Indie Pub Journal

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Welcome to Indie Pub Journal, a news and information blog about the world of independent publishing for indie authors.

Lulu offers e-book conversion to EPUB format

From their press release

Lulu.com Simplifies eBook Creation with Launch of new Lulu EPUB Converter and eBook Publishing Tools

 New free eBook converter technology speeds up time to market for self-published authors seeking to capitalize on growing e-reader usage

 Raleigh, North Carolina - (September 19, 2011) – Lulu.com, the leader in self-publishing, announced today the launch of the free Lulu EPUB Converter, a tool allowing content creators to convert popular wordprocessing formats, such as a Word document, into sellable EPUBs, the most widely adopted format used by eReaders.

  Offered for free and built into the Lulu eBook publishing solution, the converter is unique because it fixes or helps creators fix the most common formatting hurdles of EPUB creation. With support from the accompanying Lulu eBook Creator Guide, the creator simply uploads a properly formatted Word .DOC/.DOCX, Open Office or .RTF file and the converter automatically fixes many errors including accepted fonts and extra spacing. This unparalleled level of automation requires less effort on the part of the creator to generate a sellable EPUB that can then be distributed to Lulu’s retail distribution partners to be purchased on the iBookstore and Barnes & Noble’s NOOK.

  “Our main goal is help creators sell more books,” says Bob Young, CEO and Founder of Lulu.  “The key is to maximize the way their customers discover and purchase works. Through our industry-leading array of professional publishing services, we’re empowering creators to publish and sell the way they, and their readers, want.” 

 We are announcing even more exciting things soon,” added Young, “All of which will provide creators with a unique one stop, free self-publishing solution featuring an unmatched combination of formats, services and global distribution channels.”

 About Lulu:

 Lulu.com, founded in 2002, is the leading self-publishing company in the in

dustry with 1.1 million creators and 20,000 titles added to their collection each month. Lulu provides publishing services free to content creators in exchange for a small percentage of profits from each sale. Lulu provides anyone with the ability to publish print books, eBooks, mini-books, photo books, calendars, cookbooks, and travel books. To learn more, visit the website at www.lulu.com.

Uploading your book for sale in Google eBooks

I just uploaded my book American Borders to the Google Partner Program so that it can be sold in  Google eBooks. It wasn't difficult, I just: 

• logged into my google partner program account
• reviewed all the requirements
• opened my book in Adobe Acrobat Professional, and bookmarked my pdf file according to their specs (front cover, first chapter, etc.)
• named my pdf file according to their specs (ISBN#_content.pdf)
• filled out all the financial info. The financial info took a few days because what you do is authorize them to make a small deposit to your bank account to make sure that it all works.
• filled in all the information in all the various tabs in their system

Now I'm waiting for Google Editions (eBooks) to go live -- don't know how long that will take since they're scrambling to get it done for the holidays I think, and also probably a lot of people like me are uploading their books.

I also snail-mailed them my out-of-print book Cycling the French Riveria, for them to scan and offer for sale. When they get it it'll appear in my list of books and I'll need to do the same thing - fill out all the required fields, such as how much "preview" content should be visible, etc.

Will report back.

Self-Publishing Presentation 2010 Writing for Change Conference

Here are the slides from my presentation at the 2010 Writing for Change conference in San Francisco on November 14, 2010. Click the right of the screen to page through the presentation. Get more resources, articles, and the workbook at the Self-Publishing Boot Camp site. You will be able to order the talk on-demand from San Francisco Writer's University soon. Check them out for a lot of other great online classes, too.

Where to Learn All About eBooks: Nov 12 in SF

Guest blog post by Laurie McLean (I will be participating on a panel at this event)

The San Francisco Bay Area… It’s the second largest publishing center in America and the number one technology innovator in the world. It’s a magnet for change and a leader in new ways of thinking.  Why is this important? Because technology is evolving the publishing industry at the fastest pace since Gutenberg invented the printing press. And New York heads are spinning. 

Considering the powerful emergence of eBooks and enhanced books, the agency pricing model, efficiencies of digital publishing and the opportunities of localized print on demand, the publishing world is simultaneously horrified and inspired to greatness. Everyone wants to know what to do.

How does this affect you as a writer, editor, publisher, content creator, agent, librarian or bookseller? I know a place where you can find out.

Come to the first digital publishing symposium of its kind on the West Coast: All About eBooks. Industry leaders Brad Inman of Vook, Mark Coker of Smashwords, Rob MacDonald of Scribd, Mark Wolf of GigaOM, Philippa Burgess of Studio Mythopoeia/Creative Convergence, David Marshall of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Jay Hartman of Untreed Reads, online marketing expert Stephanie Chandler and many others are going to join me at this one-day intensive mind-meld that will cover all aspects of the eBook phenomenon.

You’ll learn how to create and distribute your own eBooks for free and how to market them online. You’ll hear about the future of enhanced eBooks and transmedia. Authors who’ve successfully sold eBooks will share their tales.  And industry professionals will give their perspectives. In one day you’ll dive deep into the pool of everything eBooks.

Here are the facts:
All About eBooks Symposium
Friday November 12th from 9 am to 6 pm
At the San Francisco Hilton-Financial: 750 Kearney at Washington
Cost: $199 (including all sessions, lunch and a cocktail reception)
Limited to 75 seats for an immersive learning experience

For further details go to www.allaboutebooks.us. To register go to: www.sfwritingforchange.org  and then click on ‘Register for All About eBooks’. Hope to see you there.

Laurie McLean is a literary agent with Larsen Pomada Literary Agents in San Francisco and Dean of the new San Francisco Writers University. She has been immersing herself in digital publishing news, trends and perspectives since 2008.

Understanding Metadata: Document Tagging for Better Searches

Web site promotion companies bill thousands of dollars each quarter to ensure their clients' sites remain prominent on search engines and directories. But most of us don't need that kind of popularity. We just need people to be able to find our pages when they want them. This article talks about how to get good coverage in most search engines and directories by using document tagging and HTML body text techniques for your website. You'll learn about:

• keyword density, the robot exclusion protocol, and spamdexing
• why you should use ALT text for graphics and comments tags
• where to place graphics and the JavaScript programming language
• how to use other methods so you gain more control over how the search engines index and rank your site

Directories, Robots, and Spiders

Directories, robots, and spiders all attempt to categorize and rank the sites they find. However, they collect information in different ways, which poses a few challenges for web developers.

How Directories Work
Directories are created through a manual process. Humans review sites and include them in their topical lists. When you change your site, the listing in the directory does not change. Curation sites are beginning to mimic directories, for example,  sites that sell or point to gardening books or teen vampire e-books.

How Robots and Spiders Work
Robots and spiders (bots and crawlers) are used by search engines to follow links from one website to another to index all the pages they come across. They collect similar information but weigh it differently. Factors might include:

• Link popularity -- ranking by the number of incoming links from other sites
• META tag content
• HTML body text content

Search engines can be further divided into deep and shallow, with these capabilities and limitations:

• Some index the main page only, and others index every page on a site.
• Some can't deal with frames or read the URLs embedded in image maps.

Most top directories/search engines are actually hybrids, so it's worth it to make your pages attractive to both humans and robots.

HTML Body Text Is Critical

Some search engines don't look at META tags at all. Instead, they look in the body of the HTML text. Even the search engines that do look at META tags may also take HTML body text into consideration. Here's how to make sure HTML body text helps you get good rankings:

• Make sure descriptive HTML body text appears as the first element on each page if at all possible. This should closely match your META description text. Some search engines determine what your site is all about by the first few hundred characters. Others determine it by using the first 100 words of each page.
• Put the text summary of a page ahead of any graphics, Flash, JavaScript technology, or other bells and whistles.
• Make sure keyword density -- the number of times META keywords appear in your text summary -- is as high as possible.
• Provide text links to image maps for those engines that don't read them.
• Create a page heading that comes from the most descriptive META keywords or phrases. The heading can contribute to better indexing by reflecting what is in the text of the page.

Creating Keyword Density

• Work as many META keywords as possible into your top-of-page text summary to create keyword density for two reasons:
  • Search engines that ignore META tags may calculate the frequency of a word on your page to determine the topic of the page. Therefore, use as many keywords as possible, as frequently as possible, in the BODY text of your page (especially the first few hundred words).
  • Search engines that look at META tags may also add the words found in HTML body text to count toward keyword density, which greatly increases your keyword density and therefore, your ranking.
• Work as many META keywords as possible into the top-of-page text summary.
• Use keywords in the HTML body text -- search engines that look at META tags may also use these keywords to count toward density. Keyword density is calculated by determining the frequency of these words in relation to the total number of words on a page.

Placing Graphics, Flash, Java Code

• Start a page with at least 200 or 300 characters of text. Some engines will skip a page if they encounter graphics, Flash animations, Java code, and other non-text items first.

Getting the Most from Your Graphics and Images

• Always include an accompanying text link if you're using graphics as navigational tools. Most search engines can't read the URLs imbedded in image maps.
• Use the ALT text description to name the graphic precisely for the following reasons:
  • Some search engines catalog images using ALT text information.
  • Some search engines can't read the URLs inside image maps.
  • ALT text can increase keyword density.

Rethinking META Tags

Include META tags and relevant body text on every page of the site, especially framed pages. It's important you spend some time thinking about META tag content, especially the keywords, which you should sprinkle throughout your HTML body summary text. Here are the basics.

META Tag Structure

• Place META tags between HEAD tags.
• Place META tags in any order between the HEAD commands as shown in the following example.

<head>
<meta name="TITLE" CONTENT="descriptive title">
<meta name="author" CONTENT="author name">
<meta name="description" CONTENT="description of page">
<meta name="keywords" CONTENT="list of keywords for page">
</head>

Creating the Title Tag

• Remember -- the title tag is the most important element to search engines that collect the data in META tags. It will appear when the site is bookmarked.
• Enter words that will differentiate your site from others.
• Limit the text's size to 69 characters, including spaces.

Example:
<meta name="TITLE" CONTENT="Document Tagging for Better Searches">

Creating the Keywords Tag

• Consider what a person might enter in a search engine to find your site.
• Write summary text for the HTML body using as many of the keywords as you can. Doing so will help improve keyword density (for search engines that don't look at META tags).
• Limit your keywords (and phrases) list to no more than 1,000 characters, including spaces.
• Place the least important keywords last because some engines will cut them off before 1,000 characters.

Example:
<meta name="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="document tagging, META tag, META tag guide, ALT text, Web site promotion, directory submission, search engine tutorials, robots exclusion protocol, spamdexing, keyword density, choosing a URL, submitting a URL, how to META tag, choosing keywords">

Creating the Description Tag

• Keep the text between 150 to 200 characters, including spaces, so it won't be cut short.
• Provide a different title and description for each page on the site.
• Make sure each description matches the first sentences in the body text (for engines that don't look at META tags).

Example:
<meta name="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="How to improve your site's ranking using META tags and HTML body text, keyword density and comments tags, ALT text, graphics and JavaScript placement, and other tricks for Web developers.">

Choosing a Descriptive URL

The name of your URL may be taken into consideration by directories, and the words in it may also be taken into account by engines as contributing to keyword density. This means a long, descriptive URL isn't necessarily a bad thing. For example, the following URL may help bolster searching for the document.

http://carlaking.com/podcast

Don't Spamdex!

People used to fool the search engines into thinking their sites are number one in their category or how to bump site stats by fooling people into clicking on their link (remember SEX! SEX! SEX!?). Some ways that have worked are camouflaged text, comment tag stuffing, and META tag keyword stuffing. This is called spamdexing, and those days are over. The limit for repetition is 3 to 7 times, depending on the search engine. If you spamdex, you may not be listed at all.

Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is filling the META keyword field with the same word over and over again. That includes word forms, too: tag, tags, tagging. This is spamdexing, so don't do it.

Comments Tags
Many search engines simply ignore comments tags now. However, it still doesn't hurt to include the META tag description and put it in the BODY text comments tags for the search engines that still read them.

Excluding Pages

It may not make sense to index certain pages of your site because they add no value to users in searching. Many robots read the robots exclusion protocol and obey the robots META tag.

Robots Exclusion Protocol
The exclusion protocol allows you to place a simple text file at the top level of your site that contains a list of pages to tell the robots and spiders not to index your page. The page must be named /robots.txt, and its contents look like this:

User-agent: * (indicates all robots should read the disallow commands that follow)

Disallow: /temp/ (reads /temp.html but skips /temp/index.html)

Disallow: /links/ (skips both /links.html and /links/index.html)

Disallow: /~carla/ (reads ~carla.jpg and skips /~carla/spreadsheets.html)

Robots META Tag
Instead of including a /robots.txt file, you can simply place a META tag on any page you don't want indexed. The following tag tells robots not to index the page or to analyze any of the links on the page:

<meta name="robots" CONTENT="noindex nofollow">

Checking Results
Now it's time to monitor the results. There are a number of website ranking tools available to help you. Search for "free site rank check tool."

 

Scribd Readers Read Very Fast!

So curious. I posted a story on Scribd.com. Literally as soon as I uploaded it it and took a look at its page the story already had 27 reads plus a comment and a rating. I thought there must be some automated "reading" thing going on. I queried the guy who had commented on and rated my story and he immediatly replied that he reads really fast. Okay, so at least he's real. Still very curious!

 

Be the Star You Are - StarStyle Radio - for $441

I received this unsolicited "offer" to be interviewed on StarStyle radio, wow, was very impressed to be alongside Depak and other amazing authors until saw it costs $441. A tax-deductable donation, of course. Then realized they had the name of my book wrong - Motorcycle Misadventures is the publisher and American Borders is the book. They probably send hundreds of these daily. Do you know? I guess Depak and Dr Phil have the budget to be on their show. Basically paying for publicity. Is it worth it? I have no idea. Not about to find out soon though...

-----

Dear Ms. King ,

Congratulations on the publication of your book, Motorcycle Misadventures.  I'm the guest coordinator for a radio program called StarStyle - Be the Star You Are!  I would like to invite you to be a guest on the show to talk about your book. Our previous show guests have included Dr. Phil, Deepak Chopra, Neale Donald Walsch, Elizabeth-Kubler Ross, Ken Blanchard and T. Harv Eker, just to name a few. We read every book cover to cover to make sure that you receive a premiere interview promoting your book.

Our host is Cynthia Brian and she is the co-author of the New York Times #1 best seller, Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul and a contributor to numerous books, magazines, and on-line sites.  Her bestselling books include Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul, Be the Star You Are! for Teens, Be the Star You Are!-99 Gifts for Living, Loving, Laughing, and Learning to Make a Difference, The Business of Show Business, and Miracle Moments®. Cynthia Brian is also a fellow IBPA member.

Our program, Starstyle®-Be the Star You Are! broadcasts on World Talk  Radio every Thursday from 3-4pm PST/6-7pm EST, part of the world's largest radio network of Voice America with over 5.5 million listeners .  Each interview is 18-20 minutes long and we are currently booking for 2010.

The telephone interview requires a $396 tax-deductible donation to an all volunteer 501 c3 charity Be the Star You Are!  For an additional $45, your short bio (750 characters including spaces) with photo and link will be displayed on your own page of our World Talk Radio web site along with your interview. This boosts your Search Engine Optimization and allows listeners to find you by name on any search.  All donations are utilized by the charity to provide positive media and literacy outreach services.  We operate solely through donations and generous contributions of supporters and guests and do not receive any government funding.
Total $441.00

Please let me know if this interview is of interest to you and I will be happy to forward additional information.

All the best,
Angela Siekman
Guest Coordinator
Starstyle-Be the Star You Are! Radio
Email: Radio@BethestaryouareRadio.com
Web: www.bethestaryouareradio.com
Charity: www.bethestaryouare.org

You can listen to live and archived shows and download programs from
http://www.voiceamerica.com/worldtalkradio/vshow.aspx?sid=764
to get a feel for the type of upbeat interview we provide.

Our program gets RAVE reviews from our guests and many ask to rebook several times. You can read the comments at www.starstyleradio.com. Click on PRAISE!

Visit the charity site for more info at http://www.bethestaryouare.org.

You can see a list of past guest, plus read comments and find our syndicated networks at http://www.star-style.com/radio/index.htm.


IMPORTANT NOTE ON BOOKINGS: All bookings are NONREFUNDABLE.  In fairness to all guests and to the amount of preparation and promotion we provide, once a guest has been confirmed, there are no cancellations or refunds for any reason. All interviews that need to be rescheduled will incur an additional donation fee. Please make certain that the date and time work for you. Thank you for your booking on Be the Star You Are!®

This message is confidential, intended only for the named recipient (s) and may contain privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you may not disclose, print, copy or disseminate this information.

We reserve the right to terminate any on air interview for inappropriate language, conduct, content or unintelligible communication. In the event that a guest is deemed inappropriate, the segment will not be broadcast, publicity will be removed, and a refund will not be issued. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the above, please discuss it with us prior to booking. Once the program is book, no refunds or rescheduling for any reason.

Smashwords adds Diesel to their digital bookstore distribution

In addition to their new deal with the Diesel eBook store, Smashwords now distributes books to the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and major mobile platforms including Stanza and Aldiko. Coker adds that, "we've signed additional distribution agreements now in the pipeline that we haven't yet announced."All Smashwords Premium Catalog books will go live at Diesel by August 19. Read more.

It's very expensive for a retailer to enter into contractual distribution relationships with each individual indie author and small publisher. For most retailers, large and small, they pay essentially the same amount for every book sold, whether they source the book directly from the author or publisher, or from a distributor such as Smashwords. By utilizing Smashwords, a retailer can quickly and efficiently ingest thousands of new books at no cost, whereas the alternative is to spend millions of dollars to staff and duplicate what Smashwords has already created.

In Diesel's case, they will encourage all authors and publishers with fewer than 100 titles to utilize Smashwords as the recommended onramp into the Diesel store.

Metadata and Digital Marketing for Self-Publishers

I've long encouraged self-publishers, bloggers, and website owners to pay close attention to metadata for SEO (search engine optimization) reasons. It's still if not more important than ever. Wired magazine just published a piece called Why Metadata Matters for the Future of E-Books:

Publishing metadata, for instance — things like ISBNs, trim size, etc. — has traditionally been one of the dullest aspects of the business, useful for selling to retailers and libraries but not much else. Now, however, publishers are expanding their definition and uses of metadata, in order to make their titles easier to find in text searches. Readers don’t care about metadata — until they can or can’t find the book they’re looking for.

“Making a title discoverable in a world where hundreds of thousands of books are published each year is more critical than when only tens of thousands were being published,” Don says. “Basically, if you do a poor job with your metadata, you’re hosed.” Metadata is good information management, but in a search-driven business, it’s good marketing too."

Read More Why Metadata Matters for the Future of E-Books

I often look to Laura Dawson to explain book data, ISBNs, identifiers of all kinds, standards, databases, ugh... all that. Subscribe to her Authorweb blog for valuable insight on making your book stand proudly next to those of Big Publishing by correctly applying metadata. For example, Metadata! More Important Than Ever! explains that "Discovery/review services like NetGalley – as well as all the ecommerce sites – are heavily reliant on metadata not just for listing titles, but also for search algorithms themselves." And goes on to give details on why publishers (self and traditional) need to pay better attention. (See also Accurate Metadata Sells Books.) Especially in this age of Digital Marketing.

Project Publish: The American Idol of Book Publishing

Lori Culwell is the author of the novel Hollywood Car Wash, a novel that won first prize in Project Publish:

Via Project Publish, Touchstone Books was the first major publisher to put our market-based method for evaluating media content to the test…a team of editors, including Touchstone publisher Mark Gompertz, evaluated the 50 top scoring book proposals on Media Predict. They selected five book proposals as Project Publish finalists, and eventually one grand prize winner.

Read the entire article and note this author's dedication and success at marketing using social media tools.