E-Publishing

In 2010 I purchased a Kindle and was exposed to its vast array of free and economical reading material.  During a search for e-books, I discovered Project Gutenberg, which enables readers to download classics like Ben Hur, Les Miserables, and others at no cost.  Perusing Amazon's stock of inexpensive e-books introduced me to Mainak Dhar's zombie series and Naomi Kramer's humorous Deadish  murder mysteries. Aaron Stander's real life crime stories in Upper Michigan kept me swiping the pages and Simon Denman's Connected presented me an all to real preview of humanities eventual take over by AI.  Since many of the books were not from mainstream publishers, I doubt I would have experienced them if it had not been for the Kindle.  Based on this observation, e-publishing offered a fertile ground for my next literary endeavor.

Poor Reese during my Les Miserables period

E-Publishing on Kindle

Ikons was already written in Word and had a JPG cover, so I figured I had everything I needed to e-publish.  Late in 2011, logged on to Amazon and printed out the necessary steps to e-publication.  Since this was prior to automatic conversion, the process consisted of: make the Word file compatible for the new format, create a mobi file from it and upload the results to Amazon.  While this sounds straight forward, it wasn't.  I obtained the free copy of  MobiPocket Creator and used it to generate a mobi file of Ikons, which I then viewed with a program called Kindle Reader.  This required going through the entire book page by page looking for improper formatting.  Then it was back to the Word file, correct the errors, convert it, then check again with Kindle Reader.  After several iterations, Ikons was ready for e-publishing.  I went to Amazon, filled out the forms, got a new ISBN, slapped on a $2.99 price tag and uploaded my novel.  Several days later, Ikons for the Kindle appeared on Amazon.

Ikons as an ebook

After my experience converting Ikons to a Kindle book, Banners was a cinch.  I breezed through the set up and even managed to embed a photo in the book, something I failed to do with Ikons.  Like Ikons, Banners was listed at $2.99.  

Banners on Kindle

A Kindle version of Slogans was even easier, since it was included in the iUniverse publishing package.  The biggest difference from my other two e-books is iUniverse set the selling price at $3.99.  Still a bargain.

Slogans on Kindle

Smashwords

Around the same time I e-published with Amazon, Mark Corker started Smashword, a site for easily putting your work on the internet for distribution to multiple reading devices.  Smashword attracted and welcomed all types of writing from novels, to novellas and short stories.  Corker offered a variety of download help guides spanning the entire e-book processes from submission to sales.  It sounded good to me.

Getting your work on Smashword is easy.  All you need is a correctly formatted Word file and a cover.  Upload your story to Smashword and it creates files compatible with Kindle, erf, lrf and others, and lists them in an on-line catalogue.  From there the author is responsible for pricing and sales.

Smashwords offers hundreds of thousands of titles, most low priced or free.  It is an excellent site for finding stories outside the mainstream.  While some works show the obvious signs of  a first-time author, many are very well done.  For example, Aaron Lowry's haunting story, Prisoner 721, made me question the meaning of intelligence and Nathan Thompson's The Watch in the Sand the very essence of life itself.

Selling on the Internet

While I successfully sold physical books, I have as yet to master the art of selling e-books. For some reason I mysteriously receive quarterly royalties from Amazon, SmashWords, iUniverse, and some other e-book sellers I have yet to identify. Though I'm pleased people are buying my novels, it would be helpful to know my target audience and learn how they found my works.  But so far I haven't been able to do so.