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An embedded PDF:
We’ve created this guide to show how you can import a DRM-free version of an ePub eBook into iTunes. All of our books are currently available in ePub format can be imported in this manner so that you can read them in iBooks. When Apple grants access to the iBooks bookstore to small publishers like us, we’ll have a more convenient in-app download process. Until then, this workaround will suffice for our books and anything else you might have acquired in ePub format.
[If you are on a PC and want to provide us with screenshots for how you followed this process on your PC-connected iPad, please send them to us or upload in the comments below. Thanks in advance.]
Unzip the zip file
Select the ePub file to import
Drag the ePub file to iTunes
Confirm it's in your iTunes library
Sync
Confirm it imported in to your iPad bookshelf
Enjoy the read!
Ken Auletta in last week’s New Yorker covers the growing dilemma publishers have in migrating their business models toward the inevitable (eBooks) and away from the past (print books). It outlines how the iPad helped publisher put greater demands on Amazon. It also details (in words) some interesting data about the publishing industry. Being interested in this world from both an eBook entrepreneur and a consumer, I thought I’d throw together some pie charts to help tell the story visually.
When a book sells, how much is left over for the publisher?
Of the print book's retail sale price, who gets what?
Of the eBook's sale price, who gets what?
What percentage of print books get returned to the publisher?
How large are the print and eBooks markets, comparitively?
Sad, but true.
Of eBooks sold, how many we purchased from Amazon?
If we include the iPhone as an eReader, who's got the most popular device?
Who's got the most popular device?
What percentage of all book sales go to the largest six publishers?
The big six publishers are:
Random House is the only publisher on this list to not have signed the 1-year agreement to sell books on Apple’s iBooks store.
There is no short answer to this question (yet). But we did figure out a way to get our books on the iPad and in the iBooks app library. Here’s how…
But first, an overview:
1. Apple’s iBooks app supports the ePub format. Therefore you cannot just add a PDF or Mobi file. You have to create the ePub format.
2. The ePub format is 99% HTML. So if you’re comfortable editing HTML, you’ll do fine. If not, then get comfortable by practicing, perhaps, on your book. Programming HTML is the entry level skill needed for programming Web pages too.
3. Apple has still not granted access to their iBooks bookstore to independent publishers. That said, there are companies that can help you get your book for sale on the iBooks app. Namely Smashwords and Lulu.
OK, now for the tutorial.
Create an HTML template that you’ll use to add the content of your book. Keep it simple. You can get more complicated with your formatting later. For now, we just want to get chapters created and bind the virtual book. Here’s what I start with:
DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd”>xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”><head><meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”text/html;charset=utf-8″ /><title>Template</title></head><body></body</html>
Pages in the book
<body><H1>Chapter 1</H1><H2>Meet Google Wave</H2><p>Chapter 1 is an overview of what Google Wave is and the problems it solves. To dive straight into using Wave, skip ahead to Chapter 2, Get Started with Wave. </p><p>Google Wave is a web-based collaboration tool that helps groups of people grow documents out of conversations. Google created Wave to alleviate the problems that have plagued email for over 40 years. In this chapter, you’ll see how Wave combines features from several different modern web applications into a single interface, and how it distinguishes itself from existing collaboration software. See the most common uses of Wave, how Wave got its name, and why you won’t have to depend solely on Google to wave for long.</p>
<p>Come on in and meet Wave. </p><h2>“What email would look like if it were invented today”</h2>
<p> Google Wave is a group collaboration tool that makes it easy for several people to work together on a single document on the web. Wave combines some of the best features from modern web applications you already know and love—such as email, instant messenger, wikis, and forums—into a single, hybrid interface. As such, it’s difficult to describe Wave in only a few words. The Google Wave team bills Wave as “what email would look like if it were invented today.”[1]</p>
<p>Why does email need a reinvention? </p>Relative to the lifespan of most technology, email is ancient. Invented over 40 years ago, email predates the internet as we know it—and in fact was a crucial tool in the creation of the internet. Despite its age, email hasn’t evolved much since the 1960s. Electronic mail is based on the paradigm of postal mail, a system of passing messages back and forth between senders and recipients. Wave makes a bet: surely there must be a better way to send, receive, preserve, and grow shared communiqués than via email.
<H4>Email’s Problems</H4><p>Email is simple, wildly popular, and works well—or else it wouldn’t have stayed in such widespread use as long as it has. But email has serious drawbacks when used to manage a conversation within a group. </p><p>Email propagates multiple copies and versions of messages. As soon as email is sent, the message’s contents are locked in. You can only copy, paste, edit, and send yet another copy of that message. As a result, email propagates copies of copies, storing each in a filing system of “boxes.”</p>
Select each page, rename it and give it a "type"
The various types of chapters you can assign each HTML page
Compile your book into the ePub format
Look in your publish directory to find your ePub file.
Import the ePub file into iTunes
The book imported into iBooks
This is a short, quick post about how to get your book published independently on Amazon.com. Amazon does a poor job of explaining this and in my research there did not seem to be a consensus answer for this one simple question:
There are three ways.
Here are their key differences:
Createspace is the “atoms and bits” solution to getting your creative works for sale on Amazon.com. Caters to books, music and film.
Digital Text Platform is the Kindle channel only. If you want your book on the Kindle and that’s all you care about, use DTP.
Amazon Advantage is the place where a publisher would go to selling and distributing their physical books on Amazon.com – you can ship from your own warehouse and ship them a palette of books to ship for you.
In all solutions, you as the publisher set the price, but Amazon takes 45% of the retail price.
Steve Jobs with the iPad
Hi, Steve. Thanks for innovating. We love your work. But there’s just this one thing that’s irking us now. As an independent publisher who’s primary channel for sales is digital, how can I delivery our titles to iPad owners?
This much we know:
Where’s the flood?
I’m asking this because we’ve been researching this for our own book. We have new titles that will be ready for the iPad launch in 58 days. And if it takes weeks to get a book approved (in the same way it takes weeks to get an app approved) we need to have our ePub book(s) ASAP. I’m not sweating. Really. I’m sure Apple will indeed open the floodgates. But they’re already two days late.
After searching, I’m forced to lob this plea publicly: How do I as a publisher get a book in the Apple iBookstore?
iBooks App on the iPad
I want 3 iPads. One each for me and my wife – to use a Kindle-like device. And one for my son, who’s two years old, to use as an ebook reader/portable video player/personal gaming device. Say what you want about parenting with high-tech – the kid is going to be a hacker by the time he’s four whether we try or not. Still, I worry the iPad it’s not rugged enough for him – as he’s prone to destroying anything that’s not nailed, wedged, or firmly fixed in place. In the battle between his CAT earth mover and the iPad… Let’s just say the winner will be wearing Carharts.
For me and my wife, I worry that we’ll get into the habit of buying our books in the iBookstore only to not be able to take our books to the beach. Living in San Diego, this is a more practical lament than a fleeting one. We have a pile of magazines and newspapers we gratefully read and then recycle. The books we keep. I’ll miss filling my shelves with spoils from trips to the used bookstore.
Talking with a colleague this morning, he asked me if I would buy an iPad. I told him yes, for sure, at least one. After that, I’m not so sure.
“Why?” he asked.
Inner monologue: To have at home. It’s a fun device. I can imagine using more apps, reading books, and not having to fire up the laptop to surf the web. I’ll have to test it with David to see if he’s ready for one. But I think he’d love it too for the movies.
But when it comes down to it, I just said, “I really just wanted a better Kindle.”
I don’t own a Kindle. I’ve wanted to own a Kindle. But I couldn’t get past the form factor. What a drag to use, I thought. I’m the guy waiting for Apple to make eBook readers fun and more than just a reader. Yeah, that’s me.
“So you’ll spend $500 for the iPad but you won’t spend $250 for a Kindle?”
Guilty as charged. I won’t pay a penny for something that I don’t want. But if you show me something I want, I can be relieved of much more.
We realized going into this that the gain was not profit. We thought we’d learn something and that, to us, was something we couldn’t quite put a value on. Nevertheless, we didn’t go into it without wanting to make money. We just didn’t know where to set our expectations. After all, publishing a book first as a wiki, licensing it for free distribution and making it available as an eBook to download is not a business model widely known.
In just two months, we’ve sold over 1,000 copies of The Complete Guide to Google Wave.
When Gina first approached us to help her, we put together some preliminary numbers anyway. In true scientific method, we formed a hypothesis (sell X number of books) and tested it (go out and sell them). For the preview edition, we anticipated selling between 100 and 1000 copies but really figured we’d sell around 500-700 copies. We hit our high mark of 1,000 and we did it in exactly two months. Net revenues for the book have been $5300 (we lose about 50 cents per copy to google checkout and 10 cents to docmonk). Our peak day was November 20 (Day 3) when the book was announced; we sold 85 copies that day.
Sales pattern for the (now 9) weeks since it went on sale:
Complete Guide to Google Wave sales by week
On the horizon, we will have the First Edition (not a preview edition) for sale by March 12 (when SXSW begins). It will be a higher price. With it we will also have a Print-on-Demand version that we can drop-ship as well (for a slightly higher price). We got our first preview copy of that last week. Here’s a peek at me showing it off excitedly.
Our print preview
