Aug 14 2008
Kindle Your Book
I finally got a Kindle edition of my novel, Too Near the Edge, up on Amazon this week! And I am so pleased. There’s just something so satisfying about having a paper-free edition of my book out there. Once I upload it, there’s no printing, no shipping, no extra costs for the publisher (me) or the purchaser. I love it!
It took me a while because the most recent and complete edition of my manuscript was in PDF format (for Lightning Source) or InDesign (used for layout before creating the PDF. In their guide to uploading and converting content for Kindle, Amazon says,” Adobe PDF files are supported, but the quality of conversion is difficult to guarantee.” I optimistically tried uploading the PDF, which looked horrible, then downloaded the HTML from Amazon so I could edit it, but the process was so discouraging that I never quite got through with that editing. So months went by.
But then I discovered April L. Hamilton’s free free PDF guide, IndieAuthor Guide To Publishing With Amazon’s Digital Text Platform And MS Word 2003 Or Higher, which was a great help. Thank you, April. I ended up converting my PDF file to a Word file and doing some rather tedious editing, but it worked. My upload to Kindle looked great when I previewed it.
And I’ve already sold a copy! Admittedly the $2.45 I made from that sale doesn’t go far towards paying for the time it took me to convert my manuscript. But now I know how to do the conversion. I went on to convert my daughter’s novel, Following My Toes, which is also live on Kindle now. And I will continue.
With rising fuel prices, hard times at publishing companies, and the increasing focus on green products for an eco-friendly lifestyle, I’ve come to believe that Kindle and similar reading devices are the wave of the future. If I had one, I wouldn’t have to lug a suitcase full of books with me on every vacation, or keep buying bookcases to hold my overflow, or fill my recycling bin with newspaper.
And readers who are downloading books onto Kindle will probably be less likely to care or even notice who the publisher is. I think Kindle will do a lot to level the publishing playing field.
I’ve started to have very positive feelings about Kindle. In fact, while I was messing around getting my book up there, I even watched the Amazon video touting Kindle’s features. Did you know you can search for a term in all the reading material you’ve downloaded? And you can virtually “turn over the corner” of a page you want to remember to re-visit. And the Kindle books cost about half the price of printed books.
I figure I only need to sell about 150 copies of my Kindle book to make enough to buy myself a Kindle. Maybe by Christmas?
In the meantime, I encourage all indie authors who haven’t already done so to get April’s free guide and get your books up on Kindle. I truly believe it will be worth your time and effort to do it. And you’ll have the satisfaction of putting out a green product.
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Lynne –
I’m glad to hear my Guide was helpful to you, and thanks for recommending it to your readers. =’)
I broke into self-publishing, or as I call it, indie authorship, through the Kindle. It was a purposeful, strategic move on my part, and one I recommend to other indie authors. Here’s why…
First, Kindle owners are necessarily avid readers. Second, they are also necessarily early adopters: open-minded and willing to take a risk on something new. Third, they are a limited and fairly contained population, which makes it easier to target your promotional efforts. Fourth, while Kindle editions of popular, mainstream books are being added to Amazon’s catalog all the time, the overall number of Kindle titles is very, very small compared to Amazon’s catalog of books overall; this makes it much easier to climb into Kindle bestseller lists than it is to scale such heights among Amazon’s hard-copy book offerings. Fifth, because sales figures and reviews are displayed across all editions of a given book on Amazon, it’s possible to build up some momentum for a POD, hard-copy book release by racking up some respectable sales and positive reviews on a Kindle edition for weeks or months in advance. Finally, publishing a Kindle edition via Amazon’s DTP doesn’t require a great deal of technical skill, and it’s *free*.
I published both of my novels in Kindle editions first, and in both cases the strategy has really paid off. Each time one of them hit a top 10 list in the Kindle store I was able to fire off a press release, raising awareness of, and anticipation for, the novels among non-Kindle owners. Once each book had received enough reviews, I proceeded with trade paperback publication—announced via additional press releases, naturally!
It’s true that you don’t tend to make a lot of money on Kindle editions…I think I earn about $2 per copy sold. But that’s comparable to a mainstream author’s royalty on a typical trade paperback, and since my Kindle editions are first and foremost marketing tools for my trade paperbacks, I view any royalties earned on them as pure gravy anyway.
I wrote the Kindle how-to as a result of my own frustration in trying to find a clear, complete, step-by-step guide on the subject. Later, I experienced the same frustration in prepping my manuscripts for POD publication. Since I have many years’ experience as a technical writer, I decided to fill the void with a reference book of my own, The IndieAuthor Guide. The 300pp book includes the Kindle how-to (with more illustrations), and covers just about every other topic related to indie authorship: editing, formatting, choosing a publisher, designing your own book cover, creating your ‘brand’, promotion, etc. etc. Even though the book is now in print and available on Amazon, I’ve left some of its content on my web site in the form of free pdf Guides, like the Kindle how-to, and I’m in the process of serializing as much of the book as possible on my blog (aprillhamilton.blogspot.com) as well.
As a result of giving so much of it away for free, even though the Amazon reviews are stellar I’m not selling many copies of The IndieAuthor Guide—and because it’s heavily illustrated it’s not a good candidate for the Kindle, either. But at this point my priority with the book is raising awareness among would-be indie authors, convincing them they *can* do this, that it doesn’t have to take a lot of money nor even a great deal of technical skills, and showing them exactly how. Someday I hope my book will overtake Poynter’s as “The Bible” of self-publishing among indie authors, but a lot more people need to know it exists first.
As the indie author movement fares, so fare we all: writers and readers alike.
- A
Thanks for posting the story of your experiences with the Kindle conversion. I took a quick look at April’s guide and found it clear and well-written. I’ll have to visit her blog and compliment her directly on it.
Like any new technology, there’s a certain amount of “threshold paranoia” as we call it around here. That is, nervousness about crossing a threshold into a new experience. If you aren’t sure what you are getting yourself into, you hesitate to take those first steps.
Your story is encouraging and helpful to anyone who is considering putting their books into Kindle format. It is nice to know that a real person who isn’t a computer science major (you aren’t, right?) can take this task on and hope to succeed.
Unfortunately, owning a Kindle is not in our near future, so it is hard to get excited about converting our eight self-published books to it. That’s no excuse, of course, but it definitely reduces our enthusiasm for the format. Our problem is that we live in the sticks where cell signals are hard to come by, so we wouldn’t be able to use the Kindle from our home. Nevermind that fact that the device is outrageously overpriced.
Anyway, thanks for your posting, and thank you to April too for your comments. I’m sure your words will encourage many indie authors to take those first steps over the Kindle threshold.
April, Thanks again for the guide and also for your long comment here. Both are very useful. I would have never thought of publishing a book to Kindle first. Interesting idea. Right now I’m hoping Amazon will put the reviews I have for my paperback edition on the Kindle edition page. Your comments definitely make me want to put more of my books up on Kindle.
James, I’m glad you found my story encouraging. I’d say if you have current Word files of your books, the Kindle conversion isn’t a big deal. My problem was that I had made changes in the manuscript in InDesign, that weren’t in the Word version.
I don’t think owning or not owning a Kindle is the reason to put your books up there. The reason is, as April says, that people will buy them. In fact I’d heard from other authors who had Kindle editions that they were selling. And then i got intrigued with the whole ecological benefit thing. So that’s why I did it.
Thanks for the heads-up Lynn, and I’ll add another thank you to April too.
I currently have mixed feelings about the Kindle, one reason is because of the price point of the books. I’ve read several comments that such pricing may make it tougher in the future for publishers and authors to profit. Maybe the lower margains can be made up in quantity because people will find them affordable, have to wait and see.
I also think the price structure is deceptive in a way. It sort of makes buyers think that the cost of paper, printing etc. is much higher than it really is. It doesn’t take much to get print costs down to only a few dollars, even though cover prices are in the 10-15 range. That being the case, the price really doesn’t need to be that different from the print version.
It would be nice if content could dictate price as it often does in the info marketing world for the regular publishing world too. It will be interesting to see where things go in the next few years.
Cheryl Pickett
http://www.publishinganswers.com