Go to Kindle Store, log out of your account, and you'll be able to see the price of your book in different regions

Self-publishing is changing. I think that in 2012 indie authors should go global. One of the important topics to raise is how to price books for international customers. My advice is simple: keep them low.

The report on top self-published Kindle books of 2011, which I’ve recently released, shows a downward trend in both the number of self-published books in Top 100 and the average price. One of the major reasons is the growing price competition.

The perception of $0.99 is not only affected by Kindle Daily Deal, but also by the fact that more and more legacy publishers offer their titles for $1.99 or less. Those books easier become popular, because they convince price-sensitive users not only with a price, but also with a reputation of the publisher.

This means that tagging the book with $0.99 price is not as effective as it was a year ago, when there were $0.99 self-published books and $5.99+ books from legacy publishers.

There is also one more factor, which encourages self-publishers to increase prices. If they enroll their books in KDP Select, they sooner or later come to the conclusion, that for a Prime member, who is eligible to borrow from Kindle Owners’ Lending Library only one book per month, getting for free the book with a regular price of $0.99 is not a deal at all.

Authors who sell books at $0.99 earn $0.35. They were able to earn $1.70 in December from a single KOLL borrow. The fund Amazon gives to support KDP Select is raised in January from $500,000 to $700,000. It doesn’t mean that a single borrow can give a royalty higher than $1.70 as there are more books in KOLL and more people who can borrow them. But it means that the deal is still encouraging enough to sacrifice regular sales.

So, where is the pricing for international ebook users? I think, that even if you decided to raise prices of your books for US customers, keep them low for readers from abroad. 

There are a few extra factors to keep in mind, when it comes to prices for users from different countries:
1. Many books from big publishers are not available outside US – for more details check this report on international availability and prices of Kindle bestsellers,
2. Many books are priced by publishers higher that in US – what this comparison of prices of Steve Jobs biography shows,
3. Prices are higher due to taxes,
4. Prices are higher because of international fees (in case of books from Kindle Store US).

Readers from abroad are aware that they have to pay more for the books. In fact, they hardly experienced $0.99 price shock from the beginning of 2011. So, the low price strategy which worked so well in US, seems to have chances in other countries.

How to keep prices low? There are two things you can do:
1. Offer lower prices in localized Kindle Stores,
2. Get rid of international fee.

1. Offer lower prices in localized Kindle Stores

In the KDP dashboard the author can set up prices for Kindle Stores in UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain either automatically (based on a price from US) or manually. If you increase the price in US, it doesn’t mean you have to do it in other Kindle Stores.

Here’s what I did. My flash-fiction geek stories, Password Incorrect and Failure Confirmed are a very narrow niche, but they were doing unexpectedly well in KOLL in December. It’s probably because of the fact that they’re addressed to geeks, like the ones who have bought/received Kindle Fire. New owners of this device have one month of Prime/KOLL free.

I’ve increased the price of books to $5.99 (bargain for KOLL users), but in other Kindle Stores kept prices with $0.99 tag in respective currencies. To do that I had to select 35% royalty option – there is no possibility to choose different royalties for different locations.

Set different prices in different Kindle Stores

2. Get rid of international fee

International fees applied by Amazon to Kindle ebooks sold to users from abroad are a serious issue. They influence the way international readers buy the books. Therefore they should also influence the way authors price their books.

Kindle ebooks are being sold to over 170 countries and destinations. If you set up in KDP the rights for your book to “all territories”, readers from those 170+ locations will be able to buy it.

The fees are different for different regions, but they are usually up to $4. For example, the $0.99 book costs usually $3.44 in Poland, where I live.

You can check how much your books cost by going to Kindle Store US, selecting a region and searching for your book. Read this post if you need a detailed tip on how to do it.

Is there a way to get rid of the fee? Looks like it is. What I’ve observed is that the charge is applied only until the certain amount of books is being sold. I sell my books from Kindle Store, also the ones written in Polish, so I’m determined to keep their prices low in Poland. I’ve counted that if you sold around 100 copies, the price of the book goes down to the level set up in KDP dashboard.

What you can do is to raise the price of the book in Kindle Store US only after there are no or little fees in other territories.

I wonder whether giving books for free within KDP Select affect the international fees. If anyone has noticed that, please share it in the comments. If this works, the easy way to get rid of the charges it to run a 5-day promo and raise prices afterwards.

What is also good to keep in mind is that Kindle Daily Deal books cost the same in all countries – there is no international charge applied, no matter how many books were sold to different regions. This means that $0.99 KDD book costs $0.99 (and it’s a one-day deal), while your book, supposed to be a constant deal, costs $3.44.

* * *

When thinking about international readers it’s also very good to analyze other distribution channels. Kobo and Smashwords are best picks. First, their offer is available without territorial restrictions. Secondly, they don’t apply fees like Amazon does.

If you want me to write how the distribution could look from a perspective of a European self-publisher, please let me know in the comments.

Hope it was a helpful post.

Related posts

• 03.06.2011 -- How to Effectively Publish and Promote Books to iPad and iPhone Users
• 07.05.2011 -- Kindle for the Web – How It Can Be Used by Authors
• 06.05.2011 -- Self-Publishing: How You Can Build Better Relations
• 20.07.2011 -- How to Create Ebook Covers with Phoster Application
• 27.05.2011 -- Self-Publishing: How You Can Learn and Improve

"Pricing of Self-published Books to International Readers" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

For more helpful tips on ebook formatting, check Paul’s book How to Format Your eBook for Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, and Everything Else.

What the Heck is EPUB?

The EPUB format is an open source standard that defines how the content and metadata of an eBook should be packaged and how eReading devices and software should render the format to the reader. EPUB is the most widely-adopted standard for eBooks and is the format utilized by the Barnes & Noble NOOK store, iBookstore, Sony eBook store, and many others. The notable exception is the Amazon Kindle store, which is discussed below. The open source philosophy of web design and development has fostered a culture of sharing best practices and lessons learned online, and this has allowed developers to write new software and iron out bugs for web browsers that have greatly enhanced the internet in the last 15 years–making web pages evolve from the dull designs of the 1990s to the new digital reality of the 21st century. It is reassuring that eBook design and development is following a similar trend of openness and cooperation, and this will greatly benefit the reader’s experience and adoption of eBooks on an international scale.

Since eReaders and rendering software comes in so many shapes and sizes, an eBook cannot be organized like a fixed-layout print book. It needs to have reflowable content to accommodate differently-sized viewing windows on the reader’s screen (from a big desktop monitor to a tiny iPhone). That is why the EPUB format looks more like the source code of a website rather than an actual manuscript. You can head on over to my eBook formatting tutorial or buy my How-To guide if you’re looking for help on turning your manuscript into an eBook. Essentially, the entire EPUB format is a collection of XHTML and XML files (plus images) that defines the content, reading order, and metadata of an eBook. Alright, so what the heck is XML and XHTML? eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a way to transport and store data, while XHTML is a specification for the language used for web pages based on XML that is being phased out in favor of HTML5.  Using this type of code allows eReading software and devices to render data on a wide variety of screens, and it’s great for standard fiction or non-fiction eBooks. This is what is widely used today – the EPUB 2.0.1 specification.

However, many readers want more than just the standard content that would be similarly available in a print book. Comic books, text books with complicated mathematical formulas, and the ability to read foreign languages that are nothing like English (Korean, Japanese, Thai, Arabic, etc.) are just a few features that the EPUB format being utilized today has trouble with. Also, the next evolution of the internet is HTML5/CSS3, which is slowly replacing XHTML and plug-ins like Adobe Flash. This will facilitate a better system to embed audio, video, and other media content. That is why the International Digital Publishing Forum endeavored to come up with a revised standard – the EPUB 3 specification.

What’s Can the New EPUB 3 Do for Me as an Author/Publisher?

The EPUB 3 specification was finalized in October 2011, and new software and eReaders that support this format will hopefully be out in 2012. Azardi has an EPUB 3 reader that is available for free if you are interested. The EPUB 3 specification allows for a variety of new features that EPUB 2.0.1 does not support, and they will provide great enhancements to the eBook experience. Here is a brief snapshot of some of the new things to expect:

1. Audio/Video Support – Support of embedded audio and video using HTML5 tags is a feature that will make eBooks really stand out from print books. While the file sizes of the eBook itself will obviously become larger with embedded audio and video files, this will hopefully be offset by improved storage capacity of tablets and improved communications/cellular infrastructure to allow quick file transfer. Also, another benefit of embedded audio and video means better support for text-to-speech for readers with disabilities.  [spec]
2. Mathematical Equations – For the huge textbook market, the current version of EPUB does not allow for representation of complex mathematical equations. Generally, an eBook designer has to embed the equation as an image inside the eBook, which bloats the size of the file and can make for a somewhat clunky reading experience. The new EPUB 3 supports MathML which is a way to encode equations in a similar fashion that web pages are encoded. This will help eBooks gain wider acceptability in the textbook market. [spec]
3. Headers and Footers – It is standard practice for print books and PDFs to have headers and footers on every page outside of the body content (e.g. the author’s name, book title, page number, etc.) With eBooks, you often only see headers and footers based on what the eReader decides to put there (usually it’s some piece of information extracted from the eBook’s metadata). With the current EPUB format in use today, you can’t really define what should be a header and footer, because you have no idea what the size of the page will be for the reader. However, for the new EPUB 3 specification, there are new tags where the designer can actually define what should be in the header and footer of every page. [spec]
4. JavaScript – JavaScript is a simple programming language that was designed for web pages in the 1990s. While the technology has been around for a while, the only place where it can be used inside an eBook is on the iBookstore. Even then it’s sort of confusing about how the current EPUB format is supposed to process it. With the new EPUB 3 specification, it defines how the eReading device is supposed to render it and what to do if there is no support for JavaScript. This will allow for all sorts of neat features in eBooks, which we have taken for granted on the internet, such as pop-up footnotes, rotating pictures, dynamic color changes, and everything else. This will provide a whole new level of interactivity and help give the children’s book market a much-needed jump into the digital world. [spec]
5. Embedding Fonts and Advanced Text Styling – While you can embed fonts in the current version of EPUB, the new EPUB 3 specification dictates better support for this feature. This is critical for eBooks to gain acceptance in foreign languages. The EPUB 3 specification makes use of the advanced CSS 3 properties to allow better control of how text is displayed (note: CSS or Cascading Style Sheets are a specification for styling how content should be presented, and they are generally used in web design and eBook design). For instance, you can decide whether text should be hyphenated at line breaks or not. It should be noted that there is a lot of hand-wringing over how licensing and legalities for fonts works in eBooks, so embed fonts with caution. [spec]
6. Better Graphics and Perhaps Animation – The new EPUB 3 specification allows for better use of SVG-type images. Scalable Vector Graphics are useful, because the quality doesn’t change as the image is made bigger. This is in contrast to bitmap graphics (like JPEG, PNG, GIF, etc.), which degrade in quality as the image is expanded or zoomed in on, since they are a grid of pixels. Additionally, the new CSS3 specification has support for creating animation, and you can see an example here (note: recommend not viewing with Internet Explorer). Hopefully, developers will create EPUB 3 rendering software that can recognize the powerful animation features of CSS 3.

It will be exciting to see what kind of software developers come up with to read eBooks written in the EPUB 3 format, and we will hopefully start seeing some this new generation of eBooks soon. More interactivity will allow eBooks to gain even further market share over print books.

How Does This Tie in with the Amazon Kindle store?

Amazon owns and still utilizes the MOBI/AZW/PRC format in their Kindle store, which is somewhat similar to the EPUB format. There are some very serious downsides to MOBI as opposed to EPUB, but Amazon continues to utilize their own proprietary file type, probably for various business reasons as opposed to technical. With the release of the Kindle Fire, Amazon announced a new “Kindle Format 8″, which boasts similar functionality to some of the new EPUB 3 features. Amazon has not informed the public of how this format will work yet besides a quick press release, but it appears that, like EPUB 3, it will support a lot of the things that HTML5 and CSS3 can handle. Luckily, Amazon provides their own software, KindleGen, which easily converts the EPUB format into MOBI for upload to the Kindle store. Hopefully, the conversion process from EPUB 3 to Kindle Format 8 will be equally as simple, but we have to wait and see.

Paul Salvette is an author who lives in Bangkok, Thailand, with his wife, Lisa, and newborn daughter, Monica. He grew up in the United States and served in the Navy from 2002 to 2009, with some time in Iraq. His day job involves working at a Thai foundation that focuses on poverty eradication, philanthropy, and education. He hopes to stay in Thailand until he is deported or dies of natural causes, whichever comes first.

Learn more about Paul at http://paulsalvette.com or follow him on Twitter @PaulSalvette.

Related posts

• 04.11.2011 -- Creating Epub Ebooks with Sigil: #3 – Images, Metadata, TOC, Finalization
• 21.10.2011 -- Creating Epub Ebooks with Sigil: #2 – Styling and Chapters
• 07.10.2011 -- Creating Epub Ebooks with Sigil: #1 – Getting Started
• 28.05.2011 -- Polskie książki na Androida
• 23.03.2011 -- Polskie książki na iPada

"What’s New With EPUB 3?" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

This is a last part of the Sigil tutorial by Paul Salvette. You’ll read about how to add images and metadata to an ebook, how to deal with table of contents, and finally – how to convert epub file to mobi format, if you want to make it available for Kindle devices.

You can read two previous articles here and here. For more helpful tips on ebook formatting, check Paul’s book How to Format Your eBook for Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, and Everything Else.

Adding images

The EPUB format supports JPG, GIF, PNG, and SVG images. The JPG format is good for photographs and has a small file size, the GIF format is good for text, line art, and tables, and the PNG format has a large file size that is good for images you want to look sharp (like a company logo). To add an image click on this button in the menu:

Adding metadata and a table of contents

Metadata is information about the eBook that is embedded into the EPUB file. This includes the eBook’s title, author name, publishing date, etc. You can even add relatively obscure data like the name of your photographer. This metadata is important for search engine optimization (SEO) for potential readers to locate your eBook, so do not neglect it. To access the Metadata editor, click on “Tools” and then “Meta Editor”.

Many eBook retailers (like NOOK and iBookstore) require certain information in the metadata. As a best practice, you should add the following meta as a minimum: title, author, language, description (the back jacket blurb), date of publication, date of creation, and subject (you can add multiple subjects and they function like keywords). Some sample metadata is as follows:

The next step is to add a meta Table of Contents (also called the NCX Table of Contents). To do this, you simply pull up the Table of Contents under “View” or press Alt+F3. Then, you click on “Generate TOC from headings”. Sigil will look for anywhere that you defined text as “Heading X” and incorporate that into the Table of Contents.

Finalizing your EPUB and a trick to make a file for Kindle

Now you simply click “Save” and you will have a valid EPUB file. Try opening it on your PC using a program such as Adobe Digital Editions or NOOK for PC and see how it looks. If you aren’t happy with it, you can always adjust it in Sigil or learn about XHTML and CSS coding to accomplish more fine tuning of your eBook.

You may be disheartened that the Amazon.com Kindle Store does not accept the EPUB format. Amazon.com uses the proprietary AZW/PRC/MOBI formats for their eBooks rather than the open standard EPUB. However, it is a relatively simple process to convert and EPUB to MOBI, because they are quite similar formats. If you unzip your EPUB file using a program like 7-zip, you can open the content.opf file with MobiPocket Creator, which is free. Alternatively, you can use a command line program from Amazon.com called KindleGen to easily convert the EPUB format to MOBI format. If that is not working for you, try using the open source eBook management system Calibre.

* * *

Thank you very much to Piotr for allowing me to guest post, and I hope that this quick tutorial on Sigil will be helpful for the self-publishing community. If you want to learn more about eBook formatting, please visit my website at http://PaulSalvette.com or say hello on Twitter @PaulSalvette.

Paul Salvette is an author who lives in Bangkok, Thailand, with his wife, Lisa, and newborn daughter, Monica. He grew up in the United States and served in the Navy from 2002 to 2009, with some time in Iraq. His day job involves working at a Thai foundation that focuses on poverty eradication, philanthropy, and education. He hopes to stay in Thailand until he is deported or dies of natural causes, whichever comes first.

Learn more about Paul at http://paulsalvette.com or follow him on Twitter @PaulSalvette.

Related posts

• 21.10.2011 -- Creating Epub Ebooks with Sigil: #2 – Styling and Chapters
• 07.10.2011 -- Creating Epub Ebooks with Sigil: #1 – Getting Started
• 02.12.2011 -- What’s New With EPUB 3?
• 28.05.2011 -- Polskie książki na Androida
• 23.03.2011 -- Polskie książki na iPada

"Creating Epub Ebooks with Sigil: #3 – Images, Metadata, TOC, Finalization" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

iBookstore w iTunes - kliknij, by powiększyć

Kilkanaście dni temu iBookstore oficjalnie wystartował w 26 nowych krajach, w tym również w Polsce. Księgarnia dostępna jest przez iTunes Store (pasek górny » Books), a także z aplikacji iBooks (przycisk Store).

Od razu uprzedzam, że jest słabo. Polskich książek jest kilkadziesiąt i wcale nie jest łatwo je znaleźć. Apple, otwierając e-księgarnie w kolejnych krajach ewidentnie nie ma ochoty starać się o książki w obcych językach – na przykład w językach krajów, w których iBookstore wystartował.

Jak znaleźć polskie książki

Większość tytułów polskich wydana została przez wydawnictwo O-press. Są to książki dla dzieci i poradniki.

Wyszukiwania według języka niestety nie ma – to wielki minus. Wpisanie w oknie wyszukiwania słowa Polish nic nie daje. Pojawiają się tytuły angielskie, w których tytuł lub opis zawiera to słowo. Oczywiście można wyszukiwać według tytułu lub autora, ale bestsellerów nie ma co szukać, przynajmniej nie teraz.

Żeby sprawdzić listę polskich książek znajdź – zarówno w iTunes jak i w iBooks – baner Bestsellers by Language (jak na obrazku poniżej) i kliknij w niego.

O nie, nie spodziewaj się, że od razu zobaczysz polskie tytuły. Najpierw będzie lista książek po angielsku, potem jeszcze portugalski, grecki, turecki, słowacki i wreszcie jest -język polski. Jest to lista tytułów płatnych. Tytuły darmowe są jeszcze gorzej dostępne. Zacznij od banera Free Books.

Alternatywną metodą jest przeszukanie polskiego iBookstore w Google. W oknie Google web search wklej poniższy tekst:

site:itunes.apple.com/pl/book/ "Language: Polish"

Żadna z tych metod nie jest idealna. Myślę, że Apple zdaje sobie sprawę, że książek w językach obcych nie jest dużo i promuje tytuły anglojęzyczne. Zresztą przeszukiwanie iTunes Store zawsze było związane z przechodzeniem przez niezliczoną liczbę różnego rodzaju list typu New&Noteworthy, a wyszukiwarka kulała.

* * *

Premiera iBooks/iBookstore w czasie, gdy wchodził iPad była dla mnie dużym rozczarowaniem. Użytkownicy z Polski korzystający z aplikacji iBooks mieli dostęp jedynie do darmowych publikacji z iBookstore US. Wśród nich było kilkanaście książek po polsku – klasyka z domeny publicznej wciągnięta do iBookstore z Project Gutenberg. Dla porównania – polskich książek w domenie publicznej, dostępnych w formacie ePub jest około 3 tysięcy.

Czy sytuacja zmieni się na lepsze? Nie sądzę, żeby nastąpiło to szybko. Po pierwsze dlatego, że wydawcy i autorzy z Polski nie mają łatwego życia. Żeby opublikować książkę w iBookstore trzeba mieć Maca i amerykański numer identyfikacji podatkowej. Apple chce sprzedawać urządzenia, a kanały dostępu do treści, takie jak iBookstore, mają uzasadniać wydatek.

Podejrzewam, że Apple, w przeciwieństwie do polskich dystrybutorów e-książek, nie będzie usilnie starał się o nowe publikacje. Raczej inicjatywa będzie należeć do wydawców i autorów, ale nie mają łatwego życia, więc koło się zamyka.

Co więcj, od czasu premiery iPada (i braku polskiego iBookstore) polscy wydawcy publikowali przez App Store. W applowskim sklepie z aplikacjami można znaleźć więcej książek po polsku niż w applowskim sklepie z e-książkami.

A najlepiej będzie pobrać polską aplikację e-książkową – Virtualo, Woblink lub Bezkartek. Tutaj przeczytasz o polskich książkach dostępnych w iOS, jeśli przestaniesz liczyć wyłącznie na iBooks/iBookstore.

Related posts

• 23.03.2011 -- Polskie książki na iPada
• 22.07.2010 -- iBooks 1.1.1 – słownik i treści multimedialne
• 23.06.2010 -- Jak dodać polskie książki do iBooks?
• 29.11.2010 -- iPad jako e-czytnik – lista przydatnych artykułów
• 02.09.2010 -- Jak pisać i mówić o e-książkach

"Polskie książki w iBookstore" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

In a second part of the Sigil tutorial Paul Salvette gives tips on how to style the document. What is especially interesting is how to deal with headings and how to split an ebook into chapters.

Read a first post here and get free updates of the blog, if you don’t want to miss the next part, where Paul will explain how to add images, metadata and table of contents as well as share tips on finalizing a file and converting it to Kindle format. Check also Paul’s book How to Format Your eBook for Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, and Everything Else.

Styling text

Content with all the same font and characteristics is probably not how you want your finalized eBook to look. For instance, you probably want to add some italics, bold, or underlined text. To do that you simply select the text and then click on the appropriate button in the top menu:

Some self-publishers might prefer the paragraphs to be justified, which is when the text aligns vertically on both the left and right side. Also, for your title and chapter headings, you probably want them centered. You can click the cursor in any paragraph and then click one of the justification buttons in the top menu to align your paragraph left, center, right, or justified:

The next step is to declare your title and chapter headings as “Heading X”. Headings have a larger font size than the regular content and are bold. When you generate the meta Table of Contents, it will find any text that you have defined as “Heading X” and include that in the Table of Content. Click your cursor inside the paragraph of any text and make it a heading with this button:

Here is an example of how your eBook might look in the WYSIWYG pane after adding some styles:

Splitting up into chapters

When eReaders first came around, they were very primitive devices that had trouble reading large files. That is why splitting your single HTML file into many smaller ones, or “parsing”, is continued as a best practice today. Additionally, everywhere you split your HTML file, the eReading device will recognize it as a page break. It is advisable to split your HTML file before each chapter. So if you have 13 chapters in your novel, you probably want to have 1 HTML file for the title page, and 13 more for each chapter (14 total). To split the HTML file, you simply press Ctrl+Enter or press the Chapter Break button in the top menu:

Paul Salvette is an author who lives in Bangkok, Thailand, with his wife, Lisa, and newborn daughter, Monica. He grew up in the United States and served in the Navy from 2002 to 2009, with some time in Iraq. His day job involves working at a Thai foundation that focuses on poverty eradication, philanthropy, and education. He hopes to stay in Thailand until he is deported or dies of natural causes, whichever comes first.

Learn more about Paul at http://paulsalvette.com or follow him on Twitter @PaulSalvette.

Related posts

• 04.11.2011 -- Creating Epub Ebooks with Sigil: #3 – Images, Metadata, TOC, Finalization
• 07.10.2011 -- Creating Epub Ebooks with Sigil: #1 – Getting Started
• 02.12.2011 -- What’s New With EPUB 3?
• 28.05.2011 -- Polskie książki na Androida
• 23.03.2011 -- Polskie książki na iPada

"Creating Epub Ebooks with Sigil: #2 – Styling and Chapters" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Photo: © vectorine | Fotolia.com

Browsing for non-English books at Kindle Store is not easy. You can follow these tips to get most of it. However if you don’t find books in the categories of your interest, you can try to get them from other legal sources.

Remember, for your Kindle ereader or application, third-party books have to be:
- in prc/mobi format (also described as mobipocket or kindle),
- without DRM (unprotected).

Before you’ll buy a Kindle, check whether in your country there are any legal sources of DRM-free prc/mobi books. Some local ebook distributors may be selling books in this format, knowing that Kindle is the most popular ereader in the world – it ships to over 170 countries and is probably cheaper than ereaders officially sold by local ebookstores.

There are a couple of great services which can be a valuable source of non-English books for your Kindle.

Smashwords

The catalog contains over 60,000 books from contemporary authors. It’s one of the most popular self-publishing services in the world. Not only English-speaking authors use it to publish their books.

Description of every book includes also a language. But don’t get disappointed – if you click on a language it returns no results. Apparently, there is apparently a bug which prevents language search at Smashwords.

A good way is to type in a search box your language pronounced in English (f.e. Finnish or Portuguese). You can also browse Smashwords via Google. Go to Google web search page and paste into the search box (replacing Spanish with your language):

site:smashwords.com "Language: Spanish"

You can also go directly to Smashwords satellite sites for language-specific ebook collections:
Spanish – approx. 750 titles
French – approx. 550 titles

Feedbooks

Feedbooks is a great source of free ebooks from self-published authors (apart from public domain classics). Search by language is available for 5 languages: English, German, French, Russian, Spanish. To reveal it, find in the left panel a section called Language and click on More options (see picture below).

Direct links to supported languages:
German
French
Spanish
Russian

If your language is not supported, you can replace two last letters in the address bar – they are the language tag:

http://www.feedbooks.com/userbooks?lang=es

Tag es stand for Spanish. If you want to find, for instance, Polish books, replace es with pl. A full list of two-letter language tags is available here.

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is a mother of all public domain books in digital format. Books from PG can be found at Feedbooks, Manybooks or Internet Archive. The great thing about this service is that you can search by language easily and comfortably – just go to this page.

You can search for language, sort languages by popularity or alphabetically. What’s important, next to each language there is a number of books available.

Most popular languages are French, German, Finnish, Dutch, Portuguese and Chinese.

Internet Archive

The site lists public domain books, but it’s also open for the contribution of free Creative Commons texts.

Currently, Internet Archive collects almost 3,000,000 titles. You can search for books in your language using advanced search. From a Custom field drop-down menu select language, then in a field next to contains type a two-letter tag of your language (see picture below).

Open Library

Open Library is a community-driven ebook resource. Over 1,000,000 titles are available. Search doesn’t give an option to select language. You have to paste into the address bar the text below:

http://openlibrary.org/search?language=spa

The site is using three-letter language codes (different from Feedbooks and Internet Archive). You can find them here.

Scribd

Scribd is a YouTube for texts. 10 million files are shared here, majority for free. Available file formats are “only” pdf and plain text (txt), but if you’re really looking for a wider choice of books, you should try browsing this site.

Language search is easy. You can first select a category you’re interested in. On a list of result look for a bar with options (see picture) and choose your language from a drop-down menu.

* * *

Note, that you can’t use third-party books in your account the same way as books bought at Kindle Store. For instance you can’t sync them between devices associated with your account.

Originally published at Ebook Friendly

Related posts

• 14.09.2011 -- Get Updates of Kindle Daily Deal via RSS or E-mail
• 26.08.2011 -- “Look Inside” for Kindle Books – 3 Tips for Authors
• 19.08.2011 -- Now “Look Inside” Feature Is Available for Kindle Ebooks!
• 18.08.2011 -- Easy Tip to Reduce Clutter While Browsing Amazon
• 25.07.2011 -- 6 Tips and Tricks to Use Kindle for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch

"6 Sites Where You Can Find Non-English Kindle Books" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

I’m delighted to present a first part of a tutorial on how to create epub ebooks, written by Paul Salvette. Formatting files for digital distribution might look difficult, but it’s good to give it a try – and Sigil seems to be the best tool available. What’s most important – Paul did a great job to explain it as simple as possible.

Today you’ll learn how to get started with Sigil. In the two next parts Paul will share tips on styling a document, adding images, metadata, table of contents, and finalizing the work. Don’t hesitate to check Paul’s exceptionally helpful book on how to format documents before you upload them to major self-publishing platforms. If you don’t want to miss next parts of the tutorial, get free updates of the blog.

Formatting an eBook can be a daunting task for the self-publisher who is not familiar with HTML. Many people try to upload a file (such as a .doc and .rtf) from their word processing program directly to the big eBook distributors only to find that the formatting is a complete mess and an embarrassment to the author. This is because eReading devices display eBooks similar to the way a web browser views a website, not how a word processor reads files.

For those interested in all the nitty-gritty details of proper eBook formatting, you can check out my guide How to Format Your eBook for Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, and Everything Else for just $2.99 or my tutorial series for free. Understandably, many self-publishers do not have the patience or time to learn the HTML skills required to turn a manuscript in their word processor into a quality eBook. That’s where the free program Sigil comes in, which allows indie authors to craft an EPUB eBook with minimal technical knowledge.

What is EPUB?

The EPUB format is used by Barnes & Noble NOOK, the iBookstore, and numerous other eBook distributors and aggregators. As a matter of fact, it’s pretty much used by everyone except Amazon. It is an open standard format that compresses all of the images, content, and meta information into one .epub file that can be opened by a variety of eReaders and PC-based software like Adobe Digital Editions. Unfortunately, the construction of an EPUB file is complicated, difficult to validate, and uses web design standards that were phased out years ago. There is an EPUB tutorial on my website that isn’t much of fun read, and the official EPUB standard is available at the International Digital Publishing Forum, which can be a bit challenging for authors who are not technically inclined. Fortunately, Sigil helps take out a lot of the heavy lifting required to make a valid EPUB.

Getting started with a TXT file

Using Sigil allows you to avoid most of the technical stuff to get your eBook created in the EPUB format in a short amount of time. The program is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac users, and it doesn’t cost a dime. Once you download and install it, you’ll be ready to get started. Sigil can only open TXT, HTML, and EPUB files. Unless you enjoy torturing yourself, you probably did not write your novel in a text editor. One useful trick to convert your manuscript into a TXT file is to use the “Save As” feature in Microsoft Word, Open Office, or another word processor. The example below is from Microsoft Word 2007.

When asked about what type of encoding to use, make sure to select “UTF-8″. You will now have a TXT file that can be opened with programs like Notepad, Notepad++, and Sigil.

Starting up Sigil

Once you launch Sigil and open your TXT file, it will look similar to your manuscript, but all the text will be the same font, there will be no italics/bold/underlined text, and all your images will be gone. Here is an example of how it might look:

The main pane is the “What You See is What You Get” or WYSIWYG portion of Sigil, and this is how the text will actually look on an eReader. The far left pane is the Book Browser. This is the actual directory structure of your EPUB package that Sigil has generated for you. The “content.opf” file is the package that tells the eReading device exactly how the eBook is compiled and contains the metadata. The “toc.ncx” file is the meta Table of Contents. Unless you want to be advanced, it is advisable to not alter the content.opf or toc.ncx files directly. The meta Table of Contents should not be confused with a linked Table of Contents (sometimes referred to as a “traditional Table of Contents”) that you see in the content of some eBooks. Unfortunately, Sigil does not have a good way to generate internal hyperlinks required for a traditional Table of Contents.

If you click on the Split View function in the top menu, it will pull up the actual HTML of your eBook below the WYSIWYG pane.

You’ll notice that every paragraph of your eBook is wrapped in <p> and </p> tags, which is how a web browser or an eReader determines where a paragraph starts and where it ends. For individual lines of text, such as “Chapter X” headings and section breaks, they will should also be wrapped in <p> and </p> tags.

Paul Salvette is an author who lives in Bangkok, Thailand, with his wife, Lisa, and newborn daughter, Monica. He grew up in the United States and served in the Navy from 2002 to 2009, with some time in Iraq. His day job involves working at a Thai foundation that focuses on poverty eradication, philanthropy, and education. He hopes to stay in Thailand until he is deported or dies of natural causes, whichever comes first.

Learn more about Paul at http://paulsalvette.com or follow him on Twitter @PaulSalvette.

Related posts

• 04.11.2011 -- Creating Epub Ebooks with Sigil: #3 – Images, Metadata, TOC, Finalization
• 21.10.2011 -- Creating Epub Ebooks with Sigil: #2 – Styling and Chapters
• 02.12.2011 -- What’s New With EPUB 3?
• 28.05.2011 -- Polskie książki na Androida
• 23.03.2011 -- Polskie książki na iPada

"Creating Epub Ebooks with Sigil: #1 – Getting Started" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Image: Fotolia

Buying ebooks is different from buying print books. You are much more tied with the ebookstore as it’s also giving you the access to your virtual bookshelf with all the titles you’ve bought.

Does comparing ebook prices between different sources make sense, then?

Definitely yes. There are at least three instances you may want to use the tools described in this post:

1. You are about to decide which ereader to buy – which is very strongly related to which ebookstore will be your primary source of ebooks. Checking prices of a device is one thing, but it’s also reasonable to check the prices of the books you’re planning to buy.

2. You own a tablet (or a smartphone) and have a couple of ereading applications installed, like Kindle, Kobo or Nook. You have accounts in all those ebookstores. It doesn’t matter which app you’ll pick to read a new book. You want to buy this book for the lowest possible price.

3. You are using price alert tools as you don’t want to overpay for the ebooks you buy. You can compare prices in different ebookstores, set up an alert at the lowest level found and wait until a bargain offer comes.

Price comparison tools are also a great way to check the general price level of ebooks comparing to print books, for instance the ones you have already bought.

Inkmesh.com

This innovative site compares prices from as much as 34 sources, including Kindle Store, Kobo, B&N, Lulu, iBookstore, Smashwords as well as free ebook sites (Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, Feedbooks).

You can search by title, author or keyword. You can narrow your search only to free ebooks. This can be done by clicking a separate button next to search box.

On a front page you have direct links to lists of current free ebooks from major ebookstores. This way you can find and add free titles to your device or app from a primary ebookstore, not as third-party.

Each title on a search results page is accompanied with the information about how many sources offer the book, the list of supported devices and a first line of description. The price shown is the lowest found.

You have several tools to narrow down and sort your search. You can pick up a price range or select results by content type (i.e. textbooks, audiobooks), device and average rating.

Luzme.com

Luzme is as simple and friendly as Inkmesh. You can search books by author, title or ISBN.

Search results are displayed in groups: book series, authors and suggestions of particular titles. Tip: it’s good to type author’s full name or the full title of the book to get most relevant results. Otherwise the list of suggestions may be too long.

On a book page you’ll see buying options split into two currency sections: GBP and USD. You also have information about available ebook formats. You’ll see whether the book has Adobe DRM. What is especially helpful, also regional restrictions are listed, so that you can immediately know whether the book is available in your country.

Another helpful option is the information about the date of a latest price check, so that you can be aware of a possible price change if you move to a bookstore.

The site is a bit slower than Inkmesh and it doesn’t have that advanced search features, but it’s a great way to compare prices and availability for readers in different countries.

Originally published at Ebook Friendly

Related posts

• 13.02.2011 -- Tablet or E-reader: Which Device Should I Choose to Read E-books? [Questionnaire]
• 19.10.2010 -- iPad vs. iPhone 4 – size comparison [infographic]
• 30.06.2010 -- Prices of e-readers down by 40% since June 2009
• 13.10.2011 -- 6 Sites Where You Can Find Non-English Kindle Books
• 14.09.2011 -- Get Updates of Kindle Daily Deal via RSS or E-mail

"2 Great Ebook Price Comparison Tools" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Photo: © vectorlib com / fotolia.com

Many Internet users treat social media as news feeds. The challenge is to reach them at the right time – the time they are active online.

Even if some users don’t subscribe to your blog, you can still reach them via social media. There is only one disadvantage. Social networks are all about instant information. Your message will stay in a stream, well, we have to face it, until a web page is refreshed.

If the user opens a social media site and you’re not right at the top of the stream, or on a first page, or within a couple of scrolls down – that means you’re not there at all.

I’m not a SEO or SM expert, but I guess the same rule which applies to Google search results can be also applied to social media streams: top 3 items count.

And this is where message scheduling comes with help. All four tools described below are very effective and it’s up to your personal preferences which one you’ll choose. Also, all of them offer statistics, so that you can track the effect of your activity.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is my main social media tool. The service evolved from a web-based Twitter client into a powerful social media dashboard, where you can update at once to your accounts in several networks, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and even WordPress.com blog. If you add Ping.fm account, the number of connected accounts becomes even higher.

Scheduling was always one of the strongest Hootsuite’s features. The service is one step ahead of competition in that matter. Its application for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch (AppStore link) is the only one I know, which gives you a chance to schedule updates.

When you sign up to Hootsuite, you can use a legendary bookmarklet – Hootlet. Once you add it to a bookmark bar in your browser you can seamlessly share a content of the web page you’re reading. Hootlet also supports scheduling, so if you usually read your favorite sources in the morning, you can schedule them when your readers are most active (and you may be already sleeping).

There are two very useful features of the schedule section. One is that you can schedule updates in bulk. Don’t get excited too much, you won’t be able to send the same, repeated message a thousand times. You can schedule up to 50 messages at once and they can’t be the same. The file format is csv. You can prepare a list of updates in a simple text editor and afterwards in the name of the file change .txt to .csv.

The updates should have the format DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM,”MESSAGE”,”URL”. The example is shown below:

16/11/2010 17:35,"Your message here","http://website.com"

You can download a sample .csv file from here and use it as a base to create a bulk upload document.

Another great Hootsuite feature is the ability to save drafts of most often updated messages. Instead of looking for the same page to get the new short link over and over, you can simply choose a proper update from a list of saved drafts.

If you want to dig further about Hootsuite, you can also use a simple tip to install Hootlet bookmarklet in Safari on iPad.

One more thing about scheduling with Hootsuite. Thanks to this service I’m running a book promotion which will last… 98 years more. Sounds unbelievable, but it’s actually doable with such a powerful tool like Hootsuite.

Hootsuite's update box with a scheduling panel

Plans & prices

A free account is ad-supported, and you can add 5 social media accounts. A pro account, $5.99/month, gives unlimited number of social profiles. Check a comparison of features here.

SocialOomph

If you’re looking for a service packed with features for advanced, heavy social media users, you should try SocialOomph. It gives you all the tools you need to boost your online productivity. Twitter follow management, updating to social media by e-mail, writing blog posts and pages, auto-follow and auto-DM – it’s only a part of a long list of features.

Most of them are, unfortunately, not available in a free version. As far as it comes to scheduling, you can still use a free account if you focus on Twitter.

When writing a new update, SocialOomph offers a similar option to Hootsuite – you can save text as draft to be reused later. You can also schedule updates in two variants:
- absolute time – by selecting exact date and time
- relative time – just type how many minutes/hours/days/weeks from now you want to publish an update

In SocialOomph Professional you can also schedule recurring updates with rotating text

Plans & prices

With a free account you can use basic features and add only Twitter profiles. If you upgrade to Professional version, for $29.97 per month, you’ll get Facebook integration with schedule features and many other benefits, listed here.

Timely

Timely is the smartest schedule management tool I know. It just does the scheduling for you.

The idea behind the service is genuinely simple. The tool is analyzing your recent activity and schedules the updates at the time of day, which gives the biggest response from your friends/followers.

Benefit: you save a lot of time and guessing.

Timely is scheduling to Twitter, but recently a support for Facebook was added. Thanks to that the tool becomes a very easy and time-saving way to reach your audience in two biggest social networks.

In a Settings panel you can set up how many updates you want to send per day and whether you want to include weekends in your queue. Timely can send weekly reports by e-mail. You can also receive e-mail notifications when the queue of scheduled updates is emptied.

The service has a bookmarklet and it’s lovely. You don’t have to bother with figuring out what will be the best time to send an update. What you can focus on is what you want to say – not when you want to say it.

One thing to remember: if you planned 30 updates in a row, 3 per day, and now want add a new one (let’s say the news you’re just reading), if you press Add to Queue, this news article will be sent on day 11. For quick updates use the Post now button.

Write an update and click Add to Queue - Timely will schedule it for you

Plans & prices

Free plan goes with unlimited number of Twitter accounts. At the time of writing this post an information about the number of Facebook accounts was not available at the page with comparison between free and pro accounts. With pro, which costs $9.99/month, you get priority non-stop e-mail support.

Dlvr.it

Opposite to Timely, Dlvr.it is not focused on update scheduling. It is just an additional and helpful feature to an advanced tool through which you can syndicate content from your blog(s) to social media channels.

The schedule box offers basic options. What’s exceptional is that you can not only schedule an update to one of your social profiles, but also to one of content distribution channels.

For instance, I’m blogging in two languages, English and Polish. I’ve set up a channel which syndicates English content to my English Twitter account and a Facebook page which is in English. When scheduling a message, instead of selecting two different social media profiles, I can just pick up one content channel.

Dlvr.it - simple scheduling tool is a great addition to a powerful content stream management system

Plans & prices

So far, Dlvr.it is free, but I think it’s just a matter of time, when a pro plan will be introduced. The service is just too good to be free.

* * *

When it’s good to schedule updates? When the time of your highest activity during a day doesn’t match the time of your readers. For example, I’m most productive in the morning. My morning, Warsaw time zone, is a middle of the night for most readers in US.

You can use it the other way round. If you are a writer, you can change the time you send information about your book, let’s say to GMT. You no longer reach, in real time, readers in US, but you actually expand by being available to readers in Europe – just because of the fact you’re sending your message at the time they are active.

A well-scheduled tweet is a good thing, but don’t forget that social media is not a one-way communication. It’s about conversation. Find time to thank for the response and keep the conversation going.

Related posts

• 22.05.2011 -- Which Links Shared on Twitter Are Mobile Friendly?
• 02.02.2011 -- Use Mobile Twitter to Discover and Instantly Buy Kindle E-books
• 22.01.2011 -- How You Can Sell E-books to Mobile Twitter Users
• 20.01.2011 -- Now Users Can Download Your Book Directly From a Tweet to Kindle for iOS
• 22.08.2010 -- Let iOS Users Download Your ePub Book Directly From a Tweet

"4 Powerful Tools to Schedule Social Media Updates" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

The only disadvantage is that you won’t get updates exclusively for Kindle Daily Deal.

After reading a great tip by Chris Walters from Booksprung, I played with some RSS tools, but eventually decided to set up a special feed at Ebook Friendly with books featured at Kindle Daily Deal. The big benefit is that you can get free updates powered by Feedburner – either by RSS or e-mail.

We create posts manually, shortly after the new book appears at the official page, that is around 12 AM, Pacific time. In every update you’ll get the information about the list price (yesterday’s price), the discount in dollars, how much you save (%), and the today’s discounted price. What’s important, you can also read the book’s description in your feed.

Get updates via RSS | Get updates via e-mail

So far the savings ranged from 57% to as much as 88% – check the Kindle Daily Deals archive here. Among the featured books there were Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly. Some of the discounted books are not available outside US. I’ve also noticed that two or three times there was a difference between the price of the book on the official Kindle Daily Deal page and the price displayed on the book’s page. Luckily the latter one was lower.

To make it even easier to keep up with new deals, I’ve also set up a short and memorable link amzn.to/kindeal. If you’re on Twitter, you may also follow a special tag – #kindeal.

There is one more benefit of subscribing to the Kindle Daily Deal feed. Ebook Friendly’s site is adjusted to small screens of mobile devices. If you get an update, want to buy a book, but don’t have access to a larger device, you can easily buy the book, even from a smartphone.

Check below how Kindle Daily Deal looks in a Google Reader.

Kindle Daily Deal as seen in Google Reader

 Originally published at Ebook Friendly

Related posts

• 13.10.2011 -- 6 Sites Where You Can Find Non-English Kindle Books
• 26.08.2011 -- “Look Inside” for Kindle Books – 3 Tips for Authors
• 19.08.2011 -- Now “Look Inside” Feature Is Available for Kindle Ebooks!
• 18.08.2011 -- Easy Tip to Reduce Clutter While Browsing Amazon
• 25.07.2011 -- 6 Tips and Tricks to Use Kindle for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch

"Get Updates of Kindle Daily Deal via RSS or E-mail" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.