rather, Google automatically determines the reader's country of origin and the product page will be based on the reader's language and country settings in their Google account.

Product Page Prototype: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/bookname?id=xxx

Product Page Prototype w/Affiliate: N/A

Buy Links and Affiliate Program for All Romance Ebooks

All Romance eBooks has an affiliate program and you can contact them to sign up for it here. The affiliate code to use in the URL is assigned to you via the email they send you. As an example of the affiliate code to use in the URL, ours is 52b038d50929a.

Product Page Prototype: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-some-book.html

Product Page Prototype w/Affiliate: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-some-book.html?referrer=affiliatecode

Buy Links for Draft 2 Digital and other Vendors

For Draft2Digital, since they aggregate to other vendors, and for small-scale vendors where it would be too time-consuming to make all the buy links, it is recommended that you use a "Universal" type approach. You can use links to your website or product pages on your website rather than specific vendor product pages. Alternatively, you may not want to use hyperlinks at all, just opting for a list of your books.

Let BB eBooks Help You

If you are interested in working with BB eBooks for your formatting project, we would be happy to help get the buy links sorted out for you. We like to think that adding buy links is a specialty of ours, and we can support multiple-vendor eBook builds (including Amazon, Nook, iTunes, Kobo, Smashwords, Google Play, and many more). Please feel free to contact us anytime about your project.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

The Mechanics of eBook Preorders (by Vendor)

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 02:07:15 +0700

The Predorder Process

Ever since eBook preorders were allowed at Amazon in the middle of 2014, many authors have utilized this feature at Amazon and other vendors to set a predictable launch date for promotional purposes. In an ideal world, the final edited and formatted eBook files would be ready weeks ahead of the preorder date so that you could set up the preorder product page at all vendors well in advance of the launch date. As authors in the real world though, you know that the final edits and finishing touches are being placed on the eBooks days (and sometimes hours!) before the book is set to be released. Because of the short timeframe from when the book is ready for sale and when it must be published, it may be necessary to set up the preorder product pages before the book is finished.

Problems and confusion have arisen around what files you need to set up the preorder page, so let’s talk a look at each vendor. In general you need the following:

The eBook Cover
The eBook metadata (price, title, author name, etc.)
The date your book will go on sale

You will notice that you do not need a finalized eBook that has been edited and formatted to set up your preorder page at most vendors. However, BB eBooks recommends having the final edited/formatted eBooks for the two major aggregators that allow preorders: Smashwords and Draft2Digital. Let’s talk about each vendor.

Amazon eBook Preorders

Anyone with a KDP account can set up a preorder at Amazon up to 90 days ahead of time. When you publish at KDP, on step 4, you can check the “Make my book available for pre-order” option and list a date.

Amazon says you need to have the final edited/formatted eBook up 10 days ahead of time, but it’s actually 3 days. You have to upload a book file to complete the pre-order process and get the product page. If you’re still working on your book, most authors will upload whatever manuscript they have—even if unedited. As long as the word count is roughly the same, the information on the product page will be accurate. Preorder pages do not have the Look Inside feature, so the reading public will not be able to see your unedited manuscript. Once the final book is ready and formatted, you can replace the book through KDP prior to preorder (recommended at least 10 days ahead of time, but it’s actually 3). Another tactic is to upload a previous MOBI eBook: the logic being that if the customers get the wrong eBook, they’ll blame Amazon rather than the author for releasing an unedited manuscript.

Beware: We strongly recommend getting your final edited and formatted eBook no less than 10 days to KDP before the preorder date, since within the 3-day period before your book launches it gets “locked” in their system and cannot be changed. If you have the wrong eBook in Amazon’s system, it’s a total nightmare since the wrong eBook will get delivered to everyone who pre-ordered. This results in many negative reviews and nasty emails from irate readers. Also, you cannot adjust the price of your eBook during this lockdown period.

Kobo eBook preorders

Anyone with a Kobo Writing Likfe account can set up a preorder at Kobo up to 180 days in advance. After you have successfully completed the four initial publishing steps for your eBook at Kobo Writing Life (i.e. 1) Describe your eBook, 2) Add eBook content, 3) Choose content rights, and 4) Set the price) you will arrive at the “Publish your eBook” section.

Once at the “Publish your eBook” section, there will be a little calendar that allows you to set a date if you would like to establish a pre-order date in the future. Be sure that the “Allow Pre-orders” checkbox is clicked after you set a date.

Once you publish, you will get the product page. You can go back and change the manuscript to your edited and formatted EPUB anytime.

Nook eBook Preorders

Nook Press only allows direct preorder functionality for “a small group of publishers” at this time and BB eBooks did not make the cut! Most authors use Draft2Digital or Smashwords to set up their preorder at Nook (see below).

Google Play eBook Preorders

As you may know, Google Play is one of the toughest self-publishing platforms to wrangle with. However, they do allow preorders up to 180 days ahead of time. Fortunately, compared to the rest of the publishing experience at Google Play, setting up a preorder is fairly simple. Under “Book Catalog > Settings: go to ”On Sale Date“ under the ”Distribution Settings“. Once there you can enter a date for preorder in the YYYY-MM-DD format:

You can change the manuscript for your EPUB/PDF any time prior to the preorder date. However, they advise on their website: Due to variable processing times and other factors, Google cannot guarantee that a book will be available for pre-order sales during a specific time range. We recommend that you send us your book as soon as you are able. As it can take a matter of weeks to process a PDF or ePub file, please plan accordingly.

Beware: there is also another setting called “Publication Date” under the Settings tab, but this field does not have anything to do with preorders. Make sure to adjust the setting under “On Sale Date” as mentioned above.

iTunes eBook Preorders

Unfortunately, BB herself does not think purchasing a Mac would be a wise investment for the company, so we don’t have direct access to iTunes Producer. However, you can set up an “assetless” preorder (i.e. not having a completed book file) via iTunes Producer up to one year in advance. You may need to contact their customer service team to enable an assetless preorder. They require the cover, metadata, and price. Unlike the other vendors you should not upload a dummy file (like an unedited manuscript or previous eBook). Also, you should disable sampling. Another way to get a preorder established on iTunes is through Draft 2 Digital and Smashwords (see below).

Smashwords eBook Preorders

Smashwords was one of the first aggregators to really push for authors to use preorders, and by going through them you can get preorder product pages set up at Nook, Kobo, and iTunes. To set up a Smashwords preorder, go to “Publish” and in Step 1 click on the “Make it a Pre-order” button and set a date.

You can set the date up to 180 days out. Please note that the eBook has to be approved through their team to get “Premium Status” first before shipping to the Nook, Kobo, and iTunes. So, for Smashwords we recommend having a fully edited and formatted eBook prior to getting the preorder product pages.

Draft2Digital eBook Preorders

Draft 2 Digital is another aggregator that allows for setting up preorders at Nook, Kobo, and iTunes. To establish a preorder, you can adjust the date on the “Release Date” in the “Acquisitions” section of the publishing process:

Like Smashwords, BB eBooks recommends uploading a final edited/formatted eBook when establishing a preorder at Draft2Digital to avoid any problems when they distribute the files to the various vendors. You can set up your Draft2Digital for assetless preorders, but you have to contact their customer service team separately. Also, please note that they require the final edited/formatted eBook files 20 business days ahead of the release (which is a lot!)

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

Creating Word Documents to Make eBooks

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 00:43:30 +0700

When Going Amateur is Required

In general, publishing a MOBI/KF8 eBook to Amazon and an EPUB eBook to all other vendors will give you the most predictable and professional results. However, most eBook vendors and aggregators (Amazon, Nook, Smashwords, Draft2Digital, etc.) allow you to upload a Word .doc or .docx directly that gets automatically converted into the necessary eBook formats (i.e. EPUB and MOBI/KF8). This may not give the greatest results, but for straightforward novels, the eBooks will be functional (hopefully). While the method of using a Word .doc or .docx may work well for first-time and hobbyist authors who don’t have a big budget, we generally advocate either DIY formatting into the EPUB and MOBI formats or hiring someone out. This is because properly constructed EPUB/MOBI eBooks using HTML and CSS allow for embedded fonts, flourishes, and other design features to set your eBook apart. They also avoid the algorithms used to convert Word documents into HTML, which can result in serious code bloat. Additionally, the internal hyperlink feature in Microsoft Word for building the Table of Contents, footnotes, and an index (if your book has one) can be very frustrating to deal with.

Although, there are two situations where a .doc/.docx is required to be uploaded to the eBook vendors rather than a properly-packaged EPUB is MOBI. One is for Amazon’s Kindle Worlds, and the other is if you would like Smashwords to convert to all formats. Let’s talk about some of the formatting restrictions in using both of these specific platforms.

Publishing a .docx at Kindle Worlds

Kindle Worlds was established by Amazon in 2013 as a way to publish fan fiction. It’s an interesting idea—allowing both the original authors and fan fic authors to profit—but, has unfortunately been met with a lukewarm reaction. As an example, the #1 book on Kindle Worlds is #6,049 in the Amazon paid store at the time of this writing. Although, Amazon has been courting the heavy-hitters in the indie community the last several months to elevate Kindle Worlds. Carly Phillips’ popular Dare to Love series and H.M. Ward’s The Arrangement have attracted other well-known indie authors to take part in Kindle Worlds. Who knows? Maybe it will be the next big thing.

For Kindle Worlds, formatting, it really needs to be as plain as possible and in the .docx format. The full guidelines are here, but the TLDR version is:

.docx format only (they can accept .doc but Amazon’s conversion of .doc to MOBI is wonky)
No tables
Table of Contents in the back
No images
No embedded fonts
No Copyright Page
cover should not be emedded in the Word .docx

The no copyright page requirement is because the Kindle Worlds team will actually add their own special copyright that applies specifically to fan fiction. If you require Kindle Worlds formatting, please contact us. We can do for very cheap since it’s just a Word .docx.

Publishing a .doc at Smashwords

For Smashwords, if you are using it primarily to aggregate to the major EPUB vendors (Nook, iTunes, etc.) it is advised that you only upload an EPUB, which is what will ship to those vendors. However, if you would like the sample option and the other formats (MOBI, PDF, plain text, etc.), you must upload a Microsoft Word .doc. The .doc will go through their Meatgrinder and get converted into all formats (including EPUB). You can upload both a professional EPUB plus a Word .doc if you would like to override the Meatgrinder-produced EPUB. For our clients who order a print-ready PDF, we generally provide a complimentary Word .doc that will work at Smashwords.

The Meatgrinder is not without its headaches, and you can learn more about it by reading the Smashwords Style Guide. Here are some rules to get into Premium status at Smashwords:

.doc format only (the Word 2003 version)
No tables
Table of Contents in the front matter
Title Page must be the first page or it will get flagged during the review process
Must have a copyright page
Images are okay
No embedded fonts
No internal hyperlinks (footnotes, cross-references, etc.)
Cover should not be embedded in the Word .doc
Do not have any links to other vendors except Smashwords (iTunes, Nook, and especially Amazon)
Do not say “Buy this Book at…”, you can say “Get this Book at…”
Do not use colored text

If you need help getting a Smashwords .doc, please feel free to contact us.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

Taxes and BB eBooks

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 22:25:27 +0700

Payment Reports

Happy New Year’s! For those clients as diligent and morally upstanding as Ned Flanders, you may have already started on your 2014 taxes. For those like me who wait until the last minute, not to worry! You can access your record of payments to us at any time.

All payments made to BB eBooks are of course professional fees related to your business and should be deducted as expenses. To access all individual payments made, you can go to BB Client and see all your orders under “My Orders”. If you would like a consolidated receipt by year or for all years, you can access this new feature under “My Reports”. Aside from taxes, this can also be useful for bookkeeping purposes.

If you are an existing client, but don’t have access to BB Client, please feel free to contact me for login information.

U.S. Tax Obligations

For our U.S. clients, there has been some understandable confusion about 1099s. For BB eBooks, we are a non-U.S. company with 100% non-U.S. shareholders, so it is not necessary to issue us 1099s for services performed (since we are not obligated to pay U.S. taxes). However, since BB eBooks is a “foreign” contractor, we do have to provide you something called a W-8BEN-E. It basically states that BB eBooks is not a foreign financial institution; rather, we are a privately-held company providing the services you’ve come to expect from us. This is required per the new FATCA regulations to ensure you aren’t secretly harboring funds offshore (trust us, we already spent the money you gave us). You are not required to file the W-8BEN-E with the IRS, but you should keep it on file.

Value-Added Tax (VAT)

BB eBooks is VAT-registered with the Thai authorities. We are required to pay Value-Added Tax for all transactions with clients who intend to use our services while in Thailand (so anyone residing in Thailand, Thai or expat). The current VAT rate is a flat 7%, and we always include VAT as part of the quote. If you are based on Thailand and need a special “Tax Invoice” to file with your monthly VAT report to the Thai Revenue Department, please feel free to contact us separately and we can provide one for you. If you are not VAT-Registered in Thailand you can disregard this entire paragraph.

For our cousins in the EU, the new regulations on VAT went into effect on January 1, 2015. The VAT applies to digital good transactions based on the customer’s country rather than the supplier’s. This has created huge problems for small businesses that engage in ecommerce and has created significant fear and loathing about how to price eBooks (more on this later as we get our arms around it). This affects business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions of digital goods. However, for BB eBooks we do not sell “digital goods” defined under the new law so the EU VAT rates at the place of the customer do not apply.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

Minimizing Your eBook File Size

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 20:29:40 +0700

The Trouble with Large eBooks

Many of our clients are rightfully concerned that the file size of their eBooks be minimized to the fullest extent possible. Avid readers with a large library can quickly fill up the device space on smartphones and tablets, leaving little room for other apps and, of course, more eBooks. Additionally, eBooks that use large, uncompressed images can crash out a device: the iBooks app being a notorious offender. However, the biggest concern with large eBooks from a publisher/author perspective is the dreaded Amazon delivery fee.

When you take the 70% royalty option at Amazon (highly recommended if you are between $2.99 and $9.99 inclusive and used by most authors), Amazon slaps the publisher/author with a so-called “delivery fee.” The rate is $0.15/MB on every eBook delivered. So if your MOBI eBook is 2MB, then Amazon will take $0.30 from every sale. This can eat into your income very quickly, so it is important to keep the eBook file size as small as possible. Amazon has, arguably, the most powerful web-based infrastructure and servers on the planet, so it’s not clear why they charge so highly for content delivery. However, it’s Amazon, so they can do whatever they want. I’m not anti-Amazon per se… I’m just sayin’.

Strategy to Keep the eBook File Size Small

The biggest culprit that takes up space in eBooks is images. Unlike print editions, eBooks do not need to have the highest-res images possible. This will cause major device lag and also eat into your well-deserved royalties at Amazon. With the exception of fixed-layout eBooks, we have never encountered a situation where the image had to be greater 127KB. If you are a client of BB eBooks, we’re happy to handle all this for you. For DIYers, we strongly recommend getting a decent image manipulation program like Photoshop or Gimp (which is free and wonderful!). You can degrade the quality of JPEG type images, usually to between 70-80%, and this will cut down tremendously on the eBook’s file size. If you are converting your eBooks from Word, Pages, or another word processing program, make sure to embed the image in the document after reducing the file size with a program like Gimp.

The cover in the MOBI file is an exception to the rule. The cover embedded inside the eBook file and uploaded as the marketing image does not count toward the Amazon delivery fee. Therefore, please feel free to upload large covers for the marketing image and embed high-res covers inside the eBooks (please note: if you’re a client of BB eBooks we will handle the embedding of the cover in the eBooks).

Fonts are another culprit that can bloat an eBook. Many traditional publishers and InDesign users embed fonts for the actual body content rather than just headings and special content like text messages. BB eBooks typically advises against this practice, because 1) many readers want to select their own font to use, 2) every eReading device comes equipped with its own selection of fonts that the user can choose, and 3) if a font like DeJaVu Sans or Charis SIL is embedded that has a massive set of glyphs to cover multiple languages, it can create close to 1MB of overhead. That’s money down the drain! It is recommended to only use fonts that have a limited glyph set and to only use them for headings, special content, and dingbats/fleurons (again, if you’re a client, we take care of this for you). If you do intend to use a font face with a huge number of glyphs, try to subset them to have only the glyphs you need for the eBook itself. Font Squirrel has a great app top reduce the size of font files, and we’d love to hear about other ones you may know about.

The last culprit for big eBook file sizes is sloppy formatting/coding practices that “bloat” the eBook file size. This is an in-depth discussion beyond the scope of this blog post. However, BB eBooks’ clients can rest assured that our standards are very, very high to ensure clean, professional formatting that minimizes the eBook’s file size.

The MOBI Conundrum

Amazon’s command-line tool for developers to create MOBI files is called KindleGen, and it is also integrated into many eBook-making programs like Calibre. Honestly, the thing is a black box of proprietary Amazon code and I don’t know how the hell it works. But, for some reason the file size of the outputted MOBI is 2-3 times the EPUB size. Rob Siders of 52 Novels explains why in this helpful comment:

…the packaged Mobi has as many three versions of the book: a KF8-ready version (if those features were used) for Kindle devices and apps that can play them, a version for legacy Kindle devices and apps, and also the source epub. This results in a final file size that’s as much as three times the size of the source epub.

Therefore, the physical file size of the MOBI eBook is not what Amazon will use to calculate the dreaded delivery fee. To find out what file size Amazon will use to calculate the delivery fee, upload your MOBI eBook through the KDP publishing process in Step 1 (Your Book). After you are done uploading the MOBI and you get the “Upload and Conversion Successful” message, proceed to Step 2 (Rights & Pricing). If you scroll down below the royalties information you’ll see the file size in fine print. Below is an example screenshot:

In this case the actual file size of the eBooks was 1.1MB, but the delivery fee will be calculated for 0.4MB, so about 6 cents per eBook sold. Please note that you can do these steps without actually publishing the book itself if you just want to have a look.

Box Sets and File Size

2014 is definitely the year of the box set. Many of our clients have banded together to create 8-, 10-, and even 12-book box sets. This is a great way to make a run for the coveted NY Times and USA Today bestseller lists. Our hats are off to you! Many authors will price their box set at $0.99 for a limited time to maximize sales and get on the important lists. Unfortunately, there is a limit at Amazon to pricing your eBook at $0.99. If your book size, as calculated by Amazon for the delivery fee, is >3MB, you must publish at $1.99 or higher. If your book is >10MB, you must publish at $2.99 or higher. More on this policy from Amazon here.

Even if all the images, fonts, and code are squared away, some box sets are just too darn big in content to be <3MB for the MOBI. From experience, we advise the following if you would like to keep your box set under 3MB at Amazon so you can price at $0.99:

<500,000K words total if there are covers at the beginning of each story in the box set
<650,000K words total if there are no covers at the beginning of each story in the box set

As long as the total word count is less than these, you should be okay if you work with us. Please feel free to contact us for help with you multi-author box set.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

16 Practical Tips for Entrepreneurs

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 00:13:06 +0700

The most successful authors always seem to more like businesswomen/men and less like artists. Joanna Penn has a great new book about author entrepreneurship as well that can help you.

Today, I was invited to speak to a group of young entrepreneurs. I’m not a particular fan of lofty discussions about changing the world, so I attempted to add a dose of reality. Hope my 16 tips aren’t too pretentious, and I assure you that I still learn new things every day. Perhaps some of these tips might be useful to you in your publishing pursuits.

Most entrepreneurs are workaholics. If you’re not, you may want to consider another line of work.
Be cautious about taking advice from other people who are not your customers. Those who can’t actually run a business always seem to dish out lots of bad advice.
If possible, avoid any contractual obligations or receiving investment early on. There may be enough strings attached to hang yourself!
Recognize that plans change often in the early days. Don’t be afraid to change your business model when you are new and lean. Working on the wrong thing can be very detrimental to a new business.
Even if you are a one-person business, organize the tasks of your business into clearly defined departments. This will be important when you expand.
Develop procedures for every task at your business. This will ensure you deliver a consistent product to your customers and will help prevent crisis management.
Whether you are business-to-business or a business-to-consumer company, you must provide a valuable product or service in a consistent and predictable way.
Understand your market segment, not marketing.
Gimmicky marketing techniques will bankrupt you quickly. Discover a way to provide valuable insight and information to your target market segment in a low-cost manner (blogs, newsletter, social media, etc.)
For bureaucratic and administrative requirements, develop a reliable system that is “good enough” and legal. Spend as little time on it as possible.
Hiring staff is a big step. Remember that they do not share the same passion as you do for your business. Treat them with respect and do not overwork them. Don’t become a toxic boss or a screamer.
Never, never, never have an intimate or preferential relation with one of your subordinates. This will completely destroy the morale of your entire workforce (guaranteed!).
When you make a mistake or your product is flawed, take immediate steps to correct and apologize profusely. This works every time.
Remember your customers are your livelihood. Treat them with the utmost respect and do what you can to help them. However, don’t promise something you can’t deliver.
Learn the art of saying no.
Your job is to make money. Once you understand that everything sort of falls into place.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

Prevent Piracy of Your Books Before They Are Released

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 22:52:42 +0700

The Growing Problem

Three years ago when I first became interested in indie publishing piracy of eBooks was not that big a deal. Most authors were primarily concerned with just getting noticed and figuring out how publishing their own books worked. If anything, piracy could be seen as a form of free advertisement! That was then though, and my how things have changed.

Now, try Googling your book plus "EPUB" and you will probably find, on the first page, a list of torrent sites and sleazy web operators like TUEBL and General EBooks. If you are in the top 1,000 on Amazon, you most likely have had your book(s) stolen, unfortunately. There is also a recent, troubling development of Facebook groups dedicated to sharing eBooks stripped of DRM.

Avoid Leaks

It is very difficult to prevent piracy once your eBooks are for sale. We discussed a few methods you could try in a previous post here, but I'm not sure we have any real groundbreaking solutions. However, one thing that keeps us up at night is ensuring that piracy of your eBook does not happen before it goes on sale. There have been an alarming number of cases where ARC copies have been published before the author's release date. This is a disaster, but luckily it is very preventable with a few modest security measures.

What We Do On Our End

We have a very small staff and they have all signed a statement (including me) saying that under Thailand's Computer Crime Act unauthorized distribution of a client's copyrighted material will result in criminal prosecution (with the involvement of our lawyers) plus jail time. Thailand is under military rule at the moment, and Thai prison is not a pleasant place—I assure you. I am also responsible for monitoring incoming and outgoing internet traffic on our office. While the normal goofing off and selfie-posting is permitted to some extent, my wife and I take the issue of client's files very seriously. Our staff understand this and we have never had a problem (knock on wood).

Additionally, we are in a very non-descript neighborhood with a guard so physical sabotage of our office is highly unlikely. Our server is password-protected and our backup drives are kept in the company safe. I'm much more worried about car driving through our door (this almost happened—twice!) than someone breaking into our office to steal your eBooks.

BB eBooks uses no sub-contractors for eBook production-related tasks. Everything is made right in our office. For distribution, we distribute books primarily through the BB Client system, which is use an encrypted connection to transfer you your files. This is much safer than using email and especially Dropbox.

We have not yet received an email from someone asking for an author's book before it was released, but I imagine this will occur someday. This is one of the reasons why we build one-on-one relations with our clients, so we can notify them if something fishy is happening. I am not a gullible person and am actually quite rude to unwanted solicitors. We will notify the client immediately if something is amiss.

What You Can Do On Your End

You have to keep in mind that the EPUBs and MOBIs we send you are not DRMed. They are ready to upload as is and have no security measures whatsoever. Therefore, it is best not to place these in a potentially unsecure location online like Dropbox/Google Docs or in an unsecure physical location like a flashdrive that could be accessed by someone with malicious intentions.

For Advance Reading Copies (ARCs), we recommend you utilize the PDF eBook we send you (if you order the print-on-demand package). It contains no page numbers, so can't be sold as a print book. Additionally, PDFs cannot be sold as eBooks at the major vendors like Amazon and Apple. Every file can be stolen, but the PDF eBook is the "least worst" book to have stolen.

Be careful about who you send ARCs to and make sure you trust the reviewer. You may want to consider releasing your eBook before sending out copies for reviews. Never, never, never send your print -ready PDF to anyone except CreateSpace, Lightning Source, or another printer.

We only recommend sending out the EPUB and MOBI you get from us in very specific circumstances. If you have a book blogger who only takes EPUB or MOBI, you may want to consider gifting it to them via Kindle or trying out a service like NetGalley which can distribute DRM'd eBooks. If you need help making a specific ARC copy of an EPUB or MOBI, this is very easy for us to do. Please drop us a line and let us know how we can help.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

Amazon to Award Bonuses to Top Performing Authors

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 18:13:42 +0700

More Money for the KDP Select Program

In response to many traditionally-published authors launching a crusade against Amazon, Amazon has attempted to curry favor with more indie authors by expanding the money involved with the KDP Select program. KDP Select sort of became passé in 2013, but the program has received some revived interest this year. Two months ago, Amazon launched the subscription service Kindle Unlimited that requires indie authors to be enrolled in KDP Select. While this has some downsides for authors, many authors have noted that it has helped their genre ranking.

Now, Amazon has announced that they will be rewarding significantly more cash for top-performing authors and titles in KDP Select. The details from Amazon are here and the money involved is as follows:

The top 100 most-read KDPS authors will each be awarded the following amounts:

Authors 1 through 10 will receive $25,000
Authors 11 through 20 will receive $10,000
Authors 21 through 30 will receive $5,000
Authors 31 through 50 will receive $2,500
Authors 51 through 100 will receive $1,000

Authors of the top 100 KDPS titles will each earn the following amounts:

Titles 1 through 10 will receive $2,500
Titles 11 through 50 will receive $1,000
Titles 51 through 100 will receive $500

This pays out monthly too!

For those not familiar with KDP Select, you can enroll your eBooks in KDP Select when you publish through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). The downside is that you cannot publish your eBook anywhere else, including your own website. Many people viewed this program as a cynical power-grab by Amazon when it was launched in 2011 to shut down other eBook vendors. We are inclined to agree.

Using Box Sets to get to the Top Spots

Since KDP Select isn’t much used by the big publishers, this could be a great opportunity for top-performing indies to get some extra cash. From the numbers quoted above, this is real money and not just a gift certificate to the Red Lobster. No worries if you’re not a big name author, you may be able to get in on a box set that sells at $0.99. The box sets of 8, 10, and even 12 authors’ books have performed very well in 2014, often reaching the top 100 overall paid at Amazon. Coordinating with other authors in your genre to release a thrifty box set that goes into KDP Select may be a pathway to some well-deserved cash from Amazon.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

Help with being a Customer Service Rep as an Author

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 18:56:20 +0700

The Problem with Being Everything to Everybody

When you first start out as an author, you will most likely receive a periodic email from a fan or well-wisher. No doubt you will be ecstatic that someone has taken the time to write to you. Eventually, as you get more and more well-known these types of emails will become more demanding and burdensome on your time. Some of the questions will be downright silly and responding will be frustrating.

As the manager of small business with a very niche product, it is not too difficult to deal with all customer inquiries in a prompt and professional manner. We can even do things like take them out to dinner if they are passing through town or have a one-on-one Skype session to hash out some issues. In this way, we’re sort of like a law firm or some other organization that provides a specialized service for a limited number of clients. We are spoiled though and authors do not have this luxury since most are writing for a mass market. There could be thousands, if not tens of thousands, customers… and only one of you. If they all sent you an email or Facebook message in one day your head would explode. Some strategy in coping with this problem is needed.

I am biased since our primary focus is helping authors/publishers (not readers), but I think it is unfair that some readers have the condescending mentality of “I pay your rent”, so they feel they are entitled to take up large portions of an author’s time. Please note to readers who think like this: a $3 eBook purchase would not cover the cost of rent in any country on the planet. However, flattery is everything in this business and readers must be satisfied.

Recently, an author had a Class Alpha meltdown and made the cardinal sin of insulting one of her readers on social media. The internet (and email) is written in stone, not pencil, so once your harsh words are out there… they are really out there for the world to analyze. Customer service can be challenging if you’re a famous indie author, and being mean to your readers, except in very limited situations where you are trying to build an avant-garde image, can be disastrous for your reputation. Although, good customer service can really improve your brand and is essential to building strong word-of-mouth. It can really help rather than being a perpetual time suck. Let’s talk about some customer service solutions.

Have Information Readily Available

People will often only email if they cannot find out an answer that is readily available somewhere on the internet. Most people are familiar with how to perform a Google search, so you want to have some part of your website that provides detailed information on questions you often get asked. The traditional way to do this has been with a FAQ, but I personally find FAQ sections to be a bit too unorganized and people often don’t read them. If you’re getting a lot of questions about your series order (this is a common one from readers), you may want to have a separate part of your website that just talks about your which books to follow to read the entire series. You do not need this to be on the landing page (which should be uncluttered and not too wordy for author websites), but rather a separate dedicated page. Even if it’s not incredibly easy to navigate to from the front page, Google will index the page and it will show up in search results. Take note of the questions you are getting asked most frequently and consider developing a content strategy on your site that will prevent too many emails.

Another technique to answer email, but makes writing email a lot quicker, is to develop some canned responses. These are boilerplate responses to common emails you encounter in day-to-day operations. Small businesses use these all the time (including BB eBooks). For instance, if someone inquires on when you’re next book is coming out, you can have something ready on your computer for cutting and pasting about how you’re writing really hard and expect the book to come out in early 2015. It doesn’t matter how often you repeat the same email because it is going to different people, so they’ll be none the wiser and think you provided them a personal response. Please be careful about using a template made in Word or other word processing program. The reason is when you copy it into an email client often the font formatting will show up, and you’ll end up with a bunch of weird looking fonts in the same email. This will be a clue to the reader that you used a canned response. You can use a text editor like Notepad, and when you copy and paste the text the formatting will be nice and uniform.

Enlisting Assistance and Crisis Management

Hiring a competent and capable assistant is a great way to help answer your fans’ questions. They can free up a tremendous amount of your time after you provide clear and specific instructions on what you would like your author brand to achieve. Although, a PA may be out of your budget. One advantage of being an author is that you can get your fans to help out too. Many businesses would not be successful at “crowd sourcing” customer service functions simply because it would come off as tacky and opportunistic. However, a huge advantage of being an indie author is that you are a real person, not some faceless corporation. Therefore, acting human and admitting that you are having some trouble trying to keep up with all your wonderful fans may have some benefits. Many of your fans will “step up” and start answering other fans questions. It’s genius! I have seen many successful authors do this in times of crises. This works particularly well on large social networks like Facebook.

Occasionally, shit happens. You may have promised a book release on a certain date, but realized that Amazon didn’t approve it in time. You are unfortunately going to have a bunch of angry readers on your hands. The best thing to do is shift the blame from yourself to some external, faceless entity, particular a large company like Amazon. I would not recommend blaming a contractor or subordinate (especially not BB eBooks!) because that looks like you are a bully. Rather, no one minds when you blame a large corporation—readers can sympathize since it’s more of a Davey-and-Goliath situation. It’s important not to get into a “Me vs. All of You” mentality with your readers. Explain that you are equally upset that vendor xyz is taking forever to review your book and not release it for sale. Your fans will be guaranteed to sympathize and direct their anger elsewhere.

Dealing with Bozo Readers

Once you become well known you will unfortunately have some weird people contacting you, often real creeps. This is especially true for female romance authors. It is absolutely mortifying the amount of sexually monstrous and unsolicited pics that many female authors get. It is disgusting, but can be unfortunately difficult for large social media networks and law enforcement to prevent. I’m not sure a good strategy to prevent this, but I would recommend ignoring it the same way you would with spam, since giving attention to the offender will only feed their trolling and malicious behavior. There’s an interesting study on trolling behavior written about in The Guardian.

On the less disgusting side, you may get strange emails from fans who ask you millions of questions want to know a lot (a lot!) of personal information about you and share with you their own problems. I don’t think these people are malicious like the aforementioned perverts, but they are dangerous because they will take up an inordinate amount of your time. It is also not fair to your other fans to spend an huge amount of your time and resources dealing with one person. For these people you can 1) ignore them or 2) greatly delay your email response time and only send a very terse response.

Another type of problem reader is the one who wants a bunch of free stuff from you. Free shirts, free eBooks, free lunch, the whole shebang. If they are being mean and nasty then hopefully they do so on Facebook so your fans can come to the rescue and make them go away. However, if you are getting emails from this person, you should immediately turn the discussion into about how much it will cost. A discussion of money usually scares off the freeloaders.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.

Delegating Tasks as an Author

paul@beebee.asia (Paul Salvette) — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 18:39:54 +0700

The Next Phase of Self-Publishing

Despite many naysayers during the early part of this decade, the debate has been pretty much settled that independent publishing is a viable option that can greatly benefit authors. Compared to legacy publishing, many authors prefer the creative control they have over the entire book and the ability to connect with fans directly. However, what about the financial aspects? Like any small business, there is inherent risk and no guarantee of success, but hard work does indeed pay off. Many authors are not comfortable thinking of their writing as a business, preferring to define what they do as art or passion. But like it or not, creating and publishing books is a business (a multi-billion dollar business actually), so it is beneficial to think like a businesswoman in your endeavors.

The Problem with Time

There are only 24 hours in the day. No amount of scientific and societal advancement will ever change that. In fact, despite the conveniences of the modern world, most people have less free time than in generations past. People are working longer hours than they used to, and the modern age of smartphones has made it so that anyone can get ahold of you at any time—holidays, vacations, and weekends included. Authors often talk about delivering a product that will be enjoyable during their readers’ limited free time. Authors have to compete with games, television, and movies that have substantial advertising budgets and production resources. But what about an author’s own free time? How can an author free up some of her time?

Hiring Contractors

Working with contractors is typically done by an author because they believe that they would not be able to do the job themselves and that these specialists can add value to their work. Contractors are paid a fixed or hourly fee for their services. Contractors typically employed by authors include:

Cover Designers
Editors/Proofreaders
Formatters
PR Special1ists

Often, many indie authors will try to do all these tasks themselves when starting out—it’s part of the indie, DIY ethos. Beginning indie authors will also hire out contractors because they feel the task would be too challenging to take on themselves. However, once your writing and sales have reached a certain level and your cash flow can support, you may want to consider hiring these services out to free up more time for your bigger goals and objectives. The more tasks you can hire out, the more time you will have to focus on more important tasks such as writing and developing a larger fan base.

Forming a Company and Hiring Staff

I am often surprised from our successful clients when they contact us directly about formatting. These are some very big names, and I figure they would prefer to delegate the task of coordinating with the formatting guys to one of their staff. Often these big-name authors are workaholic, one-woman shows. I have no idea how they have time to handle every aspect of publishing and marketing their books (perhaps they do not sleep or are robots). My hat is off to them, but it may be beneficial to add some team members.

If you are doing well and are short on free time, you may want to consider hiring full-time staff. Staff are different than contractors, because you are not just paying a company or individual for a specific service. Your staff will understand your objectives and brand much better than a contractor ever would. Many successful authors hire personal assistants, and just having one dedicated and motivated staff can make a huge difference. Many personal assistants that work with authors are avid readers, so you may be able to hire someone from your fan base.

Although, like any management job, it is important that you clearly communicate your priorities and long-term objectives to your staff. No employee wants to mess up at work, but often employees are not clear on what the boss wants. As we used to say in the Navy, “There are no bad sailors, only bad leaders.” Delegation is a challenge, but the more tasks you can remove from your plate the better off you will be.

Hiring an employee is a big step and there are certain legal obligations that come along with it. Please consult the laws of your country/state/province regarding employment. There are some things that can get you in legal trouble, so please pay particular attention to the following:

Laws regarding overtime and maximum hours per week
Income taxes for your employees
Taxes associated with social security, Medicaid, etc.
Providing healthcare for your employees (if required)

It is also recommended that you incorporate as a private company (called an LLC in many countries). This will prevent you from being sued for your personal assets. Limiting the liability and conducting everything in a legal manner is essential, and hiring a local lawyer to help set up your company is a good step that many authors have taken.

Please read the rest at the BB eBooks Blog.