Most of the bookselling sites expect you to do the hard lifting. You’ve got to figure out their requirements, wrangle your manuscript into their format, upload and verify everything and then hope for the best (especially if you’re like me and don’t own a mobile device for testing).

One bookseller, Shortcovers.com, is a little different. This is the online bookstore for the large Canadian bookseller, Indigo Chapters, and their mantra is:

Shortcovers is not just for avid readers or technophiles. It’s for anyone who wants the convenience of accessing and reading their favorite books, content, anytime, anywhere, on the mobile device they already own.

Okay, not obviously so different from other booksellers, you think, BUT they have one cool advantage: they’re into selling short stuff (hence the name), like individual chapters, short stories, blogs, articles, poems, speeches, etc., as well as entire ebooks. I like this bite-sized approach to mobile reading.

logo for kobobooks

I was ticked and said so, ever so politely. To my amazement, a week or so later I received an apology and an offer I couldn’t refuse: Shortcovers generously agreed to cover the cost of the new conversions!

And they did, though it took weeks and weeks but eventually three of my works (two mysteries and one short story) went live. By this time, I had written a non-fiction primer on writing mysteries and decided to pony up the conversion fee (about $35 CDN) and have shortcovers handle this manuscript as well.

That was over a month ago and still no sign of Youdunit Whodunit! on shortcovers.com. I’ll follow up and I’m sure my little primer will soon appear.

In the interim, check out shortcovers. They’ve got a ton of great stuff available.

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.

Teed Off! cover

I love the idea of ebooks. Many reasons but for now let’s just say: as a author because they offer a variety of new marketing opportunities and ease of updating and as a reader because they provide simplicity, portability and availability.

So, months ago I decided to republish a pair of my novels as ebooks.

Even though I’ve never touched one, my main goal was to have my mysteries available for Amazon’s amazing Kindle ereader.

Simple, right?

No such luck BUT through a peck of perserverance and a dash of digitizing, I now (or shortly will) have ebooks available:

- in the iTunes.com App Store
- on Smashwords.com (the ‘people’s ebook site’)
- BarnesandNobles.com (through Smashwords agreement)
- Shortcovers.com (Canada’s Indigo Books’ online bookstore),
- Mobipocket.com (one of the Internet’s biggest ebook sellers), and
- Amazon.com’s Kindle store (waiting approval/fingers crossed).

So, how did I do it? Well, I’d love to say “Elementary, my dear Reader”, but it wasn’t. However, neither was it rocket science.

You might want to give it a digital whirl. So, over the next few weeks, I’ll blog you through it.

Geronimo!