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I'm a huge fan of self-publication and small-press publication, and I think the stigma attached to both is fading. (It's worth noting that my only experience being published is non-fiction with a big publisher, but a girl's gotta start somewhere, and I do a lot with self-publishers in my job as head of a web development shop focused on small business.) ...

This is basically a question of marketing strategy. The major pro of DRM is that it helps avoid pirating; the major con is that it limits accessibility and portability, and can annoy readers and users. So it seems to me that the primary consideration should be: "Is pirating going to cost me so much, that I'm better off risking limiting and annoying ...

I would recommend JA Konrath's blog on this. While he hasn't abandoned print publication, he sees e-books as a very valuable way to not only make money, but get your work out quickly and with more control over it. Here's a good take from him on publishing: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/08/changing-face-of-publishing.html The biggest thing is that you ...

Scrivener can compile to various formats including EPUB and Kindle formats, and gives you lots of control over formatting. Here is a video tutorial showing how it's done. It is available for both the Mac and Windows, with a Beta version for Linux.

All that readers care about is that you present them with a well-crafted compelling story. Length is of minimal importance. Some of the best written and most memorable stories have well below 60- or even 50,000 words. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Of Mice and Men, Slaughterhouse Five, Fight Club, and The Great Gatsby all have less than 60k words ...

By doing a "flip page" style of feature in ebooks, it allows the reader a chance to catch their breath. Try this sometime. Get two copies of the exact same book (preferably in the public domain). Read one formatted for an e-reader, and the other in-line. You'll notice very quickly that with the in-line text, you lose your place easily, your eyes tire ...

Ebook publishing is no different than traditional print publishing. You're going to have to write a decent manuscript, find a publisher, go through the submission process, work with an editor and cover artist, and have your work released. The are lots of benefits of being with a publisher that puts their books in ebook format. Ebooks are generally ...

I have been using Calibre to format my e-books, and I have been very happy with it. However, as PseudoCubic noted, it will not accept a Word document as input. Ideally, you should convert your file to html first and then format it with Calibre. If you convert your Word document to html, make sure you choose the Web Page, Filtered option. Otherwise, Microsoft ...

Unlike the other answers, let me try to give you a practical, nuts and bolt answer. When you go to self-publish your book, either as an ebook(Amazon, Kobo, etc) or print(Createspace etc), you are asked to give an author name. This field is not automatically filled based on your registered name. So you can fill in any name you want in the author field. This ...

Although Ralph is 100% correct in his statements I notice his answer kind of assumes your expectations, when you have asked what your expectations should be. So to deal with your bullets: Options: Anything from producing a PDF using OpenOffice to as complicated as you want to make it. You can publish e-books on Lulu, Amazon or directly into a "sharing" ...

DRM has been pretty harmful in my experience with creating and selling information products. I used some fairly heavy handed DRM when I first started out. I realized this was a mistake after taking feedback from my customers and analyzing conversion rates. I ended up doing a lot of testing on implementations of DRM to determine what worked and what did ...

I think that there is definitely an advantage to publishing to other venues/formats. From a simplicity standpoint, I use Smashwords to distribute my e-books to other markets, such as B&N, Kobo, and Apple. They don't pay as frequently (once per quarter), but they do make it a lot easier to get into more markets. I also like having the ability to generate ...

Should I e-publish? It depends heavily on your goals, on the effort you're willing/interested in investing, and on your skill with the various abilities involved with e-publishing. If you aim to eventually sell your book to a traditional publisher, then do not e-publish. Traditional publishers will very rarely buy manuscripts that have already been ...

eBooks only really "exploded" in sales over the last couple of years, so there likely isn't enough data yet to be able to accurately say what periods of the year would be best for eBooks. eBooks may not follow the same trends as normal books, after all. I'm not sure if people are as likely to buy an eBook as a gift for a friend as they are to actually buy a ...

You might want to try Calibre, which is a pretty powerful ebook conversion tool. To my knowledge it won't accept a Word document directly as input, but you can convert your manuscript to another format from word first, like HTML, plain text, or even PDF, and import it into Calibre for conversion.

I assume your students are interested in self-publishing. Traditional publishing is a whole different ball game. Key Factors To Consider Rights. One of the main draws of self-publishing is that you keep all your rights over your work. However, plenty of sub-par services exist which'll be happy to take 'em off your hands. Before posting work anywhere, and ...

I think the theories about eye strain is completely valid and may have been part of the thought process. That said, let's not forget that many people are still not sold on the e-book experience. Keeping it familiar will help ease the pain of switching for the uninitiated or reluctant. When computers shrunk to the size of a microwave and could theoretically ...

After doing a bit of digging, Aspose Words Express is the best resource that I came across for converting your files. I've used Calibre before, but I've had very mixed results. Calibre is great for converting my own books for reading on various devices, but it can sometimes leave a lot of work in terms of editing artifacts for a press-ready piece of work. ...

According to the Publishing FAQ I found on Amazon, customers have to specifically request the new version: If you’ve already purchased your book and subsequently revise the content and re-publish the updated version, you don’t need to re-purchase the book to get a copy. At this time, it’s not possible for publishers to receive the updated file without ...

I think we already have a question about generally marketing a book, so I keep the first part short (hopefully the second also): Get a blog (oh, you have one, good!) and post about your stories, pricing, etc. Tell it your family, friends, colleagues Make meaningful posts to other forums, blogs, or other sites (like what you are doing here). Do not mention ...

If an ebook has DRM, it tends to be tied to a specific reader (actually, a specific physical reader-device). Since devices are, to some extent, short-lived and libraries are (or should arguable be able to be) long-lived, DRM directly harms the end consumer. If the DRM is implemented with call-backs to a central server (not the case, as far as I am aware, ...

I have a series of short stories that I have published under a pen name, and I had a lot of difficulty getting any exposure or sales. Each short story was a stand alone story, and I priced them at $0.99 each. I then combined them together (five stories) into a collection that I listed at $2.99. The first couple of months I would sell a few short stories and ...

Is your goal to actually hide your identity? Like you're advocating the violent overthrow of the government and you don't want the police to track you down? Or maybe more realistically, you're afraid your writing might interfere with business relationships, like you don't want co-workers to know that you're writing sex novels? Or is it that you think a ...

According to these figures, 55% of ebook buyers use the amazon kindle, regardless of their accuracy, the kindle is a very popular device. The (non-drm) format which works best with the kindle is the mobi. Pdf on the kindle is sometimes unreliable. All other popular ereaders I know of support epub, and people on a pc will be fine with html and/or PDF.

If it's going to make the reader stop reading, don't do it. Your goal as an author is to absorb the author into your world and make them forget about anything going on around them. If a reader has to stop reading to watch your video or listen to a sound snippet, you're not accomplishing that goal. Instead, you'll annoy your reader and they won't want to ...

Definition of terms is always crucial. As Ralph Gallagher says, books go out of print when the contract is ended. That point may be defined differently with different authors and publishers, perhaps 'one print run' or 'when sales drop to less than X dollars per annum' or even 'until there's been no interest for one full year'. I believe an author I know ...

It varies for each reader, but the majority(at least the vocal majority) say that if I pay for a book, I should own it fully. It should be mine to move to another e-reader, another PC/laptop, or anywhere else. DRM normally doesn't allow this. With DRM, you never really own any book, you just rent it, and it can be removed any time, like it happened with ...

Nathan raises an excellent point. WIth scrolling text, you need to put in extra effort to track where you've stopped and where to start reading again. This may not seem like a lot of mental effort, but it's small things like that which tire the reader's "eyes" - a metaphor of course, it's really the brain which is tired from doing all that needless ...

I use LaTeX for any and all writing, short, long, mathematical or otherwise. It gives fantastic control to the user and you can set the output to be any one of a myriad of types, including pdfs of all sizes. Here is a showcase of some of its capabilities. Also, this is a nice compendium of examples.

Do you know how to self promote? Are you already good at it? Are you interested in learning how? Are you highly disciplined? Are you a DIY kind of person? Those are important questions if you are thinking about self-pub. If self promotion/marketing is something you have the discipline to do and passion to excel at, then self-pub becomes a much more ...