I jumped on the digital wagon last year by re-publishing my mysteries as e-books. Soon, I began instructing others—many had failed with traditional publishers or were wary of costly Print on Demand—at a Victoria, B.C., college.

Self-Publish Your E-Book in Minutes

Thus, Self-Publish Your E-Book in Minutes! was born.

It’s brief, practical and succinctly covers all the essentials of electronic publication, like formatting, uploading and marketing, and is available online at Amazon.com and Smashwords.com for $0.99.

Prices for popular e-readers Nook and Kindle are coming down below $200.

Getting better all the time. Full NYT article here.

Gotta buy one soon…

It’s now available on the iPhone, Kindle and Smashwords website. See links below.

UnnaturalStates

Check it out at:

iTunes App Store

Amazon.com Kindle

Smashwords.com

Prepare to be intrigued, challenged and shaken up!

Look out Kindle, step aside Nook, run for the hills iPad and put ‘em up Sony reader ’cause there’s a new kid in town: the Kobo eReader.

logo for kobobooks

And who said ebooks were a fad? Welcome little Kobo eReader.

Especially LOVE that you’re a Canuck.

Smashwords logo

This is really freakin’ amazing given what is required by an author/publisher to get titles into the Kindle Store. See my earlier post for more info.

I worked for weeks, spending hours lurking on Kindle forums, figuring out Amazon’s Digital Text Platform, uploading dummy test titles, reviewing and testing uploaded versions until finally hitting the publishing button for my three titles.

Amazon Kindle E-Reader

It’ll cost $259 USD plus a $31 USD import fee surcharge. Though it will be able to wirelessly download ebooks, the details about the cellular connectors (Rogers and Telus) in Canada have yet to be revealed.

Amazon Kindle E-Reader

Kindle’s VP said:

“We know that Canadians are passionate about books and reading, and we’re excited to make Kindle available to our customers there,” said Ian Freed, vice-president of Kindle, in a statement. “Kindle enables customers around the world including Canada to think of a book and start reading it in under 60 seconds.”

Read more about this announcement here.

It’s still a pretty pricey gadget but also very tempting.

(And thanks to the Kindle Blog for the pic.)

Here’s Amazon’s annoucement from their Kindle blog:
KindleforPC.

Stay tuned; I’ll blog about my experiences with it soon.

Mobipocket.com Logo

Step 2 was to use Mobipocket.com (owned by Amazon.com) as my way through the back door into the huge online bookseller. After some internet research, I had learned that you could upload ebooks onto Mobipocket and by extension, eventually into Amazon, and you didn’t need Amazon’s trifecta of account information. You only needed two bits of key information: a bank account in the United States and a United States tax number. You didn’t need a US mailing address.

So I went for it. After some searching, I discovered that one Canadian major bank has a US version, based in Florida. A few phone calls, two meetings at my local branch and three weeks of impatient waiting later, one key bit was accomplished.

I must admit I was intimidated about applying for a US tax number. That meant calling the Internal Revenue Service. Yikes! But I pushed through, figuring I would only run into trouble if I made money. And if I made money, it’d be worth it.

Amazon requires one of two types of tax numbers: a Tax ID number or an Employer ID number. The former is really hard to get; the latter a relative breeze, which I learned with the assistance of a kind and helpful IRS employee.

So, armed with my bits of info, I set up my Mobipocket publisher account. I then spent hours and learned how to format, submit, preview, fix errors and finally re-upload my properly formatted files to their ebook base. A couple of weeks later, my three ebooks were up, live on Mobipocket and ready to be distributed to the Kindle Store when an email arrived from Amazon: the giant online retailer was no longer allowing the migration of ebooks from Mobipocket to Amazon.

I was angry and frustrated to say the least. My inquiring emails went unanswered and the online Mobipocket forum buzzed from furious publishers and authors from around the world. It didn’t matter. The doors to the Kindle Store were closed once again.

Now, I was going to outline the steps to publishing on Mobipocket.com since it’s a worthwhile retailer even without the Amazon Kindle Store link BUT this is now redundant since Amazon has just closed all access saying:

Effective September 2009, we will no longer open new accounts for publishers to sell titles through the Kindle Store or MobiPocket.com. If you have an existing account, there will be no change and you can continue to upload and sell titles using Ebookbase. New publishers with a US address and bank account can sign up to sell ebooks in the Kindle store via our self-service publishing channel at mobipocket.com.

Go figure. The above comment isn’t entirely accurate, because you need the third piece of account information: the dreaded US mailing address.

So, for those of you wishing to publish on Mobipocket.com, fuugghettabout it. That avenue is dead to you.

You can, however, publish ebooks to be read on Apple’s cool iPhone (via iTunes.com) and on shortcovers.com, Canadian bookseller Indigo’s nifty new site.

And that I will explain to you…later.

Lou Allin, a fellow Canadian crime writer said the following:

The Little How-To Book That Could:

Of the dozen “how to” books on mystery writing I’ve read, most wasted too many trees, and on Vancouver Island, that’s important. One big-name author provided only a single worthwhile nugget of advice in four hundred pages: don’t write about boring people. But Canadians are very innovative, especially about saving time. Didn’t we invent Velcro? Pablum? The Bloody Caesar?

Cover for mystery writing primer, Youdunit Whodunit!

Recently my colleague Nicola Furlong produced a short, compact, and helpful e-book called Youdunit Whodunit. This crash course in mystery writing is as jam packed with gems as Nicola’s signature chocolate-pecan turtles.

For those starting out, or for authors who want to keep their writing on track, YW has twenty-two chapters in three basic innings: Structure, Character, and Story. With a wealth of pithy examples taken from selective authors, she cuts to the chase.

Hit the reader early and hit him hard. Why is the protagonist involved, if it’s not a police procedural? What do you do in mid-story, where a book often bogs? What are the pitfalls of various POV’s? Where do you get your ideas? How should you handle flashbacks and make smooth transitions without the speed bumps which mar even the best books?

Nicola will have you off and running in minutes. She’s an editor, agent, and coach all in one.

It comes as no surprise that the book is introduced and endorsed by two of our northern mystery lionesses, Maureen Jennings and Mary Jane Maffini. With multiple series and decades of best-seller success, when they speak, wise authors listen.

Obviously, I’m thrilled with Lou’s positive reaction to my ebook BUT what I find really neat is her review writing style.

Notice how adroitly she draws you in to the concept of a short ebook (crash course on writing mysteries) by referring both to the environment (wasted trees) and to her perspective (a Vancouver Islander) and then she adds a fun tidbit of Canadian trivia (Velcro, Pablum and the Bloody Ceasar!).

Not only is it an excellent lead in to her review, it doubles as an lovely introduction to Lou Allin, mystery author.

So, once you’ve bought and mastered Youdunit Whodunit!, why not check out Lou’s terrific Belle Palmer Mystery Series and see how a pro does it?

So, then what happens?

It may take awhile for the famous meatgrinder to convert your file. You’ll probably see a screen that tells you that “Your book has been received and is #X in the queue”. Over time, the page will refresh and the queue number will go down until your publication is ready. I’ve never been higher than 14 in the queue and that conversion only took about 7 minutes.

You don’t have to sit and wait, you may upload another file or leave altogether, returning later to visit your “Dashboard” (on the blue toolbar) to determine the status of your uploaded file. You’ll receive an email from Smashwords letting you know your publication is online and offering marketing suggestions.

If you do hang around, you’ll eventually see a new title “Your book is converting” and the status of each listed format changes from “converting” to “complete”. Finally, a new page appears saying “Your book upload and conversion is complete”, and you are encouraged to review the publication and check for any conversion errors. You do so by clicking “Proceed to the New Page for your Work”.

You are now taken to your publication’s “home” page, which offers information like title, rating, category, publication date, description, categories, tags and available ebook reading formats. This is where you test your publication. If you are like me and lack a mobile reading device, you are only able to test/view a few of the formats, such as HTML, PDF, RTF and plain text. If you own a Kindle, other e-reading device, you may check other formats.

So, first off: test your new publication’s format by clicking VIEW beside “Online Reading (HTML)”.

You’ll be taken to a new page where you should see the first page of your spanking new publication! Click your way through it to make sure the conversion is successful. Pay CAREFUL attention to formatting issues like indents, bullets, spacing, etc. Reviewing page by page is a drag but essential, especially if you wish you and your publication to be taken seriously (not to mention purchased).

Now, have a quick look at another format like PDF or RTF to find similar or other formatting gremlins.

Reality is that you’ll probably have a few issues but making changes is easy. Go to your “Dashboard”. This is command central for your publication so spend some time getting introduced to the toolbar and reading this entire page. It contains a lot of information and offers a variety of options.

As an example, you’ll note that there is an opportunity to have your work listed with other distributors, like Barnes and Nobles and the Sony Store, or to create affiliates or sales coupons. More info in the How Smashwords Distributes E-books.

So, presuming you have a few changes to make to your newly launched publication, click “Settings”. This new page gives you an overview of this publication, from publication status to sales figures. Click “Operations” for modifications; you may upload a new version or a new cover and/or make changes to any/all of the information you previously provided. Just remember to click “Save” at the very bottom when you’re finished.

You may also unpublish your work but note: this doesn’t completely remove it. This is an interesting quirk of ALL digital publishing; once published, an e-book will remain available for download to anyone who purchased it.

Smashwords logo

Now, review the excellent tips in the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide and start selling.

Over the next few posts, I’ll review my exploits in ebook publishing on mobipocket.com, shortcovers.com, iTunes and the granddaddy of all, amazon.com.