Gaden, Caroline - So you want to publish your book electronically? (2012)

So, you want to publish your book electronically?

By CAROLINE GADEN

Around 15 years ago I self-published a couple of family history books called The Schrader Letters and From Baron to Battler, both about the family of Dr Christian Ulrich Detlef Schrader who migrated to Australia in the 1850s and lived in Walcha, NSW. The two volumes are now out of print.

After several requests for reprints, I decided electronic versions would be the quick way to reproduce them. Wrong!
I have just spent a couple of very frustrating weeks as I tried to navigate the maze of web pages and instructions.
I started with The Schrader Letters as it is a book consisting of text only. From Baron to Battler has many photographs and inserts, so it would have to wait a while until knowledge and confidence grew.

To publish electronically, you first need to decide on which eBook publishing program to use. Hopefully this article will help you sail through the sea of web pages a bit more easily than my initial efforts, so here are a few tips gleaned from that extremely steep learning curve! Things to consider include:

Word Processing

Make sure your manuscript is word perfect with no spelling errors. Forget the fancy formatting, forget unusual fonts, forget indented paragraphs; the simpler, the better. You are subsequently going to purge it with a ‘nuclear bomb’ to get rid of all that and the extra hidden bits and pieces you don’t even know are there, so don’t waste time on setting up the ‘fancy stuff’, it's all going to go. Save your book as a Microsoft Word document.

Page Numbering

Forget about page numbers. Your eBook will have a different number of screen ‘pages’ depending on the font size used by the reader and whether they use a landscape or portrait orientation for reading.

Title and Cover

Decide on the title first and then make a separate cover for your book. It needs to be in JPEG format. The more professional looking the better. Perhaps you can have a play with your photographs in Google's Picasa (free download). I made a small collage from a couple of photos (which are apparently RGB colour, the correct format you need) and was able to add the text to the page. It’s very simple and legible as a ‘thumbnail’, which is what your potential customers will see.

Software

Now you will need to decide which eBook publishing program to use. This will enable you to upload your book to their website and they then sell it to readers who download it to their reading device.

Kindle

I have a Kindle reader so thought Kindle would be the way to go.
It’s part of the Amazon network. Go to Self-Publishing. I spent a week trying to learn how to use the Kindle program. It is suggested you work in Microsoft Word, then save your document as a filtered HTM file.

I downloaded the three necessary programs: Mobipocket Creator, Kindle Previewer and KindleGen v1.2.
I also printed out all the help pages to consult. In addition, I used CJs Easy-as-Pie Kindle tutorials.

I followed the Simplified Formatting Guide and I have to say I found some of the instructions were not that easy to follow. I then used the MobiPocket Creator instructions to build my book. It was somewhat annoying to reach a spot only to be told you should have done something earlier... (like a recipe which suggests you should have added baking powder when you're at the point of putting the cake in the oven).

I was eventually told I needed to have an NCX file for ease of navigation. I should have set it up before... But where? And how? I asked on the help forum but still was stumped. As the Easy-as-Pie tutorial says, NCX stands for Not Clearly eXplained.

I spent close to a week going round in circles here. Now you may be more web savvy than me but I just couldn't get to where I needed to go. So, apologies to Kindle, but in sheer frustration, I ended up defecting to Smashwords, a site I only heard about by chance from an eAuthor in Canada who I consulted for help.

Smashwords

Now there are a couple of bonuses with Smashwords which I had not realised. Smashwords pay into PayPal and, because of my eBay purchases, I already had an account. But probably more important is that Smashwords can be read by Kindles, Kobis, Nook, Sony and iPads as well as other eBook devices, you can even download as a PDF file to print off from your computer. It seems to be more versatile. They have a workaround called ‘Meatgrinder’ which takes your Word document and can translate it into the format needed for the various eReaders.

But how easy was Smashwords to prepare my books and upload? Well the instructions are brilliant, taking you step by step through the whole process. It has screen pictures, red arrows and is easy to follow and understand.

You can get the free download of the Smashwords Style Guide by Mark Coker. You do need to print out a copy of it (all 72 pages, but well worth the investment in paper and ink). I think of it as my Smashwords ‘recipe book’. You are working in Microsoft Word all the time.

My only hiccup was the dreaded NCX file again... You need to link your Table of Contents to your Chapter headings, but you also need to link the Chapter headings back to the Table of Contents.

This time I had it all done and checked in under half an hour. Mark Coker has done a brilliant job in making the Style Guide simple to follow and easy to do! If I can do it, so can you!

ISBN Number

Your book will need an ISBN number. Print and electronic versions of the same book each need their own separate ISBN. If your book has no ISBN, then Apple and Sony will not distribute it, you are limiting your market.

To apply for an ISBN you have some choices:

Smashwords offers a free ISBN. Click here.

If you specifically want an Australian issued number, go to Thorpe-Bowker . They deal with all Australian ISBN applications. The number takes a few days to be sent to you and the cost is AUD 40.

Tax File Number

You may need a Tax File Number for the United States or the United Kingdom. Why?

Well, Smashwords pay your sales income into a PayPal account. If you've bought anything on eBay you'll be familiar with this system. It is based in US so has tax implications over there.

Kindle will pay your sales fees into either a UK based or a US based bank account which means you have an income in an overseas country. The UK site for tax information is HM Revenue & Customs.

However, there is a problem with opening a bank account in the UK. It's something to do with our Corporation Act and banks being concerned about the possibility of money transfer for, or the result of, illegal activity. As far as I can learn from a bank contact over there and another over here, you just can't do it!

I have not researched opening an account in the US but I assume the same problems will arise. The US Tax site is the Internal Revenue Service. I spent a few hours surfing this site and still ended up sending a question for their hard-to-locate help desk. And the answer was just as complicated! My understanding is that royalties in the US are normally taxed at 30% but for Australians it's 5% as we have a treaty. We need a Form W-8BEN and an Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) obtained by filling in form W-7, the forms are available on the web site.

Smashwords has information about this and will supply the letter you need for your application when you have sold books worth more than USD 10.

Achievement

I know it all sounds a bit daunting, but please don’t be put off. I’ve found it to be quite an adrenalin rush to have completed the target I set for myself. After all the frustration of the past few weeks, the thrill of seeing my books up there on the web, available for sale around the world, has made it all worth while.

And for those Schrader relatives who may be interested, here again are my very special links:

From Baron to Battler and The Schrader Letters.

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The New England Writers' Centre is assisted by the NSW Government through Arts NSW.