BUILDING A BOOK

BUILDING A BOOK - Today’s post is the third in a series of reflections I had after attending Litquake’s digital publishing conference, digi.lit, on June 21, 2014. This session was all about the ways books can be built--in print or electronically--in today’s ever changing publishing landscape. The panel consisted of three reps from top online book sellers, but didn’t include Amazon, which continues to be number one. Kobo runs aps/ ebooks and got out of the ereader/ tablet hardware business in 2014. They partner with indie bookstores and report that 'first free' series sell extremely well. Smashwords will let an indie author post an ebook for free on multiple platforms. Think of it as one stop shopping, to get into all places and availability, in multiple formats. Ingram Spark purports to be Amazon’s main competitor. Their books are not labeled ‘independent’ and are associated with Ingram wholesale. My opinion? None of them have the same reach as Amazon, so upload your ebook, for free to Kindle. Nobody beats their POD (print-on-demand) for professional results at a cost effective price. Yes, that’s why they continue to be number one.

The following conference sessions will be covered in this series of blog posts.

1. Digital 101: Is Digital publishing the best option for me?

2. Do you read me? Author Branding and Marketing

3. Building a Book

4. The Changing Ways we Read