Some Notes About eBooks

Publishing a book is always a demanding project. But there are a lot more options these days than there used to be. And some of the newest options can substantially lower the costs of publication, thereby making it feasible to publish books and documents which previously could not have been published without the backing of a major publishing company.

One interesting option is to publish a book as an eBook. The eBookMall.com website offers more information on this web page. If you browse that website, you'll see that a lot of major book publishers are now offering their books in the form of eBooks. The most universal format is probably the PDF format which can be read with Adobe Acrobat Reader. However, one of the chief benefits of that format in certain situations can be a drawback in other situations. The benefit is that authors have complete control over formatting. The device which is used to open the file won't change the fonts or the margins or any of the other things about the document which can be important. The problem, though, is that a document which is formatted for printing on a standard letter-size printer, and for viewing on a standard computer monitor, may require constant scrolling when it's being viewed on one of the new portable document reading devices or on a PDA.

Hence, there are various document formats, including:

Adobe Reader
Microsoft Reader
Mobipocket Reader
Palm Reader
Gemstar eBook
HTML
Instant eBook
Microsoft Word
Plain Text

It helps to know what format one's eBook reader needs to see prior to buying or downloading an eBook. For example, one of the hottest new eBook reading devices is known as the Amazon Kindle. Amazon (which has an obvious advantage when marketing eBooks, due to its enormous name recognition) uses a format known as Digital Text Platform. As it turns out, the process of publishing in Kindle format involves uploading one of the supported formats and then having Amazon convert the document to Digital Text Platform format. They publish a great deal of information to guide one through the process. Suffice it to say, though, that they recommend that you create the original document in HTML format (the same as a normal Web page), or in the form of a compressed .ZIP file if one is using multiple HTML files as well as image files and things of that nature.

You can send them Microsoft Word files and then have the files converted to HTML files by Amazon. Until fairly recently, creating HTML files from within MS Word was problematic because of the extraneous Word-specific codes which made it possible to re-open such files later in Word for subsequent editing. Those codes created absurdly bloated files which took forever to open in one's browser once they'd been uploaded to a web host. Dreamweaver (the most popular and powerful web design program for professionals) actually had a function for stripping extraneous codes out of HTML files created with Word. Fortunately, Microsoft learned from its mistakes, and Word 2007 now has the ability to save a finalized web page in the form of an HTML file which has no Word-specific codes. Of course, one should wait until the page is almost ready for publication before saving in that format, since it can't be opened and edited again in Word once that's been done. But that doesn't mean that it can't be edited. One can open it in web design software such as Dreamweaver or in an HTML editing program such as CoffeeCup (or, if one is really feeling adventurous, in a standard text editor such as Microsoft Notepad). Personally, I recommend CoffeeCup for those who don't want to spend a fortune but who still want a very solid web design program. They even offer a free version, which is fine as long as one doesn't need all of the features of the full program. Go to this page if you want to download the program for free. Be aware, though, that it helps to know something about HTML if you want to get the most out of the free version. The regular version ($49) is more powerful, and a bit more intuitive, too.

The savvy publisher will take individual readers' needs into account, and will often offer a single book title in multiple eBook formats. Of course, that works better for some types of books than for others. Novels, short stories and other types of books which are primarily comprised of simple text can be easily adapted to a wide variety of formats, because such books work well regardless of how the margins are set and regardless of the fonts or font sizes which are used. Other types of books may be more limited in terms of how easily they can be adapted to different formats.

One of the advantages of eBooks is that there is no printing cost for the publisher, unless the same book is also offered in the form of a traditional printed and bound book. If an eBook gets printed, it gets printed by the buyer or recipient of that book (assuming that the file isn't digitally protected in a manner which prevents printing). So there are obviously no warehousing costs for preprinted books.

Of course, that's also true of "print on demand" books, but "print on demand" books still need to be printed and shipped once customers have ordered them online. With an eBook, there's instant gratification for the customer, who can have a document in his or hands (or, to be more accurate, stored digitally on the receiving device) within just a few minutes of ordering the document online.

Speed is also a major benefit when it comes to the revision of books and documents which need to be updated frequently. For that reason, eBook may very well be the perfect format for creative directories, resource directories, specialized phone directories and other documents of that nature.

While it is possible to make good money by publishing eBooks and selling them online, eBooks are also great as a means of publishing books when one's objective is to offer such books for free. For instance, publishing a beautiful full-color printed catalog can be a major expense (which may or may not pay off in the form of sales), but that same catalog can be offered online, as a PDF file, for next to nothing.

One particularly good option, when publishing eBooks, is offered by Lulu.com. That company allows one to publish such eBooks for profit, or to distribute them online for free. (This link will take you to a web page with more information about that option. This link will take you to a page with additional technical information.) If you charge for your eBook, then Lulu.com takes a 25% commission on your royalty (or "creator revenue"), but there's no setup charge and no production cost, so if you choose not to charge customers for your eBook, there is no cost! Naturally, you'll need to promote your eBook by linking to it (e.g., from e-mail messages, blog posts and so forth), but that's no big deal.

Whereas it's typically far more expensive to print documents in color than to print them in black and white, the inclusion of color doesn't increase the cost of publishing an eBook. It does increase the file size (and download time) somewhat, so it definitely helps to learn something about how to optimize file sizes for viewing color graphics on the Web. You should also remember that some eBook viewing devices (such as the Kindle) can't display full-color graphics. But an eBook in PDF format is probably intended for viewing on actual computers, anyway, so that can be a great way to distribute photographic portfolios or full-color catalogs.

Now, let's say that you decide to offer a full-color catalog of products (such as fine art prints or paintings) in the form of a free downloadable eBook from Lulu.com. You could include a price list in that eBook, along with an order form and instructions to those who want to order your products. They could print out the order form, fill it out and then mail it to you along with payment, thereby enabling you to conduct business which involves payments with checks or money orders.

But what if they want to pay with a credit card or debit card, and they don't want to do so by means of an online e-commerce store? Or what if you don't want to go through the hassle of programming e-commerce functions into your website? What if you're marketing your products by means of a blog or some other type of site where e-commerce programming isn't really an option?

PayPal has always been a good option for people who wanted to add e-commerce functions to their websites even though they didn't qualify for standard merchant accounts. But now the PayPal Virtual Terminal feature allows sellers to accept credit card or debit card payments via phone, fax, snail mail or face-to-face transactions! The seller still needs to be able to access the Internet (to process the payment), but the buyer doesn't need to be able to do so. In conjunction with an eBook catalog, the new PayPal Virtual Terminal feature would enable a seller to easily sell to anyone who was able to download that catalog and print the order form therein, regardless of how that person wanted to pay. Of course, distribution of printed flyers, brochures and catalogs to people who couldn't access the Web would enable one to make credit card or debit card sales to those people as well.

Whenever possible, it's ideal to sell via an e-commerce website, preferably with the help of a company (such as Lulu.com or Blurb.com or CafePress.com) which will not only process the order, but also produce the product and ship it directly to one's customer. But that isn't possible with all products, so it's great to be aware of all of one's options. Whether one is selling eBooks via Lulu.com (and/or Amazon.com) or distributing free eBook catalogs for the purpose of selling products using the order forms included in those catalogs, eBooks offer a lot of options to would-be entrepreneurs with far more vision than money!

Great Publishing Options at Blurb.com

Until recently, persuading a major book publisher to publish a coffee table book featuring one's photos and/or art was a major undertaking. "Print on demand" companies were mostly limited to text-only books such as novels. Fortunately, that is now changing.

Blurb.com is a company which offers the ability to publish high-quality hard cover and paperback books which one can then sell online via one's own e-commerce website. (Pikto.com also offers the option of selling one's own photo books online, but their onetime setup fee of $200 might deter some people from exploring that option.)

Blog books, business books, cookbooks, photo books, poetry books, portfolios and wedding books are just a few of the possibilities which are listed at Blurb.com. They can also print text-only books, but their real strength seems to be in their ability to publish full-color books (including hard cover coffee table books) and then sell them online on behalf of their authors.

Other similar on-demand book publishers which offer the option of printing full-color photo books include Pikto.com, Apple (via their iPhoto service), MPix.com, MyPublisher.com, Lulu.com and XLibris.com.

Lulu.com and Blurb.com seem to be the best choices if you not only want to publish your color photos in books but you also want to sell them online via your own e-commerce web pages.

Lulu.com is a nice option, but Blurb.com seems to offer more sizes: 7x7 (square); 8x10 or 10x8 (portrait or landscape orientation); and 13 wide x 11 high (landscape orientation; hard cover only). And each book can have as many as 440 pages!!!

Consider this: The very nice photo book "America 24/7" has 304 pages, and measures 13.1" x 10.6" x 1.2". It's a massive book, but no larger than what's possible with the parameters offered by Blurb.com.

I also like the fact that the Blurb.com site includes its own online bookstore where people can browse through all of the books they've published at any given date and time, so you don't have to know about a specific book in advance in order to easily learn about it. What's particularly impressive is the huge number of books they've published so far! Specifically:

Architecture (80)
Arts & Photography (5220!)
Biographies & Memoirs (335)
Blogs (60)
Business (36)
Children (592)
Comics & Graphic Novels (18)
Computers & Internet (2)
Cooking (168)
Crafts & Hobbies (40)
Education (74)
Entertainment (66)
Fine Art (217)
Fine Art Photography (989)
Gay and Lesbian (10, unfortunately)
History (113)
Home & Garden (87)
Humor (36)
Literature & Fiction (55)
Medicine & Science (15)
Mystery & Crime (3)
Nonprofits & Fundraising (56)
Parenting & Families (208)
Pets (153)
Poetry (250)
Portfolios (340)
Reference (18)
Religion & Spirituality (157)
Romance (50)
Science Fiction & Fantasy (15)
Self-Improvement (26)
Sex & Relationships (13)
Sports & Adventure (413)
Travel (1804)
Uncategorized (8839)
Wedding (1178)

In short, they've already published a lot of books!

I also like the fact that each e-commerce page can have an author profile, a text description of the book, tags which make it easy to find the book, a PDF preview of the book (so people can make intelligent buying decisions rather than buying solely on the basis of the cover and the description), and the ability to bookmark or e-mail interesting books. Here's a sample of what I mean. Author's can also have their own Blurb.com home pages and their own Blurb.com "bookstores". That's is particularly useful for promoting their own websites, and for gathering all of their Blurb.com books together on a single page.

Blurb.com authors also get to set their own prices, so they can make as much or as little money as they wish (provided that they charge enough to pay for printing and other costs).

Another interesting note: Blurb.com seems to have integrated its services with iStockPhoto.com, resulting in an alliance which would seem to enable writers to use photos from the latter web-based "microstock" company (in case they aren't able to produce the photos they need themselves). See this page for details. That might be very useful for poets and other types of writers. It's likely that one would need to pay for the Extended License versions of each image, though, in order to keep things legal.

I can't speak from personal experience, with regard to the quality of Blurb.com's books, because I haven't yet created or bought my first book from them. But I think that what I've seen looks very promising.

PHOTO BOOK IDEAS

Here are some ideas I have regarding books I'd like to publish via Blurb.com and/or Lulu.com:

The Creator's Creators: A visual overview of artistically talented Christians and their work. This would include samples of their work (and/or photos of them at work, in the case of musicians, actors, etc.), plus pen & ink portraits of all featured artists (created by myself using my stippled pen & ink technique), plus written profiles and interviews featuring each artist, plus complete contact information so that creative directors, concert promoters, art collectors and other interested parties could contact the people featured in the book. In that sense, the book would be a creative directory comparable to the ones which have been used by photographers and illustrators to obtain work in the past. Examples of such directories have included American Showcase, The Black Book, the Graphic Art Guild's Directory of Illustration, Stock Illustration Source, and Workbook. Publication in such directories (as well as regional publications of a similar nature) is useful both for the artists featured in the books (and related websites) and also for those who need a quick way to view numerous portfolios without waiting for the individual artists to contact them. A secondary purpose of the directory would be to draw attention to those artists who've specifically made a point of publicly expressing their Christian convictions, or who are making a special effort to target the religious marketplace (such as Christian record companies, book publishers, art galleries, etc.). A third function would be to spur collaborations and fruitful exchanges of dialog between diverse artistic Christians.

The Life of The Body: This book would be somewhat similar to America 24/7, which was a collaborative photo book based on digital images submitted online by numerous Americans throughout the United States. (That book stimulated regional versions for every state in the union, as well as similar books focusing on other countries and other subjects such as dogs and cats. The Life of The Body would be a collaborative photo book focusing specifically on the lives (both in and out of church) of diverse members of the Body of Christ throughout the United States. Brief text profiles would be included, but the primary contents would be visual. The objective would be to make people more aware of the extent to which the influence of the Christian Church permeates the cultural life of the United States. (Additional editions might later be created for other nations and/or continents.)

The Taste of Mercy: This would be a book which would combine my Christ-centered poetry, my photography, my pen & ink portraits (and other art, such as digital abstract art) and more. In addition, the book would contain order forms and related information, for people who wished to commission pen & ink portraits or purchase related products such as fine art prints. There would also be text which would describe my comprehensive vision for Artistic Christian Endeavors, and information for people who wished to book me as a speaker in relation to that project. Later, my hope is that I could produce and publish similar books which would feature the work of numerous other artistic Christians, such as poets, painters, photographers and so forth.

Other book ideas I might pursue, all of which would benefit from the services at Blurb.com:

• A portfolio book featuring numerous samples of my pen & ink portraits, along with detailed descriptions of how to go about commissioning me to produce such portraits.
• An art instruction book which I would use for the purpose of teaching others to create stippled pen & ink portraits. (Other ideas for art instruction books I could write are also running through my mind.)
  
• A catalog featuring numerous fine art prints and related products produced by myself and other members of the North American Alliance of Artistic Christians. The catalog would include detailed pricing and ordering information, along with an order form (for people who wish to photocopy that form), along with the web address where a downloadable PDF order form could be obtained.
• A portfolio book featuring commercial graphic designs I've created in Photoshop (such as full-color business cards, postcards, etc.). This book would supplement a related website as a means of presenting my capabilities to potential graphic design clients.
• An illustrated cookbook featuring numerous recipes contributed by members of the North American Alliance of Artistic Christians. Proceeds would be used to raise funds for the ministry. (Additional recipes could be sold in a book published via CafePress.com. The CafePress.com book wouldn't have full color photos.)
• An anthology of Christ-centered short stories and poems by various writers. Ideally, there would be illustrations which related to the subjects of the stories and poems.
• Church directories published for the purpose of helping members of various churches to get to know one another better, thereby enabling them to more effectively serve Christ together.
  

The preceding book projects would be sold online in order to raise funds for Artistic Christian Endeavors. The books would be published under the name Priceless Pearl Press.

There would be a related literary journal known as The P3 Review. (The literary journal would be published as an e-book, for ease of distribution and low cost. There might also be a related blog and a related podcast. The podcast would enable me to include audio interviews, music excerpts, audio excerpts from movies, readings from short stories and poetry, and so forth.)

While all of the above projects would be created partially for the purpose of raising badly needed funds, making money would not be the only objective. I sincerely believe that every one of the projects listed above would be valuable contributions to the world of reading. Some of the aforementioned projects will be very time consuming and difficult to create. Others should be fairly easy. But all of them are doable, and I believe that I have what it will take to complete these projects, with the help of numerous others who see the potential in my ideas.

UPDATE: Be sure to read my related, more recent blog post which discusses ways in which Blurb.com photo books could be used in order to raise funds and achieve other goals in relation to various nonprofit groups and charitable organizations.