Vook allows you to create eBooks quickly and easily. Just how quickly? In January, one of our production experts created an eBook on the Digital Book World stage in 5 minutes and 18 seconds. The secret is to already have a sense of how you want your eBook to look. (It also helps to have properly prepared your text, images, and video or audio files.) When I’m building eBooks, I use a trick called Creating a Stylesheet Template. Stylesheet templates Read more…
Ok, we might be biased, but eBooks are the greatest invention since . . . well, the book itself. . But, you don’t have to take our word for it. We highlighted some of the top stories in digital publishing this week so you could see for yourself: eBook users read 60% more books. Given that reading can make your smarter (seriously, check it out,) we think anything that encourages more reading is great. Yes, it may be that current eBook readers Read more…
Brian Brushwood’s book Scam School Book 1 went from notes to a published, best-selling eBook in just six weeks. With a true success story like that we knew we had to get Brian to agree to share his secrets. Luckily, in addition to being able to “win free drinks, impress the girl, and become the center of the party,” he’s also a great guy and we got on the phone with him and his associate producer, Jon Tilton, to discuss Read more…
Saying someone “wrote the book” on a subject has become a turn of phrase to mean you know everything about a subject. So why not literally write the book on your area of expertise? We think you’ll be surprised how much writing a book can help you and your business. It establishes you as an expert in the field. A big part of the battle for many small businesses is establishing they are the best in the market. Stacey Hanke Read more…
A funny paradox of the eBook revolution — it’s easier than ever to create digital books, but frustratingly complex to share them and difficult for readers to actually read them without the right device or application. eBooks have turned books into pieces of software and publishers into software companies. The very smart Peter Brantley first articulated this distinction for me in an email remark, but it’s a concept — a new kind of category and role for book makers to Read more…
Today we opened Vook to the world, enabling anyone who visits our site to access our platform and create great looking eBooks, distribute them to the major marketplaces, and track their sales. Vook’s the product of heroic work from our design and engineering teams and voluminous and insightful input from hundreds of closed beta-users, whose feedback helped make the platform what it is today. Here’s a roundup of what the press has been saying: Publishers Weekly’s Craig Teicher: ”. . . Read more…
A few months ago, I left my iPad in the back of a New York City taxi-cab. My reaction was not the same as losing a cell phone or a stolen laptop. Losing those devices is an inconvenience, but I grieved the loss of my iPad as I do when losing a half-finished book. My emotional connection to a book and my tablet are the same. Nothing is better suited for the post-PC world than books. Tablets are a back-to-the-future Read more…
So, you’ve written a great book. Now people will just automagically discover it and suddenly you’ll be a best selling author, right? Not surprisingly, it’s a bit more complicated than that. We wanted to give you a little advice, based on our experience working in digital publishing. Today, we’ll look at how to spread the word through social media. First of all, which networks should you be on? Most of our resources focus on Twitter and Facebook because that’s where Read more…
And Why You Should be Thinking About Digital Now by a Writer, for other Writers This past weekend saw the New Yorker Festival book signings at McNally-Jackson. Get ready for some serious name-dropping: Not only did Sarah McNally ring up my purchases, but Jennifer Egan shook my hand, Gary Shteyngart invited me to email him, and Jonathan Franzen asked that I call him “Jon.” After the 2-day festival concluded on Sunday, I went to Williamsburg to hear Alexander Chee and Read more…
The Kindle Fire and the newer, cheaper Kindles mean an additional retail outlet. A round-up of Amazon’s new prices: Kindle Fire (tablet) $199 Kindle $79 Kindle Touch $99 Kindle Touch 3G $149 Kindle Keyboard $99 Kindle Keyboard 3G $139 Amazon is already experiencing pre-orders for the Kindle Fire, and we’ll also see regular Kindle sales jump. When the iPad launched, Vook sales tripled the next day and have only increased since then. When the iPad 2 launched, we also saw a significant Read more…