ABCs
If you’re new to digital publishing, here are a few useful things to start with.
A beginner publisher’s guide to digital production
Publishers have to make difficult decisions about what to spend in setting up an ebook publishing programme. They have to think about their contractual obligations to authors (often defined in pre-Internet contracts); a myriad companies offering complex arrays of digital services; countless stories of the wonders and horrors of digital publishing; an apparent dearth of staff with both publishing and web-technical skills; financial pressure to cut costs, not start new departments with new staff; and the demands of their day jobs. … Read more
Reading ebooks
If you’re new to ebooks, you need to know how to find, open and read them. The easiest way is to buy a Kindle from Amazon, since Amazon have made it really, really easy. The Kindle and Kindle applications (software for PC, iPad, Android tablets and phones, and so on) currently read ebooks files in the .mobi file format. … Read more
‘The once and future e-book’ by John Siracusa
Print-on-demand basics
Print-on-demand (POD) is a broad term often used to refer to a particular printing technology, a sales process, and a kind of publishing. Basically, print-on-demand is just what it says: when a customer wants a book, you print it for them. You don’t print a whole lot of copies of the book and then wait for customers to buy them. … Read more
Ebook formats
Ebooks are produced in many formats, each with their own pros and cons. We believe the best formats to create are epub and PDF. (You can then convert epub easily to Amazon Kindle’s .mobi format, too.) … Read more
Ebook design
Since any content delivered electronically can be called an ebook, ebooks inhabit a large grey area from text on a CD to websites to novels on paper-like handheld readers. Some ebooks are no more than unformatted text in HTML, or PDFs of a printed book’s pages. And others are more than that, and include video, audio and interactive features, where the revenue model warrants the expense of their development. … Read more
Ebook distribution
Ebooks can take a variety of forms, and each form can be distributed in particular ways. … Read more
XML primer
XML is the most used and least understood term in publishing. So here’s our brief primer for publishers. … Read more
Ebook-technology layers
When you open an ebook on an ereader, what you see is determined by several layers of technology built on top of each other. … Read more
Choosing an ereader
Buying an ereader is tricky if you’re new to ereading. The advice on buying ereaders is only valid for a few months because of how fast the technology moves. There’s a guide on my blog here. … Read more
Publisher royalties
Whether you’re working with print or digital products, the royalties system is much the same, and it’s important to understand how the numbers work. … Read more