If you want to sell more books, more than just a few here and there to your family and friends, you need to ignore what the traditionalists tell you and embrace what really works. The Book Marketing School Series is about teaching you how to sell your books based on experience learned in the trenches—running this company, plus my own publishing company, and learning by trial and error.

What doesn’t work?

• Press releases
• Book signings
• Amazon best seller launches
• Pushing people to buy your books

What really works?

• Content marketing
• A platform based on your personal brand
• Social media marketing
• SEO (search engine optimization)

Get Our There and Connect With People

Think about what works not just for selling more books, but selling anything at all. To sell, you have to really connect with people. Successful salespeople don’t stay hidden in their offices working on reports, they get out there and connect with people. Successful politicians don’t hide away, they talk with as many people as they can. No matter what you’re selling—products, services, or ideas—you have to get out there and connect with people. Be proactive. Look for opportunities to connect. In fact, create opportunities. The real foundation of your entire online presence isn’t a website, your blog, or your Facebook page. The real foundation of your online presence is the relationship you form with each person you come in contact with. One of the best ways you can meet people online is by offering them something they can use, and one of the most effective ways to do that is with content marketing.

Content marketing is creating and distributing
relevant and valuable content.

So What Is Content Marketing Really?

Content marketing, unlike many other forms of marketing, is not about manipulating people or trying to get them to do something. Content marketing is about showing people—directly—that you have something useful and beneficial for them. It’s about giving instead of taking. Many content marketers don’t ever ask for something in return; all they want is to share what they know. Others have a product or service available, but they don’t want to be obnoxiously pushy about it. They figure it’s enough to show you how good they are and let you make the decision yourself. Over the past couple of years I’ve done extensive research and experimenting. What works best for long-term results is content marketing, and the heart of your content marketing is a blog that provides useful posts on a consistent basis. These posts have one overall task to accomplish and that is to create a relationship with your readers by proving you can provide what they’re looking for.

8 Steps to Sell More Books 

Here are the basic 8 steps to building your own platform and to sell more books:

1. Determine your personal brand and target reader
2. Do thorough keyword research
3. Build a website with a blog and write amazingly useful posts using your long-tail keywords
4. Optimize your website and blog posts for SEO
5. Build relationships with bloggers in similar niches and guest blog
6. Use social media to engage in conversation
7. Build your mailing list
8. Optimize your Amazon pages

Each one of those steps could provide enough information to fill a book or give a workshop on, so expect at least another blog post or even a series of blog posts for each step. For more reading in the meantime, check out the book Platform by Michael Hyatt or the tribalauthor blog by Jonathan Fields.

Learn more about Ebook Editor’s book marketing services.

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In a digital world, ebook cover design is often overlooked. It’s due to the fact that people think that because an ebook cover is only the size of a thumbnail, instead of a large in-your-face image that you’d see on a hardcover book at a brick and mortar store, that its quality is of less importance.

Never Underestimate the Importance of Visual Impact

The truth is, professional cover design is just as important in ebooks. Just as is the case for print books, it is the first and sometimes only opportunity to catch the viewer’s eye. What many authors may overlook is that ebook covers must be even more versatile. They need to be able to stretch and go from a tiny thumbnail image for viewing on places like Facebook and Amazon, to stretching to fit onto an iPad or computer screen on applications like Kindle for PC or Mac.

Ebook Covers Have More Room for Visual Appeal

Keep in mind that the title of the book in online stores is always listed beside the thumbnail image of the book, negating the need to make a title that is readable in such a small format. However, do not overcrowd the cover with images either, or the viewer is liable to pass over it rather than try and figure it out.

Words From a Bestselling Author

H.P. Mallory is a New York Times bestselling author who recently wrote The Witch Is Back and the upcoming title, Something Witchy This Way Comes. She says, “Cover art is crucial in any book (ebook or otherwise) because it’s the first touch point an author has with her readers. And readers absolutely, one hundred percent judge books by their covers, so if your cover looks like you created it in Microsoft Paint, chances are your sales will reflect it.”

When your book comes up in a search result, the potential reader will view it among many other potential books to read and your cover needs to pop in a way that the others do not. Keep in mind that the background color for Amazon is white, so having a white background can potentially make your cover disappear. Also try to avoid colors that are used on the website such as tans, golds and grays.

Things to Consider When Hiring a Cover Designer:

1. Consider the cost vs. work ratio. When you are paying for a cover design, compare prices and, more importantly, compare portfolios. Look for an artist whose portfolio meets the criteria for what you’re looking for in a cover. Some artists primarily focus on the title, a simple image, and author name with the idea that the only importance of an ebook cover is to have a placeholder for where your book appears in online stores.

Despite what many cover designers once thought, it’s important for you to have a creative cover that stands out, rather than sticking to a few basic fonts and images that are simple and not complex. Shop around and be sure to inquire before deciding to go with a designer to make sure they will be able to meet your cover design needs.

2. What are your expectations? Many authors employ an artist to create a cover design with hopes of having a cover perfectly customized to specific characters and images in the book itself. Unless you are hiring an artist to paint, draw, or photograph your cover image, keep in mind that most images used will be from stock photography and simple designs that can be created in Photoshop, rather than “a young girl with her head tilted slightly to the left in a red dress and pink shoes with her hair in pigtails and ribbons.” There’s only so much that can be created from nothing unless you’re paying for someone to actually create the image.

3. Is DIY an option? Many authors would rather cut the cost of having to hire someone to design their cover. Hey, if you’re publishing your own book, why not do it all yourself? If you have an eye for design and feel confident in your ability to create the design you want as well as one that will catch a potential viewer’s eye, then go for it. Browse other best-selling covers and make sure yours stands up with them. Otherwise, find an artist that will meet your budget without sacrificing quality.

A professional ebook design is just as—if not more—important in a time when technology is taking precedence. The very existence of an ebook, and the traditional publishing companies race to keep up, is proof that technology and trends must be followed, studied, and implemented to ensure success. Think Netflix vs. Blockbuster.

Get the Ebook Cover You Want

Something that separates Ebook Editor from other companies is not only our dedication to making your cover stand out, look professional, and catch potential reader’s eyes, but our customer service.

At Ebook Editor, our customer service is unmatched. How?

Most companies (and this is sad, really) will give you one or two drafts. If you aren’t satisfied with the cover, then that’s just too bad.

When you go with us, you’ll receive as many drafts and revisions as you need until you are 100% satisfied with the cover design. We won’t let you put your book on the market if you aren’t completely satisfied with your ebook cover.

We believe in pleasing customers and making sure they go away from us happy, not just with our professional ebook cover designs, but with our attention to detail and unique needs and wants that come along with anything requiring artistic flare.

The post An Overview on the Importance of a Professional Ebook Cover appeared first on The Ebook Editor.

How to upload your ebook to Amazon is part of our ongoing How to Make an Ebook Series as part of our Professional Ebook Conversion and Kindle Formatting Service.

In this final post of our “How to Make an Ebook” series, you learn the last and final step: how to upload your now professional-looking ebook to Amazon.

You’re almost there. You’ve styled your document, you’ve added your images, you’ve done your endnotes, your table of contents, your links, and you’ve followed all the step-by-step instructions provided in our “How to Make an Ebook Series.” You’re probably asking yourself, “Now what?”

Now you get to publish. All you need is your Word doc, your book cover image, your book description, and an account at kdp.amazon.com.

The layout at kdp.amazon.com is very self-explanatory, and it likely won’t take you more than 10 minutes or so to get through all of the steps. Once you have your account ready and you’re on the homepage at kdp.amazon.com, you’ll see a button that says “Add new Title” or just “New Title.” Click that.

This is the page where you fill in the information about the book. Fill in the title, whether it’s part of a series, book contributors, and the book description. It will ask you if your book is a public domain work or not.

Check the box that says “This is not a public domain work and I hold the necessary publishing rights.”

Now you’re going to target your book to customers.

This is where you choose the category that your book belongs in. People are often browsing Amazon for books in their favorite genre. There is almost no category here that you won’t find a good place for your book to be in. If your book is a legal thriller, choose “Fiction” and then “Legal” in the subcategory. If your book is epic fantasy, choose “Fiction” then click on “Fantasy” and then “Epic.” Sometimes there are books so specific in genre that you may not find the exact category.

In that case, choose the closest one. Think of who your biggest reader base is, and what they would search for if they wanted to find a book like yours. Then choose that category accordingly.

Keywords

This is a topic discussed at monumental length throughout the web. Keyword research is a topic all on its own, and there are people that make a living from analyzing and using keywords for optimal results. Most of the time it refers to individual websites and attracting traffic to those websites using keywords.

Fortunately for us, Amazon is already one of the most visited websites in the entire world. You don’t need keywords to get people to go to Amazon, you just need them for people to find your book there. That, however, does not make them any less important. Using keywords strategically is crucial to the success of your book. You can use 7 different keywords. For example, let’s say you wrote a fantasy novel. Your keywords might be:

Coming of age, magic, heroism, sword and sorcery, romance, war, gritty.

I’m not an expert on keywords, but I do know that people have specific tastes when it comes to fantasy (and any genre, for that matter). Some like coming of age stories where the farm boy with the magic sword conquers all evil. Some like their fantasy dark and gritty, where no character is safe and moral ambiguity reigns. Some like sword and sorcery, where wizards, barbarians, and big-breasted spear maidens are on a quest to destroy the evil warlock.

All I’m saying is this—do some research. Find out what people search for when they’re browsing for their next book in your genre. Find out what appeals to them, and use those keywords. As much as I would love to blather on further about how important keywords are, we must move forward. You have a book to publish, after all.

Upload Your Book Cover

A book isn’t much good without a cover, is it?

You’ll see this on your screen.

Just click on “Browse for image…” and from there choose your cover image (wherever you have it in your computer). If you had a book cover professionally done, it should already be at the right specifications. These are:

TIFF (.tif/.tiff) or JPEG (.jpeg/.jpg) format

At least 1000 pixels on the longest side, with an ideal height/width ratio of 1.6.
2500 pixels on the longest side is preferred.

Once you have that done, it’s time to upload your book file.

For now, choose “Do NOT enable digital rights management.” When you upload your book for the final time, you will choose “Enable digital rights management.” Why not this time? Because you will need to preview the mobi file it gives you once you’ve uploaded the book file. If the DRM is enabled, you will not be able to preview your Kindle file.

Now, click on “Browse for book…” and choose your Word doc that you’ve worked so hard to format properly. Once that’s selected, click “Upload book.”

You’ll wait just a minute or two, depending on the size of your book, for Amazon to turn your Word doc into a mobi file using its automated conversion software. Once it’s finished converting, it’s time to preview how your book will look on the Kindle.

To do that, you’ll either need Kindle for PC (free to download on Amazon.com) or you can do it on an actual Kindle. Either is fine, really. For the convenience of not having to plug in my Kindle and transfer the file to it, I usually use Kindle for PC.

Once Your Book is Finished Converting

You’ll see this:

Choose “Download Book Preview File.” Once you do that, your computer will start downloading the Kindle file of your book. Once it’s downloaded, open it with Kindle for PC. Now is the chance to go over everything and make sure everything looks right. Chances are you’ll find something you want to change.

Make the changes on your Word doc, save it, and re-upload it in the same manner. Check again. Keep doing this until your book looks exactly how you want it to.

Important Note For Previewing Your File

Be sure that when you’re done previewing your book on Kindle for PC, and you want to re-upload and check it again, to DELETE the file from Kindle for PC. If you do not, it will just open up the old one again and again.

You have your book file uploaded, you have your cover image uploaded, you have your categories set and your keywords chosen. Now check the box for “Enable Digital Rights Management” and click “Save and Continue.”

Pricing Your Book

Now it’s all about choosing the price of your book. As a general rule:

If your book is priced below $2.99, you will get 30% royalties from Amazon. If your book is priced from $2.99–$9.99, you can get 70% royalties.

Pricing is heavily discussed and debated throughout the web. I suggest you do some research and find out what works best for you.

Publish

Now that you’re done choosing the price for your book, go ahead and publish. It will take about 12 hours for it to go live on Amazon.

Congratulations, you are now a published author on the most popular book venue in the world.

This Concludes our “How to Make an Ebook Series.”

Here at the Ebook Editor, quality is everything to us. If the author is not 100% satisfied with how their book looks on Kindle, we will format it until it is.

In this blog series, the same quality control is encouraged. We have given you everything you need to know for the making of a professional-looking ebook. We have shown you many doors and what lay beyond them. It is now up to you to make sure your ebook looks professional, clean, and crisp.

At any time you can review any of the posts in our How to Make an Ebook Series. There you will find all of our previous, informative posts on how to make an ebook.

Our E-Course

Our e-course on how to make an ebook is coming soon. In it, there’ll a step-by-step manual, a book in PDF format, and most importantly, video instruction. With the manual, the book, and video instruction, you’ll have everything you need to convert your own ebooks or even start your own ebook conversion business.

Stay Motivated

As always, stay motivated. It’s okay to be discouraged; we all get discouraged at some point, especially with new things that we’re trying to learn. I promise, though, that if you push past it and keep at it, you’ll be a master ebook converter in no time.

Happy formatting!

The post How to Upload Your Ebook to Amazon – How to Make an Ebook Series appeared first on The Ebook Editor.

Keywords are one of the most powerful tools you have for selling your book. They are the key to that very first step—getting discovered by your potential reader. If they don’t find your book, they won’t buy your book. Take the time to pick the very best keywords and you’ll see your sales increase.

Using the correct keywords when you self-publish your book is vitally important to the success of your book. However, it’s an easy process and doesn’t require much more than about a half hour of your time and only a little bit of creativity.

What’s a Keyword?

A keyword is any word or phrase that’ll help people find your book when they do a search, say on Google or Amazon. It’s as simple as that. But as simple as they are, they’re extremely important in the search process. In fact, they’re what search is all about. Search engines (like Google and Amazon) work because they search for keywords. If you want your book to be found, you need to know how to pick the best keywords and learn where to put them to help people find your book.

Interest—Desire—Buy

There are three main steps in any buying process: Interest, Desire, and Buy. Each of these steps also aligns with Thought, Feeling, and Behavior. Combined, the steps are:

1. Interest/Thought
2. Desire/Feeling
3. Buy/Behavior

The Interest step is where you first get people’s interest by appealing to their rational side, their thought or thinking side. They’re looking for something specific and you do what it takes to make sure your product gets in front of them. They have an interest and you’re making sure that your product is one of those they find right away. If your book shows up on page 10 of the search results, you’re going to sell very few books.

The Desire step is where you engage with their feelings and instill desire. You help them feel trust and confidence in you. You convince them that the features of your product will benefit them and you show them how. You feed the fuel of their desire and make buying the natural next step.
The Buy step is where they perform the behavior that the previous step has led them to. Usually, this is where they buy your product. Sometimes the desired behavior is as simple as giving your email address in exchange for a free book.

Keywords Are Part of the Interest Step

Keywords are part of the first step, the Interest/Thought step. One of my authors, Denise Roessle, has a book that tells the story of when she gave up her child for adoption and then found him again years later. It’s a memoir of what that experience was like for her.
Let’s say that one of her potential readers is looking for stories of people that have given their child up for adoption and then found them again later in life. While doing a search on Amazon, they might enter “adoption stories” or “adoption reunion.” If that’s what they type, and we want them to find Denise’s book, we’d better have those keywords in one or all of three of the following places: the book title, the book description, and the keywords field.

Throughout this whole process, keep in mind that you aren’t choosing keywords based on what you feel sounds good or what you wish your book was about. You’re choosing keywords that people actually type into a search engine—mostly Google or Amazon—to find a book just like yours. Put yourself in the mind of your potential reader.

To learn more about how to identify the keywords that people are actually using and learn what tools we use, go here to get your copy of Choose Keywords That Sell Your Books.

The post Choose Keywords That Sell Your Books – Book Marketing School Series appeared first on The Ebook Editor.

Digital Rights Management, also known as DRM, is one topic for ebook publishers and authors that gets people very riled. We don’t propose to solve the issue, but instead we’ll define it and offer one possible solution we recently discovered.

Definition
Simply put, DRM is a technological method used to control access to the use and distribution of digital material; in short—copyright protection. The purpose is to limit the control of the person who possesses the digital material, thereby restricting how they can use, share, or copy the purchased content.

Pros and Cons
DRM is a hot button issue to be sure. On one side you have those who are against DRM who state that big business uses DRM as a way to control digital content for profit. On the other side are those who say it provides protection from piracy, copyright infringement, and potential viruses and is a means to keep their content safe and under their control.

The Dilemma
The biggest roadblock in acquiring DRM is the cost, which is often prohibitive for the small publisher. Fortunately, as technology and demand grow, more cost-effective services, such as Editionguard, should come out.

Solutions

•  Editionguard http://www.editionguard.com/
This appears to be a very good solution for the small and indie publishers. They let you have DRM capabilities without an enormous set-up fee and maintenance costs. Their plans range from $39 (200MB storage) to $249 (50GB storage) per month. You should also take a look at the blog on their website; it has great tips for writers.

•  OverDrive http://www.overdrive.com/
This is a distribution service. They deliver secure management, DRM protection, and download fulfillment services. This is the main service that public libraries use.

•  Adobe Content Server http://www.adobe.com/products/content-server.html
This is a very expensive solution with a license fee of $6,500 among other charges. It was the main resource for small publishers before Editionguard and OverDrive came onto the scene.

A Resource
Here’s an excellent explanation and a very thorough look at DRM written by Kirk Biglione at Pressbooks.com.

http://book.pressbooks.com/chapter/drm-kirk-biglione

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How to Format Endnotes for a Professional Ebook Conversion is part of our ongoing How to Make an Ebook Series as part of our Professional Ebook Conversion and Kindle Formatting Service.

This week’s lesson in our “How to Make an Ebook series” will show you how to include endnotes in your ebook. You may be wondering about footnotes. To put it succinctly, you can’t have footnotes in an ebook.

Why You Can’t Have Footnotes

Footnotes can’t exist on a Kindle or any other e-reader because e-readers don’t have headers and footers. Since footers are what footnotes are placed in, there just isn’t a way to have them in an ebook. In light of that, what we must to do is turn all of those footnotes into endnotes.

If you have already properly inserted your footnotes in Word, then you have a very easy task in front of you. It all starts with going to your “References” tab on the top toolbar of Word. You’ll see a little section for footnotes. Looks like this:

Click where the red arrow is pointing, and you’ll see this:

Click on “Convert…” (where the red arrow is pointing). You’ll see this:

Click “Okay.”

You’re done. All of your footnotes should now be endnotes in numerical order at the end of the document.

If, for some reason, you haven’t yet inserted the footnotes or endnotes properly in Word, you’re in for a little bit of work. Fortunately for us, Amazon’s conversion software recognizes Word’s built-in endnotes (unlike Word’s bulleted and numbered list options) and converts them properly for Kindle. All you really need to do now is insert your endnotes with Word’s built-in option.

In same “References” tab, just click “Insert Endnote” wherever you want one. Do it throughout your document. Once you have all of them done, your task is finished.

While We’re on the Subject

As I mentioned earlier, headers and footers are not one of the Kindle’s features. As such, there is no possible way to include page numbers, chapter titles and all the usual stuff that goes in headers. It’s time to eliminate your page numbers.

Note: It’s okay to have headers and footers in the document so long as there isn’t anything in them. You don’t have to delete the headers and footers themselves, only what’s inside.

Deleting What’s Inside Headers/Footers

Simply go to where your page number is and double-click. That will allow you to delete anything and everything in the header or footer. Rinse and repeat with all of them.

That Wraps it Up

It’s often the simplest and easiest things that discourage people from doing what they want. There are a lot of people out there that are intimidated by things that outwardly appear to be too complex or beyond their abilities. All anyone ever needs is a little knowledge, practice, and patience mixed with a generous sprinkling desire and dedication. The payoff is always worth it. So, dear readers, as always, I encourage you to…

Stay Motivated!

Making an professional-looking ebook for Kindle can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be. Here at the Ebook Editor, where customer service is unmatched by any other company that offers ebook conversion services, we want to give you the opportunity to learn and do it yourself. The world of publishing as we know it is going forward at light speed.

Nobody really knows where it’s headed, despite the fierce and devoutly defended opinions raging back and forth on the blogosphere. I can’t say where it’s going. I can say, though, that now is as good a time as ever to self-publish. Indie authors are being spotted by major publishing companies and selling their rights to them for six-figure prices.

These people started off just like you—they needed to turn their document into something that looked magnificent on the Kindle. I strongly urge you to learn how to make an ebook yourself. Not only is it something that will benefit you for years to come (I’m talking to you, Mr. Prolific Author), it will benefit your author friends as well.

Heck, maybe you can even make a business out of it. Either way, stay tuned to our weekly How to Make an Ebook Series and you’ll have your professional-looking ebook up for sale on Amazon in no time.

Happy Formatting and Happy Holidays,

EE

The post How to Format Endnotes for a Professional Ebook Conversion – How to Make an Ebook Series appeared first on The Ebook Editor.

Evening, folks. Hope you’re ready for yet another lesson in our How to Make an Ebook Series. To access any of our previous articles individually, pop over to http://www.ebook-editor.com/how-to-make-an-ebook/ and have yourself a read.

In this lesson, I’ll teach you how to use the Find and Replace option to make your ebook look more uniform, clean, and professional.

Clean Up That Document!

Like any worthwhile endeavor, cleanliness is a must. Your kitchen, your bathroom, your office space, and your tools of the trade, be you a carpenter, a doctor, an artist, a barber, or indeed, any respectable profession.

People don’t go to restaurants if there are cockroaches scurrying about the tables, lipstick smears on the glasses, and mold growing on the walls. So why would you expect people to read an ebook that has paragraph breaks all askance, inconsistent and erratic line spacing, and single and double spaces in between sentences running hither and thither yon as though they belong in the same document?

Cleaning up a Word doc—fortunately for us—is a great deal easier than getting on knees and elbows to scrub stubborn grime off of tiles. For this task, you need nothing but your trusty Search and Replace option. Let’s get started.

Tabs

See that Tab button on your keyboard? You know, that button that hasn’t had any practical use since the early 1990s? That’s the one. If you used it when you wrote your book, you’ve made a mistake. Luckily it’s an easy mistake to correct. Go to your Search and Replace option on your Home tab in Word.

All you need to do here is enter “^t” in the “find” bar and, in the “replace with” bar, put nothing. Just leave it blank. Then click replace all.

There it is. Your pesky tabs have been unceremoniously hurled out the window. Don’t mourn them, and don’t worry about first-line indents for your paragraphs. Using styles properly does that for you throughout the book. See http://www.ebook-editor.com/how-to-use-styles-for-a-professional-ebook-conversion-part-1/ for a previous article of ours explaining how to use and implement styles for a professional ebook conversion.

Double Spaces

Double spaces after a sentence are no good, at least for an e-book. Replacing them all is easy. We use the same method.

In the “find” bar, hit the spacebar twice. It will look blank, but we know that there’s something there, don’t we? In the “replace” bar, just hit the spacebar once. Click “Replace All.” Keep clicking “Replace All” until there are zero items found. That way you know you got them all.

Paragraph Spaces

Now the time has come for us to remove spaces at the end of paragraphs and at the beginning of them. Search and Replace, here we come.

In the “find” bar, put “ ^p” Notice the blank space before the ^ symbol. That’s intentional as hell. Now, replace that with just “^p” without the space. Ignore all those quotation marks, of course. It should look like this:

Click “Replace All” as many times as it takes.

Now, do the same thing, only instead of a space before the ^p, put one after. Like this—“^p ”

Replace them with the same “^p” as before.

Removing Double Lines

I’m sure you see the pattern by now. Nothing needed here but Search and Replace. What we’re doing now is removing any double lines in the document, or anywhere that you’ve hit the “enter” key twice to manually put spaces in between paragraphs.

Search for: “^p^p” with no spaces in there. Just as you see it (again, sans quotation marks).

Replace with: “^p”

That takes care of that.

Quotation Marks

You definitely want to make sure all of the quotation marks in your document are uniform, whether you use curly or straight quotation marks. Personally, I recommend going with straight (see why here http://www.ebook-editor.com/7-tips-to-perform-your-own-kindle-formatting-service/). Go to step 4.

Also, in step 4 of that previous “How to Make an Ebook” article (linked above) it not only tells you why I prefer straight quotes, but also how to change all of the curly quotation marks in your document to straight ones.

Give The Doc A Once-over

For this, you don’t need Search and Replace. You only need your eyes. Go through the doc and make sure nothing looks askew. You don’t have to read the damn thing, just scroll down the length of the doc at a slow pace, searching for anything you might have missed.

Usually—well, almost always—you’re going to find something. It could be a chapter heading you missed, it could be two separate words together without a space in between. Likethis sentence, forexample. It could be an image you forgot to center, or a paragraph that’s in your original font instead of Times New Roman, or whatever you set your Normal style to.

Could be any number of things.

Of course, once you can view it on your Kindle, that’s when you’ll really notice any formatting changes you need to fix. Putting the doc into Kindle format to review is very easy, but unfortunately it isn’t a subject in today’s lesson.

As usual, I leave you with:

Stay Motivated

The key to making a professional-looking ebook is to not give up. Don’t be discouraged or overwhelmed at the technical aspect of formatting an ebook for Kindle. The learning curve is pretty small—anyone can do it, especially if that someone wrote a fiction book, which is the easiest of them all to make a great-looking ebook.

Until next time, Happy Formatting and Happy Holidays!

The post How to Perform Additional Cleaning for a Professional Ebook Conversion – How to Make an Ebook Series appeared first on The Ebook Editor.

In this lesson, you’ll learn how to insert images for a professional ebook conversion.

How to Prepare and Use Images For a Professional Ebook Conversion – is part of our ongoing How to Make an Ebook Series, as part of our Professional Ebook Conversion and Kindle Formatting Service.

Inserting Images

Continuing on in our How to Make an Ebook Series, our subject today is images. Lots of books have them—fiction included. Every aspect of your ebook must look professionally done and clean, and images are no exception to the rule. The good news is, it’s very easy to insert images into a Word doc and make it look great on the Kindle. Before we get started, though, I’ll give you a concise list of things not to do. They’re just as important as the things to do.

Things Not to Do

• Don’t try wrap-around text. Keep all text either below or above your images because the ebook conversion process can only process images that are inline. If you’re doing something that requires wrap-around text, like a coffee-table book or a children’s book, there are other measures you can take. Feel free to contact us about that.

• Don’t make your images enormous. A Kindle screen is only so big, and besides that, there are file-size limits to what you can upload to Amazon as well as other book venues.

• Don’t use any image file format other than PNG.

What You Might Need

There are only two programs you need to either acquire an image, or alter one. You may not need either one, but they are really great to have.

• Adobe Photoshop—the word “photoshopped” is synonymous with images that have been altered. There’s a good reason. There’s almost nothing Photoshop can’t do to change your image to your liking. The most likely thing you’re liable to change is, of course, image size.

• SnagIt—this is the program I like to use if I need to take a screenshot of something on my computer screen. If you take all your pictures yourself with a camera, or if you just get them from the Web, you don’t need this.

Reasons for Taking a Screenshot

The main reason people take screenshots is because they can’t get the image they want from the Web or from their camera. Taking a screenshot allows you to take a picture of anything you want on your screen. This is great for graphs and charts, because graphs and charts as a rule look pretty poor on a Kindle. As an image, it will look great.

Also, you can take screenshots of information from PDF files, Microsoft Excel (or any Microsoft Office program), weather charts, charts from government data websites—you name it.

Both Mac and PC have built-in software that will take screenshots for you. I prefer SnagIt. It’s easy, precise, has a lot of good options, and overall, I think it’s better than the default built-in screenshot program.

Preparatory Work

Before you start inserting your images, there are a few things you want to keep in mind. Size, mostly. That brings us to…

File Size Limit

Different book venues have different size limits. We’ll just worry about Amazon’s for now. Their limit is 50MB. If you go to publish, and it says your file exceeds the size limit, there’s a 99% chance that your images are too large. Reducing the size will take care of the issue.

Image Size Limit

Use your picture editor to adjust the size of your images, making sure that they do not exceed the size limit for e-readers. The size limit is currently 560 pixels wide by 740 pixels in height. In addition, set your pixels per inch to 150. Be sure to save or export your image as a PNG file, not JPG. Ebooks can use JPG files, but they won’t look as good as PNGs.

Inserting the Image

For PC

To insert the image into Word, go to your “Insert” tab on the top toolbar of Word. Then click on “Picture.”

This will open up your file browser. From there, go the folder where you keep your images and insert the desired image.

For Mac

Click on Insert in the menu at the top, go down to Photo and then choose Picture from File.

Center the Image

If your Normal style is set to have a first-line indent, make sure the image is centered properly by backspacing it until it’s fully left aligned, and then center it. If you center something with a first-line indent, it will be right of center unless you un-indent if first.

That’s Pretty Much It

There isn’t much more to it, really. Amazon’s conversion software will insert the image in the MOBI file exactly where it’s placed in your Word doc. If it doesn’t, chances are your image file is somehow corrupted, but that’s rare.

A Word on Adobe Photoshop

I am constantly amazed and impressed with Deb, our design and image expert. My reverence for her stems from the fact that Photoshop is a very difficult and vastly complicated program to master—there are literally hundreds of different tools, options, and ways to alter images—all beyond the scope of my limited understanding of visual design. So, thanks Deb, for handling everything design and image-related that goes awry. You rock!

You’re Done!

Preparing and using images for an ebook conversion isn’t difficult at all. Chances are your image will be close enough to the right size, and complicated alterations in Adobe Photoshop won’t be necessary. So, as quick overview:

1.  Go to your “Insert” tab and click on the “Picture” icon.

2.  That will open your file browser and then double click on your image file.

3.  Make sure your image is fully left aligned, and then center it. If you don’t want your image centered, that’s okay, too.

4.  Voila!

Those four steps is all it really takes to have great and professional-looking images in your ebook. Easier than you thought, right? Once again:

Stay Motivated

I encourage anyone who’s interested in making their own ebook to continue reading our articles for our ongoing How to Make an Ebook Series, as part of our Professional Ebook Conversion and Kindle Formatting Service.

Armed with knowledge and the desire to overcome a small learning curve, there’s no doubt that you’ll have your very own professional-looking ebook in no time at all. Stick to your guns, and in addition to saving money converting your own ebook, you might choose to start making money doing ebook conversions for other people as well.

The post How to Prepare and Use Images – How to Make an Ebook Series appeared first on The Ebook Editor.

In this lesson, you’ll learn how to create bullet points and numbered lists for a professional ebook conversion.

How to Use Styles to For a Professional Ebook Conversion – Part 1 is part of our ongoing How to Make an Ebook Series as part of our Professional Ebook Conversion and Kindle Formatting Service.

So far in this mini-course we’ve gone over a great deal of things that help you make your own ebook look professional and clean, including How to Use Styles. Now I’m going to show you how to make your own bullet points and numbered lists and avoid the troubles that come with using Microsoft Word’s built-in lists.

Bullet Points and Numbered Lists

If your book is fiction, you may not have use for this information, but I urge you to read it anyway. You never know when you’ll have to use bullet points or numbered lists in your ebook.

If your book is non-fiction, there’s a high chance you use lists in your book. They’re a great way to categorize, separate, and emphasize bits of information without confusing the reader with huge blocks of text.

The Big No-No

Before we get started, just remember one thing. There’s one big no-no (and it’s an easy no-no to remember). Under NO circumstance use Microsoft Word’s built-in options for bullet points and lists. In Microsoft Word for PC, you’ll see them in your Home tab up top, in the Paragraph section. Below is an image of where you can find the list options in the Mac version of Microsoft Word 2011.

Why not Microsoft Word’s built-in options?

Because when you put the .doc through Amazon’s one-size-fits-all conversion software, it doesn’t recognize Word’s built-in options and leaves you with a messy ebook

Bullet Points

On a PC, just press Alt+7. That’s it. Hold down your Alt key and press 7 on the number pad. That creates a bullet point. On a Mac, press Option+8 for the same result.

From there, all you have to do is space them however you want to. I just do the bullet point, then a space, with a single line space above and below the other items on the bulleted list. You can also create a special style that uses a hanging indent if you want it to look just like Microsoft Word’s built-in list option where each line of text is aligned on top of each other.

Numbered Lists

These are just as easy as bullet points. Just put the number, followed by a period and a space. You can also create a style just for numbered lists. If you do this, you’ll have to create one specifically for numbers 1–9, another for numbers 10–99, etc.

Now you know how to do bullet points and numbered lists in your .doc to prepare it for a conversion. I have only one more tip for you in this How to Make an Ebook Series series.

Stay Motivated

Most everything you do to make a professional-looking ebook is as simple as what you just read. It’s really not as hard as you think. It’s a process—a series of steps that anyone can do when armed with the proper knowledge.

Until next week, happy formatting!

The post How to Create Bullet Points and Numbered Lists for a Professional Ebook Conversion – How to Make an Ebook Series appeared first on The Ebook Editor.

In this lesson, you’ll continue to learn how to use styles for a professional ebook conversion.

How to Use Styles to For a Professional Ebook Conversion – Part 2 is part of our ongoing How to Make an Ebook Series as part of our Professional Ebook Conversion and Kindle Formatting Service.

So far in our series on how to make an ebook, we’ve covered 7 tips that save time and frustration, how to insert links (internal and external), and how to use and modify styles.

Today, in the sincere hope that you’re still eager to learn how make your own ebook, make that ebook look professional, and create it with a minimal amount of effort and frustration, I’ve decided to show you how to format what is called “front matter.”

Front Matter

What is front matter?

Front matter is everything in your book that comes before your story. For your convenience, here’s a list of what encompasses front matter:

1. Title page
2. Copyright page
3. Acknowledgements
4. Dedication

Every book, your book included, should have front matter, and making front matter look great is easy if you know how.

Title Page

The title page is especially easy because you don’t need to give it a different style. Just keep it in Normal style. Follow these guidelines:

Title: Times New Roman, 16pt font, centered, bold, space after.

Subtitle (if applicable): Times New Roman, 14pt font, centered, bold, space after.

Author’s name: Times New Roman, 12pt font, centered, NOT bold.

Important: if your book is fiction, the Normal style will be set to have a first-line indent. If you center something with a first-line indent, it won’t really be centered; it will be to the right of center. To remove this, highlight all of the text on the title page and go to your paragraph options and set your first line indent to 0.

To get to the paragraph options, go to your home tab on your top toolbar of Word and you’ll see the box that has all of the paragraph options. Left aligned, centered, right aligned, etc. At the bottom right corner of this box there will be a tiny little arrow. I’ve circled it in red in the image below. (If you have Word for Mac, click on Format in the top menu and choose Paragraph.)

You’re done with your title page. Easy, no? It’s all downhill from here. Let’s move on to the copyright page.

Copyright Page

The copyright page only needs 2 things:

Copyright 2012 (or whichever year) Author Name (whatever your name is)
All rights reserved.
Smashwords Edition

If you’re uploading your Word file to Smashwords, also add “Smashwords Edition” to the copyright page. Note: It should only be there when you distribute to Smashwords. Leave that out for when you submit to Amazon and B&N.

The first thing you need to do is put “Copyright 2012 Author Name” in Heading 1 style. If you’re confused about styles, see my previous post on how to modify and use styles http://www.ebook-editor.com/how-to-use-styles-to-for-a-professional-ebook-conversion/. For those of you familiar with styles, you are now probably very confused as to why I would put “Copyright 2012 Author Name” in Heading 1 style.

As you may know, Heading 1 style is normally used for chapter titles. Why? We modify Heading 1 so that the font is bigger, centered, has a space after and—most importantly—has an automatic page break before.

Why then, should we put the first line of the copyright page in Heading 1 style? There’s only one easy and straightforward answer: Barnes and Noble. Allow me to explain.

When you submit a Word .doc to B&N, it will NOT start something on a new page unless that page has a page break before it. The real problem is, though, that it doesn’t recognize manually inserted page breaks. The page break has to be from the style the text is in.

If you aren’t publishing to B&N, skip this part. If you are, keep reading.

In order to circumvent B&N’s conversion software’s willful refusal to start anything on a new page without it being styled to include an automatic page break, all we need to do is make sure that the pages in our front matter start in Heading 1 style.

It’s simple, really. You put the first line in Heading 1 style, and then manually format it to look like the rest of the text. Now that you have the first line of your copyright page in Heading 1 style, change it to:

Times New Roman, 12pt font, left aligned.

Now you need to remove the space after. Your Heading 1 style should have a 12pt space after. That’s easy to remove, too. Again, go to your paragraph options.

Change that 12 to 0.

Good deal. For the rest of your copyright page, put it in Normal style and remove the first-line indents in the same way we removed it from the title of your book. Space them apart one line by using your Enter key. There, you’re done with the copyright page.

Acknowledgements

This is the easiest of them all. Put the word “Acknowledgements” in Heading 1 style. No tweaks, just leave it as is. For the body text (all the people you’re acknowledging) put that it Normal style. You’re done.

Dedication Page

For your dedication page, put it all in Heading 1 style. Most people center their dedication. So, once in Heading 1 style, do this:

Times New Roman, 12pt font, centered.

Some people put their dedication in italics. This is a matter of preference, so feel free to do so.

Pro tip: Don’t title your dedication page. Don’t have “Dedication” centered in big words up top. When you dedicate a book to someone, people don’t need to see “Dedication” looming over the page to know that you’re clearly dedicating the book to someone.

You now have simple but professional-looking front matter for your ebook. Not only that, you’ve learned to change text that’s already been modified by a style. Barnes & Noble will never get the better of you with their archaic conversion software. Feel free to go to their website and let loose a hearty belly-laugh at their attempts to thwart your ebook-making magic. You’re now well on your way to knowing how to perform your own professional ebook conversion.

Until next time, happy formatting.

The post How to Format Front Matter – How to Make an Ebook Series appeared first on The Ebook Editor.