Continuing my Quick guide to Self-Publishing Series I talk about formatting, that is creating a version of your document that can be sold either as an eBook or as paperback. I talk about ePubs and mobi files for eBooks and PDF files for paperbacks.
ePub
Smashwords with Mark Coker
In this episode I talk to Mark Coker who is the head of Smashwords, the biggest and longest-established of the eBook aggregators. It is the last (for now) of the five show eBook aggregator interview series.
Rich Media Books with David Neal
In this show I talk to David Neal, who is someone I met on now defunct #futurechat publishing chat. He has self-published the appBook Alice Winks and has quite a large amount of experience with Richer Media books, that is those books that contain more than just text and pictures. They can contain interactive elements (that is choices), videos and other graphical elements.
Revisiting the Reedsy Book Editor April 2016
It’s been a while since I had a look at the Reedsy Book Editor (in my episode on 17th February) and I’d thought I’d re-examine it and update you on the progress on the product. I did slightly rush to review it when it came out so I think it is only fair that I do a brief show every now and then to see how they are progressing with it.
First Impressions of the new Reedsy Book Editor
In episode 27 of this show, Finding Professionals using Reedsy with Emmanuel Nataf, you may remember that Emmanuel mentioned that Reedsy were in the process of developing a tool for creating, editing and formatting eBooks and print books, called the Reedsy Book Editor.
Today they have made it available to the public and are promoting it on a well-known startup app site, Producthunt. So being the naturally nosey person who jumps on the latest trends, here are my initial impressions of the tool.
It is still very beta so many of my criticisms and observations will no doubt be changed in time. Firstly I have to say that I am in general extremely impressed by the tool and I think that it will have a real impact on the self-publishing world.
In summary what it provides is a website where you can create a book in an environment similar to the blogging and social media site Medium and then be able to use it to typeset your final book and create a formatted eBook and print-ready PDF. Previously this would involve either purchasing a product such as Scrivener, paying a formatter or spending quite a lot of time hand-crafting ePub files. So this is potentially a game-changing service, especially as it is currently free.
For Reedsy it provides a great way to get people into their eco-system, so they can sell the Editing and Book Cover design services from their site more easily. It also will eventually allow editors and authors to cooperate using this, rather than e-mailing files back and forth. This feature has not been enabled yet so I couldn’t try it out.
A Quick Guide to Scrivener
I’ve had quite a few conversations recently with people who have bought Scrivener and couldn’t work out how to use it. In this show I talk about how use the product. If you use a different product and are happy with it then this post isn’t for you!
However, if you haven’t yet got a writing tool you are happy with, Scrivener is good because:
You can easily create an ePub file and a Mobi file from it.
It automatically saves your work and backs it up.
It is a great tool for planning a book.