Addendums/Amendments/Additions

Hi, if you’re reading this you’ve likely found the page from  How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks – All for Free. The book was written in March of 2010, and there are likely to be additions by both myself and the readers; all of which is designed to help others and ourselves in this endeavor.

I encourage everyone to leave comments which will be reviewed and posted as they come in. Some readers might point out where I have been incorrect or incomplete. Others may discuss ideas that I didn’t mention. Some may present an option that is superior to the ones I’ve given. Others may shed light on new products and services. The point is this; feedback can only make it a better learning mechanism for all of us.

So please leave any comments below and/or at ebooksuccess4free.webs.com. The other site is more of a forum, but the best posts will also get pasted here. Thanks.

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Smashwords Gateway for Indie Authors to iPad iBookstore

April 4, 2010

Indie authors who want their ebooks available at the iPad iBookstore can do so by uploading with Smashwords.com. They have an excellent style guide that will have to be followed, and much of that is explained in my ebook but just go to Smashwords and follow their prompts.

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Youpublish.com also good Ebook Retailer

I didn’t include them in the ebook, but that was probably an oversight and they’ll go into the Addendum’s page for sure. Mostly I didn’t include them because I’ve had some stories on their site for nearly 2 years and almost zero sales. They did no conversions, just offered the Word Doc or PDF that I sent in. Then they kept 50% of any sale, which I thought was a lot.

Surprisingly, they’ve already sold a copy of How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks – All for FREE in less than 24 hours of placing the book there even though they offer a sample percentage (I chose 35%) of the book as a free teaser which normally takes people a while to read. I also just discovered they’ve changed their royalties to 70% for the authors, so that’s cool too.

So please also consider youpublish.com as a retailer for ebooks.

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CreateSpace for Printed Books

May 26, 2010

I just approved my first proof for How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks – All for FREE with CreateSpace. The URL for the book is here. And you can read a brief blog entry here or ask me questions.

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Pubit for Barnes & Noble soon Allows Direct Uploading

June 18, 2010

It used to be you had to go through an intermediary like Smashwords to get your Independent ebooks into B&N. That’s changing. This summer of 2010 B&N plans to begin Pubit where you can directly upload to the major bookseller.

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Webs.com Changed Rename function to Settings

June 18, 2010

It used to be that if you wanted to change the name of one of your pages on a webs.com site, there was a Rename function within the Site Manager. That has recently changed to be a part of the Settings tab. This is especially useful for making changes to your Download Page in case people start sharing the link and getting your ebook for free.

A simple change to add some letters and numbers is all it takes to stop this piracy. If your book is successful, this will have to be done every few weeks, but it only takes a minute to change this, the PayPal button code and the Stat Counter code which enables you to keep track of this. It’s all explained in my ebook, but if you need more info contact me through my webs.com site.

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New Cover

August 15, 2010

It was just time to work a little harder on one. Inkscape is an amazing program, but I do find it a bit tougher to learn than something like Microsoft word. At least I was able to do this version in just a couple hours, compared to days the first go-round.

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Yola.com

Sept. 15, 2010

Yola.com is a great choice for those who want a free website with drag n drop editing features. It’s still my 2nd choice overall compared to Webs.com, but it has a lot of nice features, better SEO properties and much more bandwidth space for the free program than Viviti.

If you like to keep things really simple, Yola is a great way to go.

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Scrub The Web SEO Tools

Sept. 30, 2010

I recently stumbled across this free and paid service (depending on your options) that has a nice way of handling SEO submissions which also includes site analysis that is very informative. It’s called Scrub the Web and found at this link – http://www.scrubtheweb.com/.

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PayPal Trouble-Shootin’

Oct. 21, 2010

I got a call from a writer using the methods in the book, but she couldn’t get PayPal to automatically send buyers to her download page after purchases. We went throught every line of the form trying to figure out what was happening.

Turns out some people have to make an adjustment to their Auto Return Settings. I did not, as many people are set to default with Auto Return Settings “on.” In her case it was set to “off.”

If this seems to be a problem (getting PayPal to send people to your download page from the Step 3 Customize Advance Features tab, Go to PayPal and Log In.

Click on Profile.

Click on Website Payment Preferences.

Make Sure Auto Return is set to “on.”

Even though I have multiple buttons, it has one button’s return URL shown in the box. It doesn’t seem to affect the other buttons, so not to worry if this isn’t the URL you expect to see there.

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Blogger Now Has Stat Monitoring

Nov 26, 2010

Actually it happened way back in July 2010, and I’m pretty embarrassed that I didn’t even notice it until a few weeks back.

Now Blogger also has a Stats tab to montior traffic by visits, sources, keywords and more to let you know where and how people are finding your blog. If you’ve had a blog with Blogger for much longer than that, the stats will only go back so far to July of 2010.

I used to really prefer WordPress to Blogger, largely for this reason, so now my overall favorite free blog host is probably Blogger.

See my Blogger blog here if you want.

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Google Ebooks (Editions) is Finally Here

Dec. 7, 2010

We’ve been waiting since summer for this. It’s finally here and you can read more about it on my blog post for Google Ebooks.

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DTP Amazon changes to KDP Amazon

Jan. 21, 2011

Just when I finish making additions and changes and re-publishing, Amazon goes and switches names. It was DTP Amazon, it’s now KDP for Kindle Direct Publishing. From their site:

Dear Publishers,

You may have noticed a new name and logo on our site.  Today (1/21) we are changing our name from “Digital Text Platform” to “Kindle Direct Publishing.”  Our new URL is http://kdp.amazon.com.  The new name highlights our mission:  offering authors and publishers a fast, easy and free service to sell books on Kindle worldwide.  With Kindle Direct Publishing, you can publish your book directly to Kindle with just a few minutes of effort.  All former DTP websites will direct rights holders to the new Kindle Direct Publishing homepage at http://kdp.amazon.com.

Sincerely,

Kindle Direct Publishing Team

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Viviti Changing to Jigsy

March 4, 2011

Viviti is one of the free website venues and examples for the book. It has now changed the name to Jigsy. The old example was http://ebooksuccess4free.viviti.com which has just changed to http://ebooksuccess4free.jigsy.com/.

For more info, there’s a post here – http://ebooksuccess4free.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/viviti-changing-to-jigsy/

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Add a TOC Table Of Contents Bookmark to Kindle Ebooks

May 10, 2011

A lot of people use slightly more complex methods of formatting ebooks than I do. Mobipocket Creator and HTML files are common, but I’ve found great results can be had simply by directly uploading Microsoft Word Doc (.doc) to Amazon Kindle, Barnes&Noble Nook and Apple iPad.

For non-fiction titles and books with a Table of Contents section, one extra thing readers will appreciate is the inclusion of a TOC link. This isn’t just a page at the beginning with Chapter headings and hyperlinks to places within the document, but also a TOC bookmark, which the e-readers (like the Kindle) will automatically recognize and add to their Menu option. It’s quite simple if you’re familiar with adding a bookmark in Word.

All you need to do is place the cursor at the beginning of the page for the Table of Contents. Then click Insert and choose Bookmark. When the Bookmark tab opens, type in “toc” without the quotes and Add it. Once saved and uploaded to Kindle, for example, that will become a Menu option for Kindle readers to go to the Table of Contents from anywhere in the ebook.

This method also works for the Cover image by bookmarking it with “cover” and also where the book really begins (like the intro or prologue) by bookmarking that with “start.” (Again, do not actually type the “quotes” as I have for the demonstration, but type the words: toc, cover and start.)

Obviously these are just little things that make it nicer for readers, especially for books with TOCs. How will you know if you’ve done it correctly? When you Preview your edited version at kdp.amazon.com, the Preview Kindle has a Menu button that lets you select those options. See where it goes. If it’s not right, make the correction and try again. One of the best aspects of e-publishing is the ability to make changes quickly and easily.
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