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.

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.

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.

This is the most exciting part of the series, as it opens infinity of possibilities.

Starting point: book cover doesn’t have to be rectangular any more. In this post I’ll explain why.

I’ve designed a cover for Water’s Edge by Robert Whitlow to show my point of view. The jpeg image placed into the post is square, but you don’t see the edges. This image doesn’t seem to be rectangular.

The cover of a print book is determined – and limited – by the edges of the physical object a print book is. The cover on a screen is determined by the edges of the screen. The thing is that the book cover rarely fills the screen completely. It grabs only a part of a space, it’s usually surrounded by other elements of the web page or ereading application.

When somebody makes an ebook version of a print book cover, there is not that much to invent. But if you design a cover specifically for ebook – don’t put yourself into a rectangular box, if you don’t have to.

There are three values to play with: background, visualization and transparency.

Background

Select for your ebook cover the background color of the destination web page and you’ll get rid of the rectangular border. Let me show you the example. Most of ebookstores use white background. Below there is a mock-up design of the book cover. On the left you see it placed against white background. On the right it’s visualized on a paper book.

As you see, if there are no indications of the border, you see a round image. Circle – this is the shape of your ebook. It’s different in print. What you see is a round design on a rectangular cover of the book.

Circle is just one of billions of two-dimensional shapes you could imagine – if you only borrow a background from a destination web page. It’s as easy as that.

We have to be aware of the additional elements of the ebookstores’ web pages, which can bring the feel of the border. For instance, in Kindle Store they are placed on top (Look Inside arrow) and bottom (Kindle Edition bar).

2D shape is a part of the story, as there are also visualizations.

Visualization

Visualizations are popular already. They are designed to resemble paper book, or more precisely – a physical object the print book is. Many readers are looking for tangible proofs they made a good choice by purchasing the ebook. They need a proof that ebook is a book. It’s hard to imagine a file, backed up at Amazon servers, right?

Unfortunately, most of the visualizations are not good. And sometimes you just don’t need them, especially if they contradict the idea of the cover. I wouldn’t do a print visualization of Water’s Edge. The idea is to show that there are no borders, edges and limits and that water flows freely. Print book visualization would kill this idea.

Visualizations of print books are just one of directions to follow. If we miss the tangible look of the ebook, why don’t we make visualizations on a screen of a device this ebook is designed to be read?

Next idea: playing with context. The context is the screen and its content. You can visualize an object hanging above it, you can show a damaged screen, you can play with other elements of the web page.

There are a lot of beautiful examples of print books covers playing with context. There are absolutely no barriers to do the same with ebook covers.

Transparency

Transparency is different from background, although it can be used the same way.

First a simple tip how to make a transparent file. You can save it as png, instead of jpg or gif. If in your design there is no background, usually the website’s background will fill the space.

One more step forward is using transparency in advanced, iTunes-like interfaces, sliders and carousels. Such interface, a slide animation of book covers from your library was used in Stanza application. The carousel is also one of the most prominent elements of the user interface of Kindle Fire.

It’s worth checking the possibilities transparency creates, because it can bring amazing results. Here is how our circle cover would look in Stanza’s slider (and now imagine how would it look like if the cover was a visualization of a broken dark glass):

Transparent covers in unlimited number of shapes, in view of popularity of Amazon tablets may become a totally new form of art. I wish it happened. What covers need to show is that the same old good books are now refreshed for the challenges of the digital environment.

* * *

It’s a very important issue whether the lack of classic, rectangular shape will move associations away from a book.

I think we do not need frames for everything. I don’t feel neither better nor safer when I see a rectangle, bordered cover of something which should be limitless. If the border doesn’t help the idea of openness come through, we don’t have to limit ourselves and use it.

When you leave the rectangular shape, when you stop thinking of 6″ x 9″ standard cover proportions, you’ll feel like leaving the box. Leave the box – it’s what books teach us.

* * *

There are three more posts in a series: color, animation and finally, some examples (it’s good to visualize what I write about). Stay tuned, get free updates here – and share what you think in the comments.

Images used in this post: Water – by Irochka/Fotolia, Book cover – by Mckee/Fotolia

Related posts

• 09.09.2011 -- Ebook Specific Cover Design: #3 – Proportions
• 22.07.2011 -- Ebook Specific Cover Design: #2 – Size and Resolution
• 15.07.2011 -- Ebook Specific Cover Design: #1 – Context
• 20.07.2011 -- How to Create Ebook Covers with Phoster Application
• 06.04.2011 -- E-book Covers With E-reading Application Look

"Ebook Specific Cover Design: #4 – Shape" 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.

A cover of Joel Friedlander's ebook is a great example of maximizing the use of space in a product image field

In a third post about ebook cover design I’d like to focus on proportions.

A digital book is immaterial. It’s a file, not an object. If you open it on your device, it would most probably fit to the proportions of the screen.

So, what proportions should the ebook cover have? The simple answer to inspire your imagination is: “every possible proportions”.

Ebook cover is a screen area which represents a book. It’s a visualization of what the book is about. It’s not wrapping a physical object, so it doesn’t need to have proportions of that object.

But going creative is just one of few possible directions to follow. Actually the more I think about the topic, the more challenging it is. It’s not about picking up one of popular print book formats, not any more. It’s about making well thought decisions.

You should think of where you are going to publish a book, on which devices it will be read and how you plan to promote it.

Let’s discuss four factors which can influence proportions of the ebook cover.

1. Product image field

Just as print book is placed on a shelf in a bookstore (the fact it’s tall should be good for shelf space, right?), the ebook’s cover image is placed on a page of the online shop. That’s why it’s reasonable to maximize the pixel area your cover can use.

Most of online shops use square proportions for product images. This is self-explanatory – both tall and wide products are given similar chances. So, you’ll get maximum exposure for your book if you design a square cover – as Joel Friedlander did for his great guide for writers, A Self-Publisher’s Companion.

Check below how this book is highlighted in a list view at Kindle Store. In a previous post from a series I discussed size. People see thumbnail covers when they make decisions about which book to click. Having that in mind, the square is also a good move. In a list view your cover takes 100% of given space – that is 115 px by 115 px.

Use square proportions to maximize the impact of the cover when displayed in thumbnail size

The factor to keep in mind is that proportions may be affected by elements added to cover image by the ebookstore itself. For instance in Kindle Store there are the Kindle Edition bar at the bottom and, recently added, Click to Look Inside! arrow on top of the cover.

2. Screen of the device

Another direction is to consider destination devices of your ebook. As you see in a table below, in different devices there are different height/width ratios. The most common one is 4:3, but choosing 4:3 just because of that is not enough.

I’d suggest to pick-up a proportion of the device, if you’re publishing a book on a specific platform. Obviously I’m thinking about iOS. If your book is going to be sold via iBookstore or as an app via AppStore, use iPhone or iPad proportions. In an app you can have both. The 4:3 cover could load on the iPad, 3:2 on iPhone or iPod Touch. In other words: it’s really bad if you design a book application specifically for the iPad and the moment one opens it the cover does not perfectly fit the screen.

So, which one, iPhone or iPad? Think of what device you’ll use to visualize your book. For instance, I’m devoted to reach mobile phone users with my geek fiction stories, so I use iPhone visualizations since I self-published my first book in October 2008.

Cover visualization on a device screen is something you should pay a lot of attention. What people miss in an electronic book is materiality. This materiality, the width, height, depth, is conveyed by the device – and that’s why so many people still confuse ebooks with ereaders.

It’s always worth making visualizations on color screens of tablets and smartphones. They make the book looking highly attractive, but most importantly, potential readers won’t see only a cover. They’ll see a book on a screen of their own device.

Screen sizes and proportions

3. Popular web formats

When thinking of the cover of your ebook, you can also keep in mind how would it fit into one of popular web formats – like banners, widgets or application icons.

You may think it’s too far, but if you’ll be promoting your book by exchanging links with other bloggers, you may want to give them a cover in a format and size which fits into one of slots they already use.

Google AdSense offers many sizes, including 200×200 px or 250×250 px – which may be another reason to choose square proportions.

4. Creative approach

The dimensions of a screen are a completely different world than the ones of a print book. For the latter one, if the book is 6″ by 9″ that means the cover is 6″ by 9″ and you can’t change it. If your device is 800px by 600px it doesn’t mean your cover can’t be any bigger. On the screen two very important factors join the game: scroll and zoom. They open a lot of opportunities to create unusual, provocative and creative covers.

Imagine you can design the cover the same way as Internet infographics – like this one. It’s extremely long, but it doesn’t matter as you can scroll along it. It’s just an idea, but I’d like to stress that such a cover, which is extremely long or extremely wide, is still viewable. You can use it as a teaser of your book, or make it a form of a prologue.

How to use creative covers? You can always place them on your blog. Versions with typical proportions can be used everywhere else. But don’t do it just for the sake of being first. You’ll need to have a reason for that. Let’s say your book is about the history of written word. Your book cover could show the detailed timeline and it could be as long as it needs.

If technology allows for viewing images with extreme proportion ratios, why not benefit from it?

* * *

Major issue with unusual proportions you may have is whether readers will decode images as books covers. For instance a square cover is more resembling a CD than a book.

Non-book proportions are not an issue for me. If you’re on a book’s page you know it’s the book as there are title and description next to the cover. The places where ebook covers are defenseless are image search engines, but you can always fix the issue by properly naming your files (example: yourbooktitle_novel_cover.jpg).

Most importantly, however, is how the cover is designed. If you do it properly, the cover itself will be saying: “you are looking at the book”.

Next post in a series is about shape. Stay tuned, get free updates.

Related posts

• 30.09.2011 -- Ebook Specific Cover Design: #4 – Shape
• 22.07.2011 -- Ebook Specific Cover Design: #2 – Size and Resolution
• 15.07.2011 -- Ebook Specific Cover Design: #1 – Context
• 20.07.2011 -- How to Create Ebook Covers with Phoster Application
• 06.04.2011 -- E-book Covers With E-reading Application Look

"Ebook Specific Cover Design: #3 – Proportions" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

In digital environment the book's cover rarely fills the display (cover image from "Robocalypse" by Daniel H. Wilson)

When you make a decision to publish your book only in digital format, you are also making essential change in how you approach cover design. You no longer have to deal with dots per inch in a high-quality print.

The goal is not 9 × 6 inch, 300 dpi any more. It’s 1024 x 600 px, 118 ppi of a typical netbook’s screen or 800 x 600 px, 167 ppi of a Kindle 3 display.

We also have to keep in mind that the readers very seldom will have a chance to see the cover in full screen. If yes, it’s going to be after the book is purchased.

Resolution of electronic screens as well as sizes of images displayed on them are changing the way we should look at book covers. It’s limiting on one side, but it’s good to focus on finding benefits – and that’s what I’m trying to do with this series of posts.

Size

People judge books by their covers. It’s still true, but while designing for the web we have to switch the perspective. In my opinion: totally.

Let’s use the example. Someone wants to buy a technothriller. In a bookstore, when you look at the shelves, you just see the covers, nothing else. The cover is using 100% of space devoted to a book – because this is a book.

Things change dramatically when you browse for the same book on the web. Check the screenshot below from Kindle Store. The cover of a single book has an average size of 80 x 115 pixels! This is the size of the book at a very important moment – the moment when the reader makes a decision which book to click and possibly buy.

Typical search page in a Kindle Store

If we treat browser window as a bookstore’s shelf, the four book covers you see above take no more than 5% of the total display space.

Obviously, this applies not only to ebooks but to print books as well. It’s a pity that you spend long hours to design a beautiful cover, worked out and retouched in every tiny detail and afterwards what you see is 80 x 115 px thumb.

It gets a bit better when you open a page with a single book. A size of the book cover area is set to 300 x 300 px – and this includes the margin and Kindle bar at the bottom. That makes 9% of the display – at best.

A book cover takes up to 9% of the total space devoted to a book

Not looking good, right? What can we do about, then?

There are a couple of solutions.

1. Make it look good when it’s small

One thing every cover artist has to keep in mind, is that a book cover should look good not only when it’s enlarged, but also when it’s reduced. Before finding a general concept it’s good to have in mind that a cover could be communicative also when it’s in a thumbnail size.

Think of what is the most important part of the cover – and try to make it more visible. What would be seen as dirt when a cover is small? Try to remove it.

2. Remove some elements of the cover

As I wrote in an previous post, all elements of the cover which convey text information are duplicated by other parts of the web page, so it’s not mandatory to keep them in the layout. Instead, it would be great to focus on finding a relevant, convincing key visual, which works well in both big and small size.

3. Test check different sizes

When designing a cover you can check from time to time how it looks in a medium size (f.e. 300 px in height) and a thumbnail size (100 px in height).

4. Optimize the cover for a specific destination

This is the thing you can always do. If you want the cover to be displayed at your blog and the width of the post area is 500 px, save your cover specifically with that width. While doing so, you’ll have opportunity to enhance and adjust the elements which don’t look good enough at this size.

Another example: if you plan to publish a book only at a certain self-publishing platform and this platform is optimizing the look of the covers to specific size and proportions – prepare a version exactly with the maximum dimensions of both width and height.

5. Think of a cut-out area

When you’ll plan the layout it’s good to think of what you could cut out of the cover that would represent most of its values. Think of a square area like a title or a main illustration, which you can use at web sites which display small book covers. Why square? Because it’s the proportions many web stores use to display their products. Both vertical and horizontal images have chances to be equally visible.

Check below how the cover I’ve already used in this post, J.A. Konrath’s Origin, looks when displayed in 115 px height: regular vs. cut-out:

Resolution

Designing for screen means designing in smaller resolution – and this is a big opportunity. You don’t need to have a super powerful desktop computer to create the ebook cover. It’s very probable that a laptop you own can do the job. Additionally, you don’t have to use dtp programs like Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress. You can create everything in a photo editing application.

The maximum resolution to think of could be the one of displays used for reading. As I wrote above, before the purchase the chances to see a full size are small. Assuming that the image would exactly fit the screen, the cover tailored for iPad should have 1024 x 768 pixels at 132 ppi.

There is another opportunity – you can use a camera in your smartphone to shoot pictures to be used in a cover. A photo taken with an iPhone has a resolution of 2592 x 1936 px. This is especially exciting as you can design a cool cover solely on the smartphone using one or a few applications. Take Instagram. You can apply one of cool vintage filters to your photo. If you’re using the app frequently, just think of it as a tool to grab ideas for your next book covers.

If you want to add a title, you can use another great app, Picture Show. It allows you not only to apply several filters and effects, but offers a simple type tool. You can design the whole cover just with this one application.

If you write a non-fiction book, you can get a professional look by using a Phoster application. It provides as much as 72 design templates and they all are fabulous. Read more about this fantastic app here.

Smaller resolution means also that you’ll have to spend less money for images. Many services, naming only iStockphoto ot Fotolia, charge different fees depending on the file size.

For example for this vintage photo from Fotolia you’ll have to pay:
- $0.75 if you buy a 375 x 320 px file with 72 dpi resolution
- $6 if you buy 3124 x 2664 px file with 300 dpi resolution

* * *

The issue of a size applies also to print books as it comes with a question where for a first time we get in touch with a book or/and make a decision to buy it. Is it a bookstore where I can take in my hands a beautifully printed copy of a book – or is it a web site, where the book is represented by 80 x 115 px part of a screen?

Make it look good on a screen and when it’s small – this is my general advice on size and resolution.

Related posts

• 30.09.2011 -- Ebook Specific Cover Design: #4 – Shape
• 09.09.2011 -- Ebook Specific Cover Design: #3 – Proportions
• 15.07.2011 -- Ebook Specific Cover Design: #1 – Context
• 20.07.2011 -- How to Create Ebook Covers with Phoster Application
• 06.04.2011 -- E-book Covers With E-reading Application Look

"Ebook Specific Cover Design: #2 – Size and Resolution" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

On a web page a book's cover is surrounded by information it used to convey itself - like title and author

There are three approaches to covers:
- ebook cover is a copy of a print edition,
- one cover is designed for both print and digital edition,
- a cover is designed for ebook only.

I’d like to focus on the last one as it creates much more possibilities than you would originally think of. And all this can happen if you just switch the perspective.

A different approach, free from constrains typical for print production – and taking into consideration circumstances typical for digital environment – can bring unexpected and stunning results.

In this post you’ll find tips on how to benefit from a context of the ebook. In the next posts you’ll find tips on how to play with resolution, proportions, colors, shape and animation.

Context

The context can be created by a web page where a book is displayed. It can an ebookstore or your blog. Another dimension is a presence of devices used to read ebooks.

Web page

When you’re going between bookshelves in a bookstore, you need information about books you see. This information is provided by the covers. It’s the book’s cover to make you reach for it and open.

This is different if you browse for a book on the Internet. The image of a cover is usually small and in many cases the text is not readable until you enlarge the picture. Most importantly though is that information about the book is provided by other elements of a web page. That means that the cover itself is not the only source of essential info about the book. In fact, it doesn’t have to be.

On a typical book page in an ebookstore, next to the book cover you see the title, subtitle, author, price, discounted price, book description, editorial reviews, customer reviews, similar books and many more. A content of a web page conveys much more information than front and back covers of a print book altogether.

The opportunity to catch on is that you can remove all written information from the cover. Having in mind that image of the cover is usually small, you can decide to make room for a main visual and remove all other elements which will be the less and less useful if the cover will be smaller and smaller.

From now on you can focus on the main idea of a cover, which will have more room to convey the topic and genre of the book.

A great example of the simple and powerful cover, which is designed to deliver a unique picture is Seth Godin’s Poke the Box. You see the cover once and since that time you’ll easily associate it with the book. No author or title is needed – you know it.

Take also into consideration that if you browse for a book within the ebookstore, you’ll have a list of results with a thumbnail of a cover plus a title, author and price. A thumbnail of a crowded cover can be a mess. Why should it repeat information delivered next to it if it can be a clear and memorable visual, decoded even from a 100 x 100 px thumbnail?

Covers without book title or author are going to be more popular as more and more purchases, also of print books are made through the Internet. Internet is the place we’ll see a book for a first time. If we don’t buy it from Barnes & Noble website right away and go to one of the its bookstores later on, the cover will be familiar already. In many cases a cover of a print book doesn’t have to be self-explanatory any more.

Device

The next big thing is a context created by a device devoted to read it. It can be an ereader, tablet or smartphone.

We’ve seen many wonderful ideas of print books’ covers playing with dimensions as well as a paper texture. The same thing can be done for electronic books. It’s surprising that there are so few examples of ebook covers referring to specific surrounding created by the device.

Imagine the reader opening your book on a tablet. The space to use and play with is the screen. Here are some ideas to inspire you:

1. The device as an object
Play with the depth of a device; a cover can create a feeling that the tablet is thicker/thinner than it actually is or that is has an infinite depth. Let the cover become the part of the device – imagine it’s the back of it, for example.

2. Elements of the user interface
This is what I’m actually doing with most of my ebook covers. See a picture on the right – I’m using elements of an e-reading application (as well as exact screen proportions) to make it look good on a smartphone or a tablet.

3. Realistic effects on a screen
Imagine you have as a cover an image of a broken tablet screen (how would it look if a bullet went through it?). Or imagine you have a detective story with a cover looking like someone left fingerprints on a screen. Screen and pixels are the same material to play with as paper and paint in print books. The rest is your imagination.

* * *

In my opinion, opportunities and inspiration will come to you as soon as you stop thinking of a book cover of a physical print book and start to think of it as a part of digital environment.

And it’s not only applying to expensive multimedia book applications developed by the best designers in the world. You can also come up with a fresh idea, if you just start thinking of what to do with a 500 x 750 px blank space.

Stay tuned, a next post about resolution and proportions is coming in two weeks.

Related posts

• 30.09.2011 -- Ebook Specific Cover Design: #4 – Shape
• 09.09.2011 -- Ebook Specific Cover Design: #3 – Proportions
• 22.07.2011 -- Ebook Specific Cover Design: #2 – Size and Resolution
• 20.07.2011 -- How to Create Ebook Covers with Phoster Application
• 06.04.2011 -- E-book Covers With E-reading Application Look

"Ebook Specific Cover Design: #1 – Context" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Two e-books, priced $9.99 and $0.99, start two completely different purchase processes. The price level is affecting how eager we are to get a pirated copy. In case of e-books it’s combined with, in my opinion, the biggest solution to piracy – convenience.

Digital goods (especially the ones under a magical level of 1 dollar) – music, e-books, applications – join a group of impulse purchase products. It’s not only because of a price. It’s because of possibility of immediate consumption. You can use a smartphone to download an e-book or a song. It usually takes a couple of seconds and your effort can be described as a couple of taps. Instant reward is crucial – $0.99 e-book wouldn’t be an impulse purchase if you had to wait for delivery 24 hours.

In the age of instant access to content of any kind, willingness to piracy can be described as “how much will I save for the effort I make”. Let’s analyze it on an example of a $0.99 book from Kindle Store.

"No Good Deed" by M.P. McDonald - #3 in Kindle Store on June 5, 2011

Savings

A perception of price and savings is different if you are an experienced user of piracy sites and different if you started to embrace e-books (or digital goods in general).

For a piracy site users all what’s there is free (or for a price of a premium account/features – which is another case). In fact they don’t really know how much they save, because they don’t know the price of the original copy.

The economics of downloading pirated content is that you download items in bulk. You download a folder with e-books, convert files to your primary format and upload to your device.

Managing pirated content in bulk is saving a lot of time. You’ll also save time on reading those books, because they’re just files and titles for you. You don’t know most of them, and authors of $.99 books are surely not on top of your mind.

Now, let’s move to a second example.

You’ve just bought a Kindle e-reader. You have to learn how to use the device and download e-books legally – enough for a start. You probably keep in mind that there is always a possibility to use illegal sources. The only thing is that it’s a whole new world to learn. Some people, including me, don’t want to bother with it. I want to read books, not waste my time on file conversion and adding e-books to my virtual bookshelf in a way which is not most convenient.

Kindle owner is aware of the price. It’s $0.99, full stop. She or he has a choice: to get the book in less than 60 seconds and start reading it or look for the pirated copy somewhere else. How long would it take to grab it, download, deal with DRM and upload to Kindle? 5 minutes, 15 minutes? 15 minutes every time you’ve found a book you want to read immediately.

At such a low price what usually turns on is an evaluation how much money would one earn by doing his daily job instead. How much do I earn for an hour? How much time do I waste to save $0.99 on one book?

Effort

Let’s go the pirate way first. You download, let’s say 1,000 e-books in bulk. No effort at all, you’re doing this anyway, you’re fixed on getting as much free content as possible, even if you know you’re not going to swallow it till the end of the world.

If you are a Kindle owner with no “torrent skills”, you face a simple choice: a couple of clicks versus a conversion nightmare.

You have to learn how to and where from get a pirated content. You’ll probably have to download some apps, learn some tricks, read some forum threads, fix some problems – all instead of reading a book you want.

Books are different from music. You always had to have a device if you wanted to listen to music. Managing music files and discs is natural. But books… you bought them, you opened them and your read them. Why can’t this be done with e-books? In fact it can, if you are willing to spend a couple of clicks, less than a dollar and a bit of courage to read a book from an unknown author.

* * *

Saving time and money is one thing, but there is also one thing piracy is about. Somebody wants to drain your wallet by setting up a price which is too high. You are the hand of justice and get a pirated copy instead.

In case of $.99 it doesn’t work this way any more. This is a very fair price, set up by the author itself. You are not penalizing all the middlemen, you’re penalizing the man who wants to be honest with you.

Related posts

• 03.06.2011 -- How to Effectively Publish and Promote Books to iPad and iPhone Users
• 31.05.2011 -- Thoughts on Sharing Free Content at Paid Piracy Websites
• 07.05.2011 -- Kindle for the Web – How It Can Be Used by Authors
• 12.04.2011 -- Free Tools for Authors Offered by Ebook Friendly: First Chapter Previews and Book Directory
• 06.04.2011 -- E-book Covers With E-reading Application Look

"Pirating $.99 E-books – Is It Worth the Effort?" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.