Busting the Myths About Digital Publishing

1. I have to format my work as a .mobi or .epub file before I can send it to Amazon or Barnes & Noble (or Smashwords).

Wrong. You can send your properly formatted Word .doc to Smashwords and Amazon. (I recommend allowing Smashwords to distribute to Barnes & Noble.) Amazon converts your Word .doc into a Kindle (.mobi) file, and Smashwords converts your Word .doc into several eformats and then distributes it to Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel, Apple and Scrollmotion. (I also provide a service in which I prep your Word .doc so it goes smoothly through Smashwords conversion process. For information on that, please see http://harveystanbrough.com/services. If you’d rather do it yourself, you can download my new book, The Essentials of Digital Publishing.)

2. Amazon is the best place to sell ebooks.

Maybe, but Amazon still is only one place to sell ebooks. Rather than hoping for a lot of sales in a few venues, work for a few sales in a lot of venues. If your ebook is for sale only at Amazon, that’s five venues—Amazon US & Canada, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon FR and Amazon Italy—and your work is available only on devices that read .mobi or .prc files. If you publish it through Amazon and Smashwords, it automatically sells through about thirty venues and is available on literally every reading device and in every electronic format.

3. My electronic book has to have an ISBN.

Wrong. Amazon assigns an Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN). Because some of Smashwords’ partners require an ISBN, if you add “the Smashwords Edition of” to the front matter of your ebook and include Smashwords’ License Note, Smashwords will assign a completely free ISBN for you. (If I format your Word .doc for epublishing, I return to you one document for submission to Smashwords and one for submission to Amazon.)

4. Ebooks are a passing fad.

Wrong. Today 20% of American households have at least one dedicated ereader. Dedicated ereaders are actual Kindle or Nook readers, iPads, and the various tablets. That doesn’t include Kindle- or Nook- or Apple-enabled telephones or computers that can read PDF files through Adobe Acrobat Reader, and it doesn’t include the free ereaders you can download to your PC or Mac. Additionally, in 2011 Amazon announced that ebook sales had surpassed paper book sales for the first time in its history. My own work has been published in three ways: traditionally, through POD, and now ebooks. I sold more copies and made more money in 2011 than I made on all my paper book sales since the mid-’90s.

5. I have to wait for my publisher or my publisher doesn’t publish ebooks.

Wrong. Simply retain all ebook rights (all electronic rights) and publish the ebook version yourself. Even if you’re self-pulishing, which can take a month or more from contract to having the books in your hand, you can have your ebook published within a few hours. (If you do allow your publisher to publish the digital version as well, I recommend you negotiate for at least 50% royalties on ebook sales, and be sure it’s in your contract.)

6. I’ll have to do all the marketing myself.

Okay, yes. This is true, but you have to do all the marketing yourself even with a traditional publisher.

7. I can’t get my ebooks into brick & mortar bookstores, and I can’t sign my ebooks or sell them at book fairs.

Wrong. For details, see Dean Wesley Smith’s website at http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=4154. In fact, I recommend you read his entire Think Like a Publisher series.

8. Ebook selling prices are too low compared with paper books.

Yes, but the royalty rate is much higher. Even if you get a whopping 10% royalty on your print book, for every $14.95 sale you’ll make only $1.49. On the other hand, for every $5.99 ebook sale, you’ll make $4.67 (78%) royalty. (Those are the actual prices and royalty rates of my book, Writing Realistic Dialogue & Flash Fiction, in paper and in eformat.)

9. You have to have a dedicated ereader to read ebooks from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Wrong. You can download a free ereader for your PC or Mac so you can read .mobi (Amazon Kindle) files and .epub (Apple and B&N Nook) files right on your computer. On the right column of my website (http://harveystanbrough.com) under Resources for Writers, look for “FREE” ereaders. You can also find a lot of other neat stuff there. Browse awhile.

and the biggest myth of all, an outright lie perpetrated by Big Publishing…

10. Ebooks are not nearly as good quality as print books.

Wrong. This is an outright lie. In truth, the large traditional publishers also are producing ebooks today to keep up with all the independent publishers and with a reading public that is increasingly demanding ebooks. In truth, thus far when big publishers produce ebooks, they actually are lower quality. Instead of actually laying out the book for use in an eformat, the big publishers simply scan the pages into a document, then publish it. Because scanners don’t read and translate actual letters, the results are often horrible.

The truth, as it most often the case, is simple. Poor writing leads to a bad book, whether it’s traditionally or independently published. Quality writing plus quality layout and design leads to a quality book, without regard for whether it’s traditionally or independently published.