Maine Antique Digest, December 2016

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18-B Maine Antique Digest, December 2016
- FEATURE -
Computer Column #336
Producing an E-Book
by John P. Reid, e-mail:
Let’s write a book. Book writing, publishing, and
marketing has drastically changed since the arrival
of the computer, word processors, the Internet, and
online selling. Antiques dealers and auctioneers produce
catalogs as books. Books about antiques are written by
knowledgeable collectors and dealers.
The many beautifully illustrated books on Nippon
porcelain by Joan Van Patten literally built a market
a few decades ago. A copy of Geoffrey A. Godden’s
Encyclopedia of British Pottery and Porcelain Marks
was in my van for every auction. My parents always
had Ruth Webb Lee’s books on American pressed glass
nearby. Ralph and Terry Kovel, and later their daughter
Kim, wrote close to 100 books on antiques, many of
which are go-to standards.
Publishing has become more democratic. Books used
to be the province of publishers that contracted with
authors, helped with editing, set type, printed pages,
bound them into books, did the publicity, and handled
distribution. A few rugged individualists self-published.
Today quite a few books are published in a new way,
as e-books. The author creates words and illustrations at
the computer keyboard. The publisher converts them to
e-book format and sells them online. Of course, the great
novels and standard textbooks are still produced the old-
fashioned way.
There is one conceptual difference between digital and
printed books: page numbers mean nothing in e-books.
The place where the text breaks depends on the reader’s
computer screen size and choice of type size. This slightly
complicates cross references and indexes. However, an
aspiring writer does not need to invent the process of
creating an e-book. There are plenty of e-books telling
how. Many are free downloads.
Kindle
The Amazon Kindle in various versions is a popular
e-book reader. It is inexpensive and has far longer battery
life than a tablet or smartphone. Kindle e-books also can
be read on any computer or mobile device using software
or apps available at Amazon ).
Amazon is one of the largest publishers of e-books.
The company provides a complete system for authors
called Kindle Direct Publishing .
com). There are many other e-book publishers, but their
procedures will be similar, so KDP is a good place to
start. The free e-book Publish on Amazon Kindle with
Kindle Direct Publishing by Kindle Direct Publishing
explains the system in great detail. Asecond freeAmazon
e-book, Building Your Book for Kindle, explains layout
and formatting of a new book.
Signing up as a Kindle author includes agreeing to a
long list of conditions and providing information about
the author as a publisher. U.S. residents must provide
identification so the Internal Revenue Service can be
informed of the royalty payments. Non-U.S. residents
must provide information according to their country’s
trade agreements.
U.S. publishers of Kindle e-books that the author prices
in the range of $2.99 to $9.99 get a 70% royalty from
Amazon less a delivery charge based on the e-book’s
file size. Books with prices below or above this range
get 35%, and delivery costs are not deducted. There are
other conditions that affect sales outside Amazon’s list
of foreign countries or reprints of a book already in the
public domain. Non-U.S. writers have different royalty
conditions that are detailed by Amazon. Costs for using
KDP are small. Amazon gets the residual after royalty
payments, which covers delivery costs and profit.
Putting together a book of any size is a big job. New
writers might want to try a few chapters before signing
up. Kindle format requires no special software. A list
of acceptable formats is in the books suggested above.
One format is Microsoft Word. Even better, when
illustrations are included, is to let Word save in the
HTML web format or Adobe PDF. Current versions of
MS Word for Windows and Macintosh can save in any
of these formats. If there are a great many illustrations,
the file may have to be compressed as a ZIP file. Free
compression software is available.
Other Tools
There are sellers of e-books other than Amazon. Apple
iBooks and Barnes & Noble are two larger examples.
E-book format is fairly standard, so many tools are
available for writers. Costs are small, but an author is
advised to pay a copyeditor to correct spelling, grammar,
and punctuation. Copyeditors and checkers have saved
this holiday season!
Go to and
click on Subscribe, or call 1-800-752-8521.
Give a subscription to…
open the possibilities!
Give the
gift of M.A.D.
me from looking foolish hundreds
of times in more than 40 years of
freelance magazine and newspaper
work. Check the web or local
sources. There are underemployed
copyeditors since the decline of
local newspapers. Some of the
e-book companies offer editing
services at a cost.
Any word processor that can
handle text and illustrations and
save the file in Adobe PDF will
work. Free software includes
LibreOffice )
and Apache Open Office (https://
). Adobe
) page layout
software, such as Adobe Acrobat
and Adobe Creative Suite, has powerful tools. These
programs have steep learning curves and cost from a few
hundred to over a thousand dollars.
Smashwords ) sells books
through 20 or more distributors and claims it has
published over 420,000 books. Smashwords accepts
books in Microsoft Word format, but there may be
charges for conversion to e-book formats such as
EPUB. Details of the publishing process are described
on the website
to_publish_on_smashwords). A free Kindle book on
Smashwords publishing, Secrets to Ebook Publishing
Success by Mark Coker, is available on Amazon.
Lucidpress ) is a new tool for
making e-books. Everything is done on the computer
screen by way of the Internet. Text can be formatted and
illustrations inserted by drag-and-drop. Stock illustration
or illustrations uploaded by the author can be used. Type
flows from page to page and can be flowed around
illustrations or put in artistically arranged boxes. Many
page templates are available. Videos can be included for
e-books read on a computer.
Use of the Basic single-user Lucidpress version is
$5.95 per month paid annually. There are other versions,
including the Team version for $40 per month paid
annually. There is no support for selling books, but most
e-book purveyors can accept the Lucidpress file.
Scribus ) is free page-making
software that runs on Windows, Macintosh, or Linux. It
has all the page layout tools needed for doing an e-book,
but it is geeky. It is good for a computer whiz on a budget
who does not mind taking more steps than are needed in,
say, Adobe Creative Suite or Lucidpress.
CreateSpace ) is an Amazon-
owned company. It can take a computer-created book and
make it into an e-book or a printed book that is “printed
on demand” when someone orders it. The company can
also help make and distribute CDs and DVDs.
Publicity
It is up to the author to promote the e-book. Everything
is fair—social networks, press releases, paid ads in
publications, public speaking tours, and signs at shops
or shows. The free e-book KDP Self Publishing: Kindle
Book Publishing by Brenda Kay Winters has pages of
suggestions. There are good hints in the blog Blog Tyrant
) as well.
Eight of the many free e-books available online about e-book self-publishing.
Publishing has
become more
democratic.