Free IPad publishing

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I would like your input on this.

I recognized the iBook bookshelf right away. Would this be something you could only sell through Apple?

Ann

I think it looks too good to be true - but children's book authors may want to give it a try. I'm suspicious of something so useful for free - I thought they were trying to sell books; but no, the books they "sell" are free too Sounds good to me all the way. Even if it's only for iPads - there are lots of iPads out there....

alj wrote:

I recognized the iBook bookshelf right away. Would this be something you could only sell through Apple?

Ann

No. The site uses iTunes to load e-books into a user's iPad, and iTunes is a free program.

That's the usual way to do it if you want to load an e-book from somewhere other than amazon or Apple's iBookstore. Users can do it themselves, or they can use another program that is plugged into the iTunes interface.

Abe F. March wrote:

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I would like your input on this.

If you wish to freely share your e-book and need a distribution channel, it looks like a good way to go. It seems to grease some of the steps needed to build an e-book and get it into epub format.

dkchristi wrote:

I think it looks too good to be true - but children's book authors may want to give it a try. I'm suspicious of something so useful for free - I thought they were trying to sell books; but no, the books they "sell" are free too Sounds good to me all the way. Even if it's only for iPads - there are lots of iPads out there....

My guess is that their revenue comes from advertising and selling ISBNs for e-books.

It's not only for iPads. The epub book format is an open specification that is used by a lot of e-book reader devices, including iPad.

I recently downloaded this freeware program, Calibre. The novel writing freeware that I've been using to put the Redstone Saga together, yWriter, has recently updated to include a connection to it, so that you can load your yWriter project directly into it.

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I haven't tried it yet. I'm working on getting my short-story ready to publish, and then I will see how it works, but I like what I see of it. It works with quite a few formats, including Kindle and Nook.

Ann

Thanks to all of you. Your comments are very helpful. I'm not forgetting that this is Friday the 13th. Perhaps it's a good omen.

Thanks for the link, Abe! I checked it out, and Al is right, they are selling ISBNs. It is all very new and blurry at the edges. On their forum, members are already asking who actually owns the ISBN. This issue is really re-defining the word "Publisher." Before self-publishing became something anyone can do, publishers bought ISBNs from Bowker and added them to the books they published. The books were then listed with Bowker (the publishers send the titles, author's and publisher's names to Bowker with the respective ISBN). No conflict of interest. The publisher bought and assigned the ISBN.

Lulu.com do the same that ePubBud are doing; they buy ISBNs in a large block (e.g. a thousand) and assign the numbers to books. They resgister the titles and authors of the books with the assigned ISBNs with Bowker. As such, because they bought the ISBNs, Lulu is listed as the publisher of the books with those ISBNs. No one would accept that adding a 10 or 13 digit number to a book makes anyone into a publisher. However, to make it easier for book distributors, publisher and ISBN go hand in hand.

On the ePubBud forum, members are being told that the ISBN is theirs and they can use it however they wish. This is not strictly true. To own an ISBN, you must buy from Bowker. Individual ISBNs are expensive and the price only falls to a reasonable level when bought in bulk -- and there's the catch twenty-two. If you want your name as publisher listed with all the on-line stores, you must purchase from Bowker. Otherwise, the ISBN will be listed on Amazon with "Publisher: Lulu.com" or "Publisher: ePubBud.com" which is really stretching the meaning of the word "Publisher."

Lulu charges a lot for the ISBN. If you publish with Createspace, the ISBN is free if you choose to have them assign it. If you want the book to have the same ISBN and use different publishers, you have to get your own from Bowkers, and Createspace lets you use it.

When you publish an e-book on amazon, you get an ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number), which is used for all kinds of products.

Books published with a CreateSpace ISBN are listed the same as Lulu and ePubBud -- "Publisher: CreateSpace"

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The ePubBud site produces an ebook that can be downloaded for free or put onto an author's website with a paypal button. The ebook does not go to the iPad bookstore or to Nook unless you fill in forms to request placement in Apple's and B & N's bookstores.

If you use Smashwords and follow the formattting guidelines, the book will be assigned a free ISBN and shipped to Nook, Sony reader and iPad (no forms to fill in!).

Thanks, Shelagh.

I use Calibre a lot for conversions. It's kind of slow on my old XP desktop, but it gets the job done. Integrates with most e-readers.

Another useful free program is Sigil (http://code.google.com/p/sigil/), which lets me get inside an epub file and adjust some of the e-book settings either at the html level or in a wysiwyg editor. I don't always like how Calibre converts from kindle (prc) to epub, particularly with respect to margins and indents, and this program lets me change it.

So you like Sigil? I've been wondering about it, since, as I understand it, Calibre doesn't allow you to edit.

Since I plan to use it in conjunction with yWriter, I don't expect that to be a problem for my uses. I would be taking care of any editing first, but it would be nice to have a backup, especially considering your comments, Al.

I do recommend yWriter, BTW. I need to start using even more of its features, like setting project goals and dates, etc.

Ann

Sometimes my best intentions with respect to fonts, margins, indents, etc. get trampled when I convert from one e-book format to another, and I don't care for the results. Sigil lets me get inside the epub file and tweak the internal html files. To use it to its full potential, you need to understand html and css.