publishing a book on my website???

Nomen Nescio <nobody.TakeThisOut@dizum.com> wrote in
news:ae147380156160c1e74b5a7b51957dd5@dizum.com:

> I'd suggest using <http://www.paypal.com/> in conjunction
> with pdf-formatted e-books. Simple, cheap, proven technology.
> Good SEO, marketing & networking would then be your next step.

And what's to stop Joe Public just downloading without paying?

From what I could discover, putting up a secure e-book using Acrobat
Distiller requires software costing thousands.

Putting a book on the Internet is tentamount to gifting your work to the
public for nothing.


If have just passed the point of recovering my costs from sales of a
privately printed and distributed book -- and still have 800 copies to
sell. From here on in, it is all profit! Yippee!<g>

Derry
("Training the Short-Winged Hawk - An Elizabethan Perspective": Copies
available on Ebay)
 >> Stay informed about: publishing a book on my website??? 

stan wrote:
> Question from a newbie. What tools would I need to offer an ebook for sale
> on my own website? Capability to accept credit cards, when credit card is
> accepted...book is downloaded to purchaser's computer, etc. etc.?? I have
> submitted to paper publishers with the usual five million rejection slips.
> I have been accepted by two ebook publishers who have gone under or are
> about to go under. I was accepted by a small press that went under. I have
> made a total of about six dollars on my ebooks. POD is more money than a
> starving artist such as myself can afford. I have seen lulu and IUniverse
> offerings and am pretty wary of their motives. Any suggestions would be
> helpful. Thanks in advance.
>
> s.g.

Stan,

I don't know if this would be considered "advice" or not, but putting a
book on your own web site on the Net is like selling it on the side of a
road in Alaska. Who's going to stop? Who's going to know you're there?
Is your market there?

The only e-book I've ever read is one I downloaded for free, printing it
out on my computer's printer.

Here's some "advice": Figure out exactly what you want to do AND WHY?

Is your objective to sell a million copies and get rich and famous?
That might be very hard to do without access to book stores and a large
advertising budget. Your best bet is to continue trying to get regular
book publishers or agents interested.

Is your objective to write a book? You've apparently already done that.

Is your objective to find out what others think of your book? You might
not find out. Readers have no obligation to report back to the author.
But you can pay for some professional to read and review it. That
might help.

What is your market? Is it a fiction book? A non-fiction book? A book
about gardening? A book about fixing radios? There are different ways
to approach each market.

Ed
 >> Stay informed about: publishing a book on my website??? 

On 2005-08-26, stan <stan.grimes DeleteThis @verizon.net> wrote:
> Question from a newbie. What tools would I need to offer an ebook for sale
> on my own website? Capability to accept credit cards, when credit card is
> accepted...book is downloaded to purchaser's computer, etc. etc.?? I have
> submitted to paper publishers with the usual five million rejection slips.
> I have been accepted by two ebook publishers who have gone under or are
> about to go under. I was accepted by a small press that went under. I have
> made a total of about six dollars on my ebooks. POD is more money than a
> starving artist such as myself can afford. I have seen lulu and IUniverse
> offerings and am pretty wary of their motives. Any suggestions would be
> helpful. Thanks in advance.

Look at http://2checkout.com/

Note: I use them for credit card processing, but have never tried to sell an
ebook. It's part of their business, though.

-Bill
--
Sattre Press Curiosities of the Sky
http://sattre-press.com/ by Garrett Serviss
info DeleteThis @sattre-press.com http://sattre-press.com/csky.html
 >> Stay informed about: publishing a book on my website??? 

In article <Xns96BE362C0F8BCderryadviegundogscou.RemoveThis@130.133.1.4>,
home.RemoveThis@adviegundogs.co.uk says...
>
>From what I could discover, putting up a secure e-book using Acrobat
>Distiller requires software costing thousands.
>

No, that doesn't have to be the case. To create a secure Adobe Reader e-book,
you can do it like this:

1. Get a cheap or free piece of software (regularly given away on the discs on
the front of computer magazines) that turns your word processor file into a
PDF file. They usually work as a virtual printer so that you 'print' your
document to get a PDF file. Don't set any encryption options.

2. Encryption of the file is provided by a Digital Rights Manager (DRM).
Lightning Source, www.lsi.com, is the one I know of. They charge $25 to set up
the e-book on their system. You sign up with them as a publisher, upload your
PDF, fill in all the details and the blurb etc. After a few days a test link
becomes available via which you can do the final proof-read of your book (it
should be just a formality because proofing should have been completed by you
before uploading any files) and approve it for distribution. 2 or 3 weeks
later, the e-book appears on amazon.com available for purchase. You might have
to log into Amazon as the publisher of your title and do some additional set
up. You decide the price and the discount to retailers when you set up the
title with www.lsi.com, and www.lsi.com makes their money from the set up fee
and the annual file hosting charge, of about $12 I think. You receive the full
wholesale price via your publisher account with www.lsi.com.

That will create an encrypted Adobe Reader e-book that can be bought from
Amazon. My experience was that simply having an e-book on Amazon does not
produce any sales at all! I think the reason is that there are so many titles
on Amazon that yours becomes just another needle in a haystack. Perhaps no one
will ever find it by accident, whereas in a physical bookshop one would expect
someone would - if your book would stay on the shelves long enough before
getting sent back to you for a refund, that is!

If you want to sell encrypted copies of your book via your own e-commerce site
(and so earn the full retail price on any copies sold through it - less your
credit-card-operating and web-hosting expenses), you need to sign up with
www.lsi.com as an e-book retailer. I don't know the details of what is
required to do that (but you could then sell any e-book hosted by
www.lsi.com, not just your own).
 >> Stay informed about: publishing a book on my website??? 

If you're not bothered about keeping your e-book securely encrypted, just sign
up with www.paypal.com (if you have ever been to ebay.com, you must have heard
of paypal already). When somebody pays you for your book via paypal, you
respond by emailing your e-book to them as an attachment. Simple.

Can you get anybody to your site, and will they part with their money? That is
the hard part.

Also, I have seen people trying to sell unencrypted e-books on ebay. Don't no
whether they've had any success.
 >> Stay informed about: publishing a book on my website??? 

you can register at the adobe site
https://createpdf.adobe.com
and get 5 free pdf files

(*I hate pdf files)


>
> 1. Get a cheap or free piece of software (regularly given away on the
> discs on
> the front of computer magazines) that turns your word processor file into
> a
> PDF file. They usually work as a virtual printer so that you 'print' your
> document to get a PDF file. Don't set any encryption options.
 >> Stay informed about: publishing a book on my website??? 

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

I've been using Paypal exclusively to buy and sell on Ebay
for years, without any problems. I always get paid, and my
purchases always show up on my credit cards, all nice & neat.

Perhaps I should've advised stan.grimes DeleteThis @verizon.net just to
put his e-books up for auction on Ebay? Either way, it's a
simple task to buy and sell goods and services using Paypal.

&Like TA Edison said, successful invention, or for that matter
marketing and selling, requires about 1% inspiration and about
99% persperation. You either do the work or you don't. Period.

I think the shill "naysayers" to this thread simply don't
want independent authors to independently e-publish and
e-market their books. Ha ha. Welcome to the 21st century!
Old-fashioned censorship-mongering publishers are history.

Enjoy Life! (I do it all the time)
Daniel Joseph Min
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x2B1CCFE7

*Download Min's Banned (Freeware) Books:
http://www.danieljosephmin.netfirms.com/

*Min's Google-Archived Home Page On The WWW:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=XJBDEJF138262.9022453704@anonymous.poster

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 >> Stay informed about: publishing a book on my website??? 

stan wrote:

> Question from a newbie. What tools would I need to offer an ebook for
> sale
> on my own website? Capability to accept credit cards, when credit card is
> accepted...book is downloaded to purchaser's computer, etc. etc.?? I have
> submitted to paper publishers with the usual five million rejection slips.
> I have been accepted by two ebook publishers who have gone under or are
> about to go under. I was accepted by a small press that went under. I
> have
> made a total of about six dollars on my ebooks. POD is more money than a
> starving artist such as myself can afford. I have seen lulu and IUniverse
> offerings and am pretty wary of their motives. Any suggestions would be
> helpful. Thanks in advance.
>
> s.g.
Two major suggestions:

Among the subsidy houses the one that impresses me the most is
Booklocker.com. They actually make their money off book sales and not
author fees and review copies. Visit their website and see if you are not
similarly impressed.

But an even better deal if you can handle it is self-publishing using a POD
printer (not publisher!) such as LSI or Fidlar-Doubleday. This requires
that you do your homework, buy your own ISBN block, send out review copies
and so on. This is throughly described in the various self publishing
books. Just remember getting in print is the easy part. The hard part is
selling books. Please downolad my short list
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf
select some books, buy or borrow them, and study them in detail. I
particularly recommend the Ross book, the Poynter book, and two of the
Reiss books appropriate to your situation.

Kremer's marketing book is a classic, and Horowitz' book a fount of ideas on
free promotion.

You will do well to join at least the following listserves:
self-publishing RemoveThis @yahoogroups.com
pub-forum RemoveThis @pub-forum.net
Publish-L RemoveThis @hslc.org
--
John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters
 >> Stay informed about: publishing a book on my website??? 

John Culleton <john.TakeThisOut@wexfordpress.com> wrote in
news:B-adnesURreaMJLeRVn-3g@adelphia.com:

> But an even better deal if you can handle it is self-publishing using
> a POD printer (not publisher!) such as LSI or Fidlar-Doubleday. This
> requires that you do your homework, buy your own ISBN block, send out
> review copies and so on.

Which is what I did, though I did engage a book designer or typesetter to
help with setting up.

It is easier with a "special interest" book and easier still if you have
some reputation and contacts in that field. I wouldn't care to sell a novel
that way.

Write the book, set it up using software such as Word, then import to such
as Quark, hand it to the type setter, approach suitable printers for
competitive quotes, get your ISBN numbers, get it printed, send out review
copies to specialist magazines (or better still to the reviewers direct)
stating where it can be purchased, etc. and keep plugging. I sell most of
my copies on Ebay, a few through my web page, word of mouth, but also
through retailers and distributors. I am sure there are other approaches,
but that works for me -- even though I shall be falling over a stack of
books in the spare nedroom for the next five years!

Frankly, I'd rather do it this way and maximise my returns per book than
hand it to a publisher (who does pretty much what I do for myself) and get
only 10%. It takes longer, but they sell eventually.

Derry
 >> Stay informed about: publishing a book on my website??? 

In article <Xns96BF56D935A7Aderryadviegundogscou.DeleteThis@130.133.1.4>,
Derry Argue <home.DeleteThis@adviegundogs.co.uk> wrote:

<snip>
> Write the book, set it up using software such as Word,

then import to such
> as Quark,

Actually, most typesetter/book designers are perfectly happy to have you
give them a Word file. (I receive them all the time.)


hand it to the type setter, approach suitable printers for
> competitive quotes, get your ISBN numbers, get it printed, send out review
> copies to specialist magazines (or better still to the reviewers direct)
> stating where it can be purchased, etc. and keep plugging. I sell most of
> my copies on Ebay, a few through my web page, word of mouth, but also
> through retailers and distributors. I am sure there are other approaches,
> but that works for me -- even though I shall be falling over a stack of
> books in the spare nedroom for the next five years!
>
> Frankly, I'd rather do it this way and maximise my returns per book than
> hand it to a publisher (who does pretty much what I do for myself) and get
> only 10%. It takes longer, but they sell eventually.
>
> Derry
 >> Stay informed about: publishing a book on my website??? 

Stella Abzug wrote:

> In article <Xns96BF56D935A7Aderryadviegundogscou.DeleteThis@130.133.1.4>,
> Derry Argue <home.DeleteThis@adviegundogs.co.uk> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>>Write the book, set it up using software such as Word,
>
>
> then import to such
>
>>as Quark,
>
>
> Actually, most typesetter/book designers are perfectly happy to have you
> give them a Word file. (I receive them all the time.)

Yes, but I converted my WORD files to Quark and - among other problems -
nearly all the paragraph indentations were lost. It was a MAJOR effort
to complete the conversion. (I probably missed about 20 paragraph
indentations which I only noticed were missing when the book was already
printed. The ones at the top or bottom of a page are really easy to
miss.)

To say that you can hire someone to do the work for you is true, but ...

Ed

>
> hand it to the type setter, approach suitable printers for
>
>>competitive quotes, get your ISBN numbers, get it printed, send out review
>>copies to specialist magazines (or better still to the reviewers direct)
>>stating where it can be purchased, etc. and keep plugging. I sell most of
>>my copies on Ebay, a few through my web page, word of mouth, but also
>>through retailers and distributors. I am sure there are other approaches,
>>but that works for me -- even though I shall be falling over a stack of
>>books in the spare nedroom for the next five years!
>>
>>Frankly, I'd rather do it this way and maximise my returns per book than
>>hand it to a publisher (who does pretty much what I do for myself) and get
>>only 10%. It takes longer, but they sell eventually.
>>
>>Derry
 >> Stay informed about: publishing a book on my website??? 

In article <deqo4q02qa5 RemoveThis @news2.newsguy.com>,
Ed Lake <detect RemoveThis @newsguy.com> wrote:

> Stella Abzug wrote:
>
> > In article <Xns96BF56D935A7Aderryadviegundogscou RemoveThis @130.133.1.4>,
> > Derry Argue <home RemoveThis @adviegundogs.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> >>Write the book, set it up using software such as Word,
> >
> >
> > then import to such
> >
> >>as Quark,
> >
> >
> > Actually, most typesetter/book designers are perfectly happy to have you
> > give them a Word file. (I receive them all the time.)
>
> Yes, but I converted my WORD files to Quark and - among other problems -
> nearly all the paragraph indentations were lost. It was a MAJOR effort
> to complete the conversion. (I probably missed about 20 paragraph
> indentations which I only noticed were missing when the book was already
> printed. The ones at the top or bottom of a page are really easy to
> miss.)
>

I didn't catch that you were doing it in Quark yourself.

If you had defined the "body text" paragraph style to include the
indents, then you simply would have applied the appropriate style to
each element in the book.

When working in a page layout program, you first identify each element
(chapter title, opening paragraph (if you're using a drop cap, etc.)
regular body text, heads, sub-heads, running heads, page numbers etc.
and create paragraph styles for each of these elements. Then you go
through the book and apply the appropriate style to each paragraph or
other element. Since most of a book is the regular body text, you might
assign _all_ text to that paragraph style, then apply the correct style
to all other elements. I usually select all text from one style change
to the next. (e.g. a assign CT style to the chapter title, BT DC (body
text, drop cap style) to the first paragraph of the chapter, then select
all the following text (to the end of the chapter or to the point where
there's a break for a head, etc.) and apply the normal BT style.

This doesn't usually take too long and it ensures that all elements are
consistently styled through the book.
 >> Stay informed about: publishing a book on my website??? 

Stella Abzug <abzug.TakeThisOut@soda.pop.com> wrote in news:abzug-
BB75AA.16230927082005.TakeThisOut@comcast.dca.giganews.com:

> When working in a page layout program, you first identify each element
> (chapter title, opening paragraph (if you're using a drop cap, etc.)
> regular body text, heads, sub-heads, running heads, page numbers etc.
> and create paragraph styles for each of these elements. Then you go
> through the book and apply the appropriate style to each paragraph or
> other element.

That is pretty heavy stuff for someone who is primarily a writer and not a
type-setter/book designer.

Frankly, I found I was wasting an awful lot of time trying to learn the
finer points of Quark for one book and it was definitely worthwhile for me
to employ a professional to do this.

They also wrote a letter for me to send out to different printers for
quotes, with a brief specification of the book, and this was very helpful.

Derry
 >> Stay informed about: publishing a book on my website???