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New updates to The Global Indie Author uploaded today

Tue, 01 May 2012 01:56:42 +0000

The latest updates to The Global Indie Author were uploaded today in Kindle, ePub, and PDF formats. You can download them from the right sidebar.

These updates include all previous updates, which in many cases are updated here again. New or updated material covers:

the latest developments regarding book covers for Kindle;
copyrighting of works, both American and foreign, in the United States;
issues with the ISBN system in relation to ebook aggregators and retailers;
issues regarding terms of use when purchasing stock imagery for your book cover, and more on the debate over book covers as editorial versus commercial use;
how text is translated into an ebook and why symbols often do not translate properly;
how to use the non-breaking space character to control poetry and other text layout;
how Mac users can replicate Windows’ Save as Web Page, Filtered for conversion to clean HTML;
swapping out interior images after exporting from Word;
how to build an ePub using Sigil, both PC and Mac;
the latest in agency pricing; and
importing books into Canada from the U.S.

Microsoft buys portion of B&N’s Nook

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:55:28 +0000

Just a few months ago it was rumored that B&N would no longer develop the Nook, and Nook owners were worried about the fate of their devices. Today, it was announced that Microsoft had bought a 17.6% stake in the company and plans are to integrate the Nook into the Windows operating system.

On the surface this seems like exciting news, but with the advance criticism of Microsoft’s Windows 8 already making the rounds it will be interesting to see how lucrative, if at all, this deal is for B&N. Also, B&N’s current greatest obstacle is its lack of global positioning: Nook readers are only available in the U.S. and its ebooks only distributable in the U.S. and to a lesser extent in Canada.

However, if Microsoft also integrates the Nook into older Windows systems such as the current Windows 7, and if Microsoft uses its position to take B&N global, then there might be a chance to make the Nook a real contender in the ebook business. That would be good news for consumers and publishers equally concerned about an Amazon monopoly.

Uploading your Kindle book cover separately is the better option

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 20:29:11 +0000

Update 4/26/12: in just the last 24 hours or so, Amazon has updated the KDP interface: adding the product image as your internal book cover is no longer an option, it is mandatory. KDP help pages have been changed to reflect this.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about Kindle’s new option to use your product/cover image as your interior book cover when you upload your book using the Kindle interface, as well as Amazon’s new guidelines for larger images, likely a response to the phenomenal screen resolution of the iPad3. However, questions arose as to whether Kindle is charging a higher delivery fee for those larger images; and what is happening with interior images, still limited to 127KB?

A query to Amazon has gone unanswered despite my repeated requests and their repeated assurances an answer is forthcoming, so I did a simple test to see if the delivery charge is increased if you use this option and upload the maximum image size for your cover, which in just the last few weeks has increased yet again and now sits at a preferred size of 2500 pixels on the longest side (and the minimum has increased to 1000 pixels on the longest side). The answer is good news: using this option actually decreases your delivery fee because the cover is no longer embedded in your file and Amazon do not appear to be charging anything for the cover if uploaded separately. For example, the original file of Baby Jane, which has the cover embedded, is .53MB with a delivery fee of $.08; the same ebook uploaded without the cover embedded and a 2000-pixel image uploaded separately came out to .48MB with a delivery fee of $.07.

This test doesn’t answer the remainder of my questions about future proofing, nor how the cover image is downsampled and/or compressed, and unfortunately the preview function on the Kindle interface doesn’t give a good indication of the quality of the cover image using this method, but on the surface of things it appears to be fine (downloading the HTML preview from Kindle doesn’t help as the file doesn’t include the cover image). I suspect that this method improves the quality of your cover image as it is likely the image is being delivered at a size commensurate with the device it is being sent to, as is what happens with Kindle books made using InDesign (for details on that, read the previous post on this issue), but as Amazon refuses to tell me if this is the case I cannot confirm my suspicions.

For those using Word, HTML, or Calibre to produce files for Kindle, then, it is now recommended that you do not include your cover image in these files and instead add the cover upon upload.

And what of interior images? At the moment these remain limited to 127KB, which means you still need to use smaller images because larger images will require too much compression to bring them within the 127KB limit. The exception to this, as mentioned in my previous post, is the use of InDesign to create Kindle books. If you are producing a book with interior images, you really should use InDesign or hire a designer who can, as otherwise your images on the iPad3 will be very small at their native size and will look terrible when expanded to fill its screen. I expect this 127KB limit eventually to increase as Kindle produces further developments in response to the resolution of the iPad3, but for now Amazon appears to have focused its efforts on the cover image as most ebooks do not contain interior images.

Where does agency pricing go from here?

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 23:12:15 +0000

The Associated Press has reported that the U. S. Justice Department and 15 states filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Apple Inc. and Holtzbrinck Publishers, doing business as Macmillan, and The Penguin Publishing Co. Ltd., doing business as Penguin Group. The federal government reached a settlement with three of the publishers, Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Shuster, but Apple and the other two Big 5 publishers refused to settle.

What it most interesting about this is that, as the article states:

According to court papers, the settlement agreement reached with three publishers said the companies agreed that for two years they will not restrict, limit or impede an e-book retailer’s ability to set, alter or reduce the retail price of any electronic book. It said the retailers will be able to offer price discounts and other forms or promotions to encourage consumers to buy one or more electronic books.

The agreement also calls for the defendants not to enter into any agreement or conspiracy with any electronic-book publisher to raise, stabilize, fix, set or co-ordinate the retail price or wholesale price of any electronic book.

For these publishers, then, the agency pricing model is dead. But where does this leave indie authors who are forced to use the agency pricing model, including by the likes of Amazon who opposed it? Since these pricing contracts force us to do exactly what has now been declared illegal — fixing and coordinating the retail price across sales channels — does this mean Amazon will be forced to drop at least the price parity clause?

Stay tuned. I don’t think this is over yet.

Agency pricing war of words heats up

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 20:47:27 +0000

A recent news article by paidContent.org reporting on the ongoing Attorney General investigation into Apple and the Big Five publishers’ conspiracy to fix the price of ebooks, as well as an ongoing civil class action suit, suggests a war of leaked words is the latest strategy to force a settlement. However, what is missing from these articles is that the act that triggered agency pricing — the decision by Amazon to sell ebooks at a loss — is also illegal. Called predatory pricing, it is illegal for a retailer to sell an item for less than the wholesale cost if there is an intention to create a monopoly. Jeff John Roberts, in outlining the AG’s case, states, “Amazon is the obvious winner here. A return to wholesale pricing could mean lower prices and consumers buying more e-books — which will in turn make them more dependent on devices like the Kindle Fire which Amazon has turned into a virtual shopping mall.” Since Amazon already has a monopoly on its format, the Kindle (or azw), while its competitors sell ePubs, selling Kindle books below cost to consumers who will then become dependent on the device is precisely the intent to create a monopoly that anti-trust laws require. While it would certainly have been harder for the publishers to prove predatory pricing — the standards are quite high — there was sufficient evidence to raise concerns and launch an investigation. Instead, publishers took what they perceived as an easier way out: they joined with Apple to create the agency pricing model for ebooks.

While it is not yet clear where this will all end, what is clear is that book publishers seem to have short memories. As has been said so eloquently, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.” A Guardian article about the demise of the book industry in the UK points out that, when Amazon first came on the scene, publishers kicked their loyal customers, the bricks-and-mortar bookstores, to the curb and gave Amazon the deep discounts it demanded, allowing it to kill off the competition. This act of disloyalty extracted a high cost: the master became the servant. And yet when Amazon began selling its Kindle books at below cost, this time threatening the viability of the publishers themselves, they continued to supply product to Amazon instead of walking away and courting the ePub consumer market. Why? It was simple: Amazon had already cornered a large percentage of the ebook market and publishers wanted their fingers in this very big pie. Unwilling to take a interim loss and by doing so force consumers to abandon Kindle for the open-source and thus more competitive ePub format and devices, publishers once again became the architects of their own demise. And then in what can only be described as an act of delusional self-grandeur, they thought they could force the retail giant’s hand with agency pricing. But servants don’t own their masters. Which leaves publishers with three choices: stay and continue to take your beatings, run away and hope to find better shelter, or use the laws meant to protect you and stand up for your rights instead of foolishly thinking you can beat Amazon at its own game.

Important reading for anyone considering an indie publisher

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:17:03 +0000

On the website Writer Beware (included in my links, below) is an interesting guest blog by Victoria Strauss on the failure of many small publishers. These are not the established small, independent presses that usually specialize in a narrow market but the new crop of indie author-publishers who see an opportunity for a secondary income by becoming publishers of other indie authors (though technically they would cease to be “indie” authors at that point). These new publishers, with little or no business sense — and usually even less money — are creating big headaches for authors seeking publication. If you’re an indie author who has decided you prefer the assistance of a publisher, take care in the choices you make and do not assume that a fellow indie author will protect your interests any more than a traditional publisher would.

Is there a catch to Kindle’s new option to upload your ebook cover separately?

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 21:24:01 +0000

Update: Kindle promised me an answer to this question by March 25. So far, all I’ve received is their assurances they are “researching” the matter. Considering this is not a difficult question, one has to wonder what, if anything, Amazon is hiding. Will keep you all posted.

Recently, Kindle modified its system to allow authors to use their ebook’s product image, uploaded to Kindle upon entering one’s book details, optionally as also one’s cover inside the ebook itself. The Global Indie Author was updated to reflect this change. As written, this is preferable as there are now problems with the newer Kindles and Kindle for PC/Mac apps not reading the cover bookmark correctly (this way Kindle will add its own bookmark when it adds the cover to your ebook). If the cover is your only image, by not embedding your cover in your source document you also do not have to worry about having to create a zipped file for upload. The method also makes the same file more usable for generating ePubs since when creating these you add the cover at the conversion stage. By adding your cover at the upload stage to Kindle you also don’t have to worry about the 127KB limit since the Kindlegen software will compress or downsample as necessary.

You may also have noticed that Kindle has increased the maximum pixel length for said product/cover images from 1280 to 2000 pixels on the longest side. This, too, seems like an improvement.

However, I began to wonder if this new method, and the increase in pixel dimensions, would result in higher delivery fees. If you upload a 2000-pixel image as opposed to a 1280-pixel image, and use this larger image for your cover, the result could be a difference of almost a megabyte in your ebook, meaning an increase in the delivery fee of $0.15. I contacted Kindle Support and they confirmed this was the case.

Ouch. So, that’s the catch.

Or is it? To put it simply, I think Kindle Support gave me the wrong answer — certainly wouldn’t be the first time. The reason I think I received the wrong answer is because of the way in which Kindle’s plug-in for InDesign is designed.

Normally, one has to compress images to fit within the 127KB limit of the Kindle; if your images are larger than 127KB, Kindle will compress them to fit when converting your file to the Kindle format. However, with InDesign authors can “future proof” their ebooks by embedding larger images, and at the higher resolution of 300 ppi; when the mobi file is then built by InDesign, the mobi file will contain multiple versions of all image files, at different resolutions and therefore file sizes. Kindle then delivers the best file size to meet the specifications of the device the ebook is being sent to. The delivery fee is based on the smallest file size potentially sent to a consumer, even if a consumer is actually sent a larger ebook file. This method “future proofs” the files since the trend is toward higher resolution devices.

Consequently, when I saw that Amazon is now offering the option to use one’s product image, and had increased the image dimensions, it struck me that something similar may be happening: that Kindle might be storing multiple versions of the larger image file and sending a different file according to which device the file is being sent to. Since the majority of ebooks only contain a cover image, Kindle may be trying to future proof these ebooks similar to the way it is with ebooks made using InDesign.

However, on the Kindle website it still says the Kindle can only support images up to 127KB. Since the larger the source file the more compression would be required to shrink the file size down to 127KB, using these larger product images as your ebook cover would be counterintuitive: the image degradation could be horrendous. Thus again I would think Amazon is storing multiple image files made from the one file. In the alternative, Amazon might be storing the larger jpeg file for future use and reducing a copy down to 127KB for current device use. Either way, it would be hugely unfair to charge the author a delivery fee based on the full image size instead of 127 kilobytes.

Which led me to ask Kindle the following:

When the author elects to use this new option to upload their cover jpeg and use this larger image as both the product image and the cover image inside the ebook, what exactly are you doing with the file? Are you creating multiple files from a single jpeg? Are you merely asking for a larger file to future proof, but reducing the cover image to fit current device restrictions? If the latter, are you downsampling or compressing or both in order to reduce the larger product image down to 127KB? Is the 127KB limit still in effect or only for older devices?
How is the delivery charge calculated when an author uses this new option to add the cover at upload? Is it based on the total file size of the text document plus the uploaded cover/product image at full size? Or is it based on the smallest file potentially sent to the customer? I am asking this because Kindle Support tells me that if an author uses this new option they are charged a delivery fee based on a total of the file size of the text document plus the full size of the uploaded cover/product image.

I tried going straight to the programmers but they have bounced my query back to Kindle Support. Kindle Support in turn has asked for time to research this before they come back with a new answer. I’ll keep you posted.

ISBN “Multiple formats” option misunderstood by many indie authors

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 03:31:12 +0000

The International ISBN Agency, and its national agencies such as Bowker in the U.S., have repeatedly insisted that the correct use of the ISBN system requires each format of an ebook be identified with its own ISBN, as is the case with print books. Thus a Kindle file should have its own ISBN, the ePub its own too, a PDF yet its own, and so on. However, some indie authors who have purchased their ISBNs from Bowker in the U.S. insist they can assign a single ISBN to cover all digital formats because of an option in the Bowker database to select “multiple formats” for “file type” after selecting “ebook” as the medium and “electronic book text” as the format.

Confused, I put the question to the International Agency who informed me this is an incorrect interpretation of the option and referred me to the ISBN Users’ Manual. The “multiple formats” option exists only for digital files sold as an archive; that is, a single file that contains within it multiple digital formats. An example of this would be an ebook file that, once downloaded, gives the consumer the choice to select a mobi, ePub, or PDF file to open in their ereader; this would be similar to the way online software manuals are often provided as a single file download that, when you open it, gives you the further choice to select an English-language file or a Spanish-language one, and so on.

There is no print equivalent to such a file; the closest comparison would be to a multi-volume set, such as an encyclopedia, where individual volumes are not sold separately. As Nick Woods, Operations Manager for the International ISBN Agency, put it to me in his email:

Perhaps a good comparison for the single digital archive arrangement is a ‘bundle’ whereby a set of printed books is sold as a complete set (section 5.6 [of the ISBN Users’ Manual]). As you can see in the manual, a single ISBN can be assigned to cover a multi-volume set but only on the strict condition that the individual publications in that set are not available separately. As the manual indicates, however, the International ISBN Agency would still recommend that the individual publications are also allocated separate ISBNs.

Therefore in answer to your final question, if these self-publishers are intending to sell each one of their multiple [ebook] formats independently then they are using the system incorrectly. The multiple formats option exists to allow the sale and distribution of multiple formats packaged together only.

Where the confusion has arisen, I believe, is that none of the major retailers we deal with sell multiple-format ebook files so our familiarity with such a file is negligible, yet the multiple formats option exists for us to choose from when purchasing an ISBN for our ebooks. I can therefore see why some indie authors would mistakenly believe that applying a single ISBN to multiple formats sold individually is not an incorrect use of the system. Nevertheless, now we know, so if you have mistakenly assigned a single ISBN to multiple formats of your ebook you may wish to fix your records.

Kindle Previewer Update and the New (?) Back Button

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 08:46:12 +0000

In the 07 March update to The Global Indie Author I mused about the annoying new “bug” that seemed to have invaded the Kindle Previewer: after hyperlinking to a new section in the ebook, the back button no longer returned the reader to their previous place in the text. Turns out I’m a dork: I didn’t notice that somewhere along the way Kindle added a separate Back button, distinct from the Back Arrow (Go to Previous Page) button that previously existed by its lonesome. When this new button arrived I haven’t a clue, but it is the blue arrow at the far left of the toolbar.

I have therefore updated the updates. Sigh.

NOTICE: Free “Ten Steps to Kindle” Guide Updated Today

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 20:28:53 +0000

Update 04/30/12: Amazon has once again changed the way the Kindle handles book covers, and I have elected to take this manual down until I can find the time to update it again.

Amazon recently made a substantial change to the way they handle book covers, an update that was too important not to add to the free guide I uploaded a few days ago. There are also now confirmed issues with some bookmarks not being read properly by newer Kindle devices and apps. If you downloaded the first free guide I published, please replace it with the new version I uploaded today.

Changes to The Global Indie Author updates have also been made and are available for download.