Today, it's a different story. Today's conference is about all the traditional basics, but also about topics from blogging and tweeting to e-books and self-publishing. I asked four longtime participants in the 2012 San Francisco Writers Conference earlier this month to describe how this and other writers conferences have morphed to include technical content relevant to today's writers.

You can listen to their takes below.

I started with San Francisco Writers Conference co-organizer Laurie McLean, who told me that the core teachings are still there, but two entirely new tracks have been added to handle tech topics relevant to writers today, and the previously unmentionable option, self-publishing.

Laurie McLean

For more than 20 years Laurie ran a public relations agency in California's Silicon Valley. Then she became an agent at Larsen Pomada Literary Agents representing adult genre fiction and children's middle grade and young adult books. As Agent Savant, she works with authors to create their author brand, then develop a digital marketing plan to help them promote that brand online via social media, blogs, websites and more. Laurie is dean of the new San Francisco Writers University and on the management team of the San Francisco Writers Conference. In 2012, Laurie started two e-publishing companies: Joyride Books (for out-of-print vintage romance novels) and Ambush Books (for out-of-print children's books).

Listen to McLean on adding two new tracks to the conference offerings here.

Listen to McLean on still sticking with the basics here.

Kevin Smokler

Kevin Smokler is an author, journalist, speaker and entrepreneur. He's the editor of the anthology Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times (Basic Books, June 2005), which was a San Francisco Chronicle notable book of 2005. His writing has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, The LA Times, Fast Company, and on National Public Radio. In 2007, founded, with Chris Anderson (editor in chief of Wired Magazine) BookTour.com, which was the world's largest online directory of author and literary events. Kevin regularly speaks at industry conferences and book festivals throughout North America on the future of publishing, books, reading and legacy media in the 21st century. His regular topics include print and digital publishing, legacy media, social media and the web for writers, and business skills for artists and creatives.

From Smokler's vantage, despite all the changes, there are some things that are still, and always will be, basic to publishing -- namely, the need for a quality book and connecting that book to readers.

Listen to Kevin Smokler talk about that here.

Patrick von Wiegandt

Patrick von Wiegandt is a musician and sound engineer in charge of making each session at the San Francisco Writers Conference available in audio formats for sale immediately at the conference and online after the event.

He's seen big changes "backstage," as in the transition from tape to CD to MP3, but because he also hears all the sessions, he has some interesting insights about how the content of the conference has changed since the Internet came to be important to writers.

Listen here to Patrick von Wiegandt talk about the changes he's seen.

Joel Friedlander

Joel Friedlander is a self-published author and a book designer who blogs about book design, self-publishing and the indie publishing life at TheBookDesigner.com. He's also the proprietor of Marin Bookworks, where he helps publishers and authors who decide to publish get to market on time and on budget with books that are both properly constructed and beautiful to read. Friedlander's book, A Self-Publishers Companion, demystifies self-publishing for those new to the concept.

One of the biggest changes Friedlander sees is the massive shift in how books are being publicized (authors now being asked to do promotions themselves) and how writers conferences are adapting to reflect that change.

Hear Friedlander talk about that change and others he's seeing here.

Carla King is an author, a publishing consultant, and founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp program providing books, lectures and workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994 and has worked in multimedia since 1996. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and as diaries on her website. The newest version of her e-book, The Self-Publishing Boot Camp Guide for Authors, was released in August 2011 and is available on Smashwords, Amazon Kindle, and for the B&N Nook.

Self-publishing services are on the rise -- a dramatic one. And because of this, technologies are evolving weekly, and advertising is flowing.

If you're using a free subsidy press and e-book distributor to self-publish and sell your book, one service to get familiar with is Lightning Source.

Lightning Source has free book cover templates, spine-width calculators, and bar codes, and visibly higher-quality printing. Because it's owned by Ingram, your book will automatically be visible to bookstores, too. Here are a bunch of reasons LSI should be in the mix of tools you use to publish your book.

Book Cover Templates

Maybe you've hired a professional designer who is using InDesign or Quark to lay out your book. Or maybe you've bought InDesign templates, or are trying to learn it yourself. (Aaarg! But worth it.) LSI provides free book cover templates for all the standard book sizes. You (or your designer) don't even have to register or sign in. Just navigate to LightningSource.com's File Creation area, click Cover Template Creation, and tick off the options that fit your book. Finally, enter your email address and, seconds later, you'll get the cover template in your email.

Weight and Spine Width Calculator

But ... the spine width in your book cover template only works if you're printing with LSI because of differences in paper weight among all the various printers. So if you're printing elsewhere you'll have to adjust the spine width to match their specifications. (They all have spine-width calculators, or should, by now.) If you have trouble adjusting your spine width in a program like InDesign, take a Lynda.com course for the program or, better yet, plenty of professionals can help you, for a small fee.

Bar Codes

A bar code costs about $25, but your LSI book cover template will include a bar code for free! If you've entered your ISBN (buy it from Bowker), and the price of your book, that information will also be embedded in the bar code. Don't worry, if you haven't decided, you don't have to fill in the ISBN or price in order to get a cover template. You can do it later, before you actually print your book. Once you're ready, just generate another template, copy the bar code art, and paste it into your designed cover.

Print Quality

The print quality from LSI is undeniably better than that of CreateSpace, Lulu and other subsidy POD services. Here's why:

• POD services give your book a thick glossy cover that looks like a cheap, shiny suit. LSI gives you better-looking glossy covers, and also offers matte covers, which look a lot better on many books.
• POD services generally have sloppier tolerances. A 1/8-inch tolerance, which is acceptable for many, means that your spine might wrap over onto your back or front cover just a little bit. LSI's tolerances are higher.
• LSI's creme interior is also much better looking. It's actually creme and not the yellow you see with some POD books.
• With LSI, the ink is truly black, where POD services printing can be grayish, as if they're watering down the ink.

Distribution

Because LSI is owned by Ingram your book is visible to bookstores, and you can sign up for the returns program so that bookshops might actually even order your book. Your PDF e-book can also be distributed worldwide to Amazon, but I don't recommend it -- I prefer a combination of Smashwords and BookBaby, instead. (See below.)

Costs

Costs are fuzzy with a lot of POD services. You may end up paying as much or more than you spend with LSI for its "free" setup, by buying its pro and expanded distribution plans, editing and design services, and returns programs. Also remember that POD author services companies often make money by marking up the per-book print price.

• It costs $75 to set up a title with LSI, and they may charge a $40 file manipulation fee to upload revisions. That kind of pricing has been an industry standard forever, and it seems non-competitive in these days of free and really cheap, but my theory is that they don't want to deal with the glut of self-publishers who don't know what they're doing. And if you've hired a professional designer (yes, you should), and have used the POD subsidy press to get cheap proofs, you really shouldn't need to revise.
• LSI charges $30 for proofs, plus shipping and handling, whereas the POD companies charge the per-book cost and postage.
• Sometimes you might find that LSI's per-book cost is slightly higher, but when you look at the quality side-by-side, you'll probably agree that it's worth it.
• Lightning Source is used to working with experts, and the reps I've dealt with don't respond as immediately or as patiently as customer service for CreateSpace, for example. If time is money, I've spent a lot of it waiting, researching and consulting with others to deal with LSI.

Using LSI in Combination with other Services

After trying out a bunch of products and testing out various paths to getting a book into all the markets, I think this is it:

1. It's smart to test out a print book first using CreateSpace because it's free and cheap, and also they're the fastest direct path to getting your book into Amazon.com once you're finished. In other words, work out your proofreading and cover concepts here, where it's cheap, before going to Lightning Source for quality.
2. Then when the book is perfect, join the CreateSpace Pro Plan for $39 and let them supply Amazon.com with books. They'll never go out of stock on Amazon (because they own CreateSpace) whereas sometimes when you set up a channel from another supplier you might get the dreaded "Available in 2 or 3 Weeks" label on your book page.
3. Pay $75 to Lightning Source to set up your book and let them supply it to other print book retailers. If you want brick-and-mortar stores to stock your book make sure your discount is 55 percent and make it returnable.
4. Get your e-book done: I like BookBaby for Kindle and EPUB conversion (one-time fee is $100 with no % per book) and distribution to the Amazon Kindle store, Sony, Apple, B&N, and others. And I like Smashwords (free setup, with a 15 percent commission) for e-book distribution in other formats like .doc, html, and app store distribution.

Isn't it great to self-publish? You get to pick and choose the services that fit your needs, and make changes whenever you want.

Carla King is an author, a publishing consultant, and founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp program providing books, lectures and workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994 and has worked in multimedia since 1996. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and as diaries on her website. The newest version of her e-book, The Self-Publishing Boot Camp Guide for Authors, was released in August 2011 and is available on Smashwords, Amazon Kindle, and for the B&N Nook.

Business content is sponsored by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, which offers an intensive, cutting edge, three semester Master of Arts in Journalism; a unique one semester Advanced Certificate in Entrepreneurial Journalism; and the CUNY J-Camp series of Continuing Professional Development workshops focused on emerging trends and skill sets in the industry.

With triple-digit growth in self-publishing services, technologies evolving weekly, and advertising hype, it's tough for authors to figure out which vendors to choose for which services. In this series, I've been looking at three popular paths to get your print and e-book to online retailers and brick-and-mortar stores, without going through the subsidy presses.

So far, we've covered:

Path 1: E-book only or e-book first - Using either Smashwords and Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing or a service like BookBaby, how to get your e-book aggregated to the online retailers.

Path 2: Print (POD) - Get your print book formatted and distributed to the online retailers and brick-and-mortar bookstores.

This week, in the third in the three-part series of popular publishing paths for authors, I will describe how to work with a publishing partner to get your book into e-book and print formats, and into online and brick-and-mortar booksellers.

Or:

Path 3: Partner with a pro - Finding a distributor, small press, publisher services company, book packager, or literary agent who will invest in and shepherd your book much like a traditional publisher in exchange for an exclusive distribution deal and significant royalty from sales.

A Review of the Options in this Path

The demise of traditional publishing has had a negative effect on many people in the industry, so they are scrambling to find ways to take advantage of the rise in the number of authors who are self-publishing. Book distributors, printing companies, small presses, packagers, and even literary agents are creating services for self-publishers in order to sustain their business.

Key here is that most of these publishing partners need to believe in your book before they invest the time and effort. Unlike author services companies, most of these pros make money by selling books, not by charging fees to authors, so you must be prepared to convince them that your book will sell. Woo them in the traditional way. A publishing partner's version of flowers and chocolate is a book proposal with a marketing plan.

Working with a distributor

Traditional distribution companies are becoming eager to work with self-publishers. One example is Small Press United (SPU), a branch of Independent Publishers Group. If you're one of the fewer than 20 percent of authors who are accepted into their program they will present your book to resellers next to offerings from the mainstream press. They can also print your book on-demand and format your e-book.

Don't overlook the smaller distribution companies, some of whom may have very narrow specialties -- for example, companies sponsored by a library who reach out to seniors writing literary non-fiction. Another might specialize in spiritual titles, or romance, or nature books. These are easier to find if you're a member of a small publishers organization, which not only have lists, but authors who can recommend them.

Working with a book packager

Another more popular option, because they accept more authors into their program, are companies like BookMasters, along with their distribution partner, Atlas Books. But book packaging isn't only offered by large companies; independent publishing professionals offer similar services. An example is Stephanie Chandler's Authority Publishing, which offers book packaging (aka custom book publishing) services for non-fiction book authors.

Many authors who do not expect to make money on their book, but are using a book to generate more customers, speaking engagements, media attention, or expertise in an industry, are often attracted to this solution because of the professional results they get.

Working with a printing company

Also look for established printing companies, like Transcontinental, Thompson-Shore and Fidlar-Doubleday, that offer a wide array of self-publishing services, distribution and fulfillment, data warehousing, editing, design, and marketing materials.

Working with a small press

Many small presses are now offering co- or partner-publishing deals to authors with books that match up with their catalogs. Of course, they only take books they think they can sell, because they will edit, design, convert to e-book formats, and sometimes even aggressively market your book.

Working with a literary agent

Literary agents are finding it more and more difficult to sell good books to traditional publishing companies, so many are offering independent publishing services to authors they have represented, and to new authors they believe in. Do choose your agents carefully; study each agent's submission requirements; write a great query letter; and be ready to follow up with a book proposal.

Pros and Cons

• You write the book and they handle everything else, perhaps for a fee. That's everything and maybe even includes marketing and promotion: printing, e-book formatting, fulfillment, and distribution.
• The fees can really pile up!
• They will only co-publish books they believe will sell. They are interested in making a profit from your book, which means you will also profit.
• Most insist on an exclusive distribution contract. That means that you buy your own books from them (at a discount) when you want a quantity to sell on your own website or for an event.
• Most of these partners believe in your book and want it to succeed.
• They have the skills to make your book more salable, so even though you get less money per book, you sell more books.

Further Reading

• Literary Agents Try New Role as Self-Publishing Consultants
• The Advantages of Middleman Services for Self-Published e-Books
• Want Your Self-Published Book in Stores? Weigh the Options

Other stories in this series:

• How to Self-Publish Your E-Book
• How to Get Your Self-Published Book in All Kinds of Stores

Carla King is an author, a publishing consultant, and founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp program providing books, lectures and workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994 and has worked in multimedia since 1996. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and as diaries on her website. The newest version of her e-book, The Self-Publishing Boot Camp Guide for Authors, was released in August 2011 and is available on Smashwords, Amazon Kindle, and for the B&N Nook.

Business content is sponsored by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, which offers an intensive, cutting edge, three semester Master of Arts in Journalism; a unique one semester Advanced Certificate in Entrepreneurial Journalism; and the CUNY J-Camp series of Continuing Professional Development workshops focused on emerging trends and skill sets in the industry.

Business content is sponsored by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, which offers an intensive, cutting edge, three semester Master of Arts in Journalism; a unique one semester Advanced Certificate in Entrepreneurial Journalism; and the CUNY J-Camp series of Continuing Professional Development workshops focused on emerging trends and skill sets in the industry.

With triple-digit growth in self-publishing services, technologies evolving weekly, and advertising hype, it's tough for authors to figure out which vendors to choose for which services. In a three-part series, I'm looking at three popular paths to get your print and e-book to online retailers and brick-and-mortar stores, without going through the subsidy presses.

In Part 1, we learned how to get your e-book formatted and distributed to the greatest number of online retailers.

This week you'll find out how to get your print version online and in stores, or what I call:

Path 2: Print (POD) - Getting your print book formatted and distributed to online retailers and brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Stay tuned for:

Path 3: Partner with a pro - Finding a distributor, small press, publisher services company, book packager or literary agent who will invest in and shepherd your book much like a traditional publisher in exchange for an exclusive distribution deal and significant royalty from sales.

Introduction

Indie authors who want to sell their books in print can use CreateSpace's print-on-demand (POD) service to get the widest distribution to both online and brick-and-mortar bookstores, though other services might be a better fit, depending on your goals. Plus, authors of full-color books can now use POD services -- the quality has improved. You might also choose to print with a traditional printer, especially if you're a color-book author or you want a high quantity of books at a low cost. Here are the popular options.

CreateSpace

CreateSpace, owned by Amazon, offers what many believe to be the easiest, cheapest and most thorough solution for self-publishers for both trade paperback and color books by printing on-demand. Here's how it works:

1. Create your POD book using one of the CreateSpace templates. Or, if you or your designer has created your book using another program (such as InDesign), upload the PDF files for the interior and cover.
2. Keep the book private, order a copy, and if you don't like it, experiment! Edit the cover, change the fonts, make revisions and corrections. Upload the book again, order another copy, and proof it once more. This is the magic of POD. You can repeat this process as many times as you like until you are happy with your book.
3. Sign up for the Pro Plan and Expanded Distribution Channel (EDC) to take advantage of CreateSpace's partnership with Lightning Source and the Ingram Content Group. They have a vast print book distribution network, and your book will be visible to bookstore and other distribution databases.
4. Finally, when your book is perfect, pay CreateSpace to send you a KDP-formatted e-book file. Then, upload it to the Kindle store.

Pros and Cons

• Your book is immediately available in CreateSpace and the Amazon bookstore, the largest bookstore in the world.
• Your book becomes visible to retailers around the globe if you join their Expanded Distribution Program.
• But since they don't have a returns program, brick-and-mortar booksellers are unlikely to stock your book.
• However, brick-and-mortar bookstores aren't really where most books are sold these days.
• For your e-book solution, CreateSpace will give you a Kindle-formatted e-book to upload to the Kindle store for a low price, but other solutions may be a better fit for you as described in the previous article.

Services for authors of full-color books

Authors of full-color books have fewer options because the on-demand, digital printing presses that POD companies use do not result in the high-quality color separation that offset printers offer. Also, printing color books one at a time, on-demand, can be prohibitively expensive.

CreateSpace has reasonable prices and fairly good color results. Blurb is a much higher quality -- and higher priced -- color POD vendor. Both of these vendors, and Lulu and others, allow authors, photographers and artists with no experience in InDesign to create a book. That's great for small-run books, family books, or portfolios, but authors who want their books to compete in the general marketplace will probably choose a path more like this:

• Hire a designer to create the book in a page layout program like InDesign.
• Upload PDF files to a vendor like CreateSpace, Lulu or Blurb to print proofs, make corrections, and tinker with the design until the book is perfect.
• Hire a print broker to find an offset printer (often located in Asia) to print a quantity of books.
• Order a proof from the printer to make sure the color is perfect.
• For the e-book solution, create a PDF e-book version of the book that looks exactly like the print book, or have the book converted to a fixed layout format as described in the previous article.

Lightning Source

If you've been studying self-publishing you've probably heard about Lightning Source (LSI), a publisher services company with an extremely far-reaching print book distribution network. It's owned by Ingram Content Group so your print book will be listed with the majority of online retailers and brick-and-mortar bookstores worldwide (which may actually order your book because they do have a returns program). Here's how to work with LSI.

1. Sign up ($75) and open an account. A sales rep will call you.
2. Fill out all the online forms. Sign all of the contracts and other paperwork you need for distribution to each channel and geographical location (U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, etc.).
3. Upload the PDF files for your print book. LSI provides detailed specifications, including a spine-width calculator and barcode generator.
4. Order a proof ($75) to make sure the book is perfect.

Pros and Cons

• LSI is overkill for most self-publishers, but if you're an author with more than one book and plan to become an indie publisher or small press, you may benefit from working with the company to get books into stores and Amazon overseas.
• LSI has the widest distribution to brick-and-mortar bookstores and online retailers that sell print books.
• LSI has a returns program, so bookstores are more likely to stock your book.
• Instead of working with LSI, you can obtain Ingram/LSI distribution to online retailers through CreateSpace. But your book is unlikely to be stocked in bookstores because they have no returns program.
• You need to be familiar with, or be willing to learn, all aspects of the publishing business -- including the technical tools of the trade like InDesign. Or you need to hire business and design people to represent you.
• LSI charges up-front fees per title and fees for proofs and changes, though sometimes the company runs specials.
• LSI does not handle e-book conversion and distribution. It only distributes your PDF-formatted e-book if a print book is associated with it. Other e-book solutions reach a larger variety of sales channels.
• LSI prints in a facility nearest the customer, so it's much cheaper, for example, if you need to deliver print books overseas.
• LSI can also print large quantities of offset print books.

Subsidy/vanity presses

POD companies are also called subsidy or vanity presses, and they will print and distribute anyone's book. They offer varying levels of services at widely different prices. Lulu and CreateSpace are both subsidy presses that let you upload your book for free for sale in their stores. (They make their money from adding a percentage to the print price of each book that's sold, and they also offer add-on services like editing, design, and ebook conversion.) Author House, iUniverse, Xlibris and others have basic to deluxe packages that can cost more than $10,000 and include all aspects of book development -- editing, design, marketing, e-book conversion, and distribution.

Pros and Cons

• One company handles all the publishing tasks so you don't have to outsource all these tasks yourself.
• You have little control over who is handling these tasks.
• The publisher of record is the POD company, and bookstores have little interest in self-published titles.
• But bookstores are no longer the best place to sell a book.
• If you decide to leave the company and republish the book yourself, you have to start all over with a new ISBN and reformat the book.

Carla King is an author, a publishing consultant, and founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp program providing books, lectures and workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994 and has worked in multimedia since 1996. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and as diaries on her website. The newest version of her e-book, The Self-Publishing Boot Camp Guide for Authors, was released in August 2011 and is available on Smashwords, Amazon Kindle, and for the B&N Nook.

Business content is sponsored by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, which offers an intensive, cutting edge, three semester Master of Arts in Journalism; a unique one semester Advanced Certificate in Entrepreneurial Journalism; and the CUNY J-Camp series of Continuing Professional Development workshops focused on emerging trends and skill sets in the industry.

Business content is sponsored by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, which offers an intensive, cutting edge, three semester Master of Arts in Journalism; a unique one semester Advanced Certificate in Entrepreneurial Journalism; and the CUNY J-Camp series of Continuing Professional Development workshops focused on emerging trends and skill sets in the industry.

With triple-digit growth in self-publishing services, technologies evolving weekly, and advertising hype, it's tough for authors to figure out which vendors to choose for which services. In the coming weeks, I'll be looking at three popular paths to get your print and e-book to online retailers and brick-and-mortar stores, without going through the subsidy presses.

In this piece, I'll explore what I call Path 1: E-book only or e-book first. By using either Smashwords and Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, or a service like BookBaby, get your e-book aggregated to the online retailers.

In the coming weeks, I'll also look at two other paths:

Path 2: Print (POD) - Getting your print book formatted and distributed to the online retailers and brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Path 3: Partner with a pro - Finding a distributor, small press, publisher services company, book packager, or literary agent who will invest in and shepherd your book much like a traditional publisher in exchange for an exclusive distribution deal and significant royalty from sales.

How to publish via E-book only or e-book first

Using a combination of two services, Smashwords and Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing happens to be one of the easiest, cheapest and fastest ways to get your e-book up for sale online, plus it gets your book into the most markets. With this combination, your book gets:

• converted into the most possible e-book formats (including apps)
• the widest possible distribution to online retailers
• the ability to be read on all the important devices
• a non-exclusive contract
• only 15 percent commission on net

Using BookBaby gets your book into only the major stores -- Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader and iPad -- for $129 with a lot less work because BookBaby will convert your PDF and other kinds of files. They provide add-on services like book cover design, too.

Other popular options are also reviewed here, such as BookBrewer and Pubit. Authors of color and heavily-formatted books can publish their e-book as PDFs or get them converted to look beautiful in devices by paying (a lot) for fixed-layout formatting.

Smashwords

If you have a simply formatted, text-heavy book, Smashwords is the most effective option. Through its Premium Catalog, you get e-book distribution to more online retailers than any other service. Here's what you need to do:

1. Format your e-book in a Microsoft Word doc file in compliance with the Smashwords Style Guide (templates are available), or hire someone to do it for you. (See the company's FAQ to get a list of formatters and book cover designers.)
2. Assign a unique ISBN to the Smashwords version of your e-book. (Instructions for buying ISBNs from Bowker and why you should not let anyone else buy them for you are explained in one of my previous articles.)
3. Follow the instructions to upload the interior and cover, and include carefully chosen keywords as described in this article for your book.
4. Join the Smashwords Premium Catalog and agree to all the contracts.
5. Submit the document and check the boxes next to the formats you want the Smashwords "meatgrinder" to generate.

Once your book is successfully converted, Smashwords offers it for sale on its site within minutes. Once you submit it to the Premium Catalog, Smashwords makes sure your e-book is formatted correctly before aggregating (distributing) it to the online retailers. The only major online retailer missed is the Amazon Kindle Store (though there's a deal perpetually pending, so stay tuned), although Kindle users can download the Kindle-formatted book from the Smashwords store.

Smashwords will also deliver your book as an individual book app offered to mobile device customers on Apple, Android, Windows Phone 7 and HP's WebOS.

Amazon KDP

The Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing format (like the Smashwords e-book format) is based on an MS Word doc file, so it's not a big job to edit it. Here's how:

1. Make a copy of the Smashwords doc file and rename it.
2. Assign a different ISBN to the KDP version of your e-book.
3. Make changes as required to comply with KDP formatting guidelines.
4. Follow the instructions to upload the interior and cover, and provide keywords so that readers can find your book.

Alternately, if you are creating a POD (print on demand) book using CreateSpace, then you can simply pay a $69 fee for a perfectly formatted KDP file to upload to the Kindle store.

BookBaby

Though using Smashwords and Amazon KDP gives you the widest distribution to online resellers, BookBaby gives you exposure to the major markets for less work. It also has a different pricing model. Instead of taking 15 percent of net sales, like Smashwords and Amazon, BookBaby charges a $129 fee to convert and distribute your book (plus $19 per year after the second year). To use BookBaby, you simply send them your properly formatted Word doc file. But if you only have a PDF, InDesign or Quark file, they'll convert it for an additional $39.

Pros and Cons

• BookBaby is a single-vendor solution -- it creates your e-book for distribution to both Amazon and the major EPUB (shorthand for electronic publication) resellers.
• Though your book will reach the most important retailers, the Smashwords/KDP combination reaches more.
• BookBaby is great for authors with backlist titles -- just send them the PDF.
• BookBaby offers add-on services such as book design, whereas with Smashwords and Amazon you have to outsource these tasks..
• BookBaby offers conversion of e-books with more complex formatting, graphics and color.
• You only need one ISBN for the BookBaby version of your book, versus the Smashwords/Amazon solution, where you need two.

Other vendors

The solutions above are the most popular and comprehensive, but there are other popular services that have their advantages and limitations.

BookBrewer/FeedBrewer

BookBrewer and FeedBrewer charge up-front fees starting at $19.99 and 5 percent of net profits when your book is sold to online retailers. Their service is unique in that you can upload content from a blog or website and then edit or rearrange the document into final form. They also launched an ePub-to-Print solution for $60 that generates a POD book from the EPUB file.

PubIt

Pubit is an e-book creation service owned by Barnes & Noble that will get your book into EPUB format. Pubit distributes to BN.com for the Nook, iPad, iPhone, Android and PC. However, customers can only buy your book in the Barnes & Noble store.

Heavily formatted and color books

The more complex your book, the more complex it is to format for both e-book readers and print. With EPUB, you can link images with an associated piece of text so that they're always shown together, but it will never format like a printed book or PDF file with text flowing around the image.

Fixed-Layout EPUB

Apple offers the fixed-layout EPUB format, which is more popular than formats offered by Barnes & Noble and Blio probably because it reaches a more popular device. I wouldn't be surprised to see the IDPF, which manages the free and open-source EPUB standard, embracing this in the future. The difference between PDF and EPUB is that EPUB can provide features like searchable text and multimedia, such as ambient music and narration, which is great for coffee table, spiritual, and children's books.

If you are simply illustrating your text with images to impart information, then regular EPUB will probably be good enough for you. But if you're developing a heavily formatted coffee-table type book that's meant to be a controlled reading experience, fixed format is important.

PDF vs. Fixed-Layout EPUB

Remember that more than 50 percent of e-book customers read e-books on their computer, so you may simply want to offer a PDF-formatted version, which is easy and essentially free (since it's the file type you send to the printer). It's also much cheaper than getting an Apple fixed-layout EPUB book (about $10/page), especially since it only targets one (albeit very popular) e-reader.

But that's not all

Successful self-publishing requires more than just uploading a book to online retailers. It requires good publishing practices like editing and design, marketing and promotion, understanding and implementing SEO and other book discovery techniques such as being active in social media. The other articles in this series and a good workbook can help.

Carla King is an author, a publishing consultant, and founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp program providing books, lectures and workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994 and has worked in multimedia since 1996. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and as diaries on her website. The newest version of her ebook, The Self-Publishing Boot Camp Guide for Authors, was released in August 2011 and is available on Smashwords, Amazon Kindle, and for the B&N Nook.

Business content is sponsored by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, which offers an intensive, cutting edge, three semester Master of Arts in Journalism; a unique one semester Advanced Certificate in Entrepreneurial Journalism; and the CUNY J-Camp series of Continuing Professional Development workshops focused on emerging trends and skill sets in the industry.

But some savvy agents are acting as literary consultants to help their authors self-publish, a role that offers up new opportunities and challenges for everybody in the industry.

I talked with three agents about their experiments to serve authors by widening their middle ground.

Ted Weinstein (left), a San Francisco-based agent who represents non-fiction authors, said that self-publishing "has added one more serious option for my clients when we are looking at all their possible opportunities." He's currently working with authors he has successfully placed with traditional publishers "to launch additional mid-length material and backlisted books using new self-publishing tools." These tools include Amazon's CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing, Barnes & Noble's PubIt, Smashwords, and more.

Big publishing is simply not set up to publish anything but books. Mid-length materials, worksheets, and other writing that might be downloaded from Amazon or directly from the author's site are not in their repertoire. Neither do they help the author develop unpublished chapters into articles for placement in magazines. Though these kinds of supplemental materials help the author -- and publisher -- get attention and sales, the responsibility to create, distribute and publicize them lies with authors, many of whom turn to their agent.

Weinstein has long been interested in the struggle between traditional and self-publishing, and is fond of saying, "All publishing is self-publishing." His moderated online conversation with self-publishing phenom Amanda Hocking, who accepted a traditional publishing contract, and Barry Eisler, a traditionally published author moving to self-publishing, is a good place to start when trying to get a handle on the level of experimentation that's happening in the industry today.

Laurie McLean (left), an agent with Larsen Pomada Literary Agents in San Francisco, spent more than 25 years in high-tech publicity and marketing before she started her career as a literary agent. McLean, who also co-organizes the San Francisco Writers Conference and runs SF Writers University, knows how to work the web and social media. Like Weinstein, she says she is "incorporating self-publishing into every one of my clients' career plans for backlist titles, experimental fiction, shorter works, and more."

McLean supplements her agent business with Agent Savant Inc., to help authors discover their brand and create a marketing plan. "I can't do social media for them, but I can show them the road map and get them started on their journey."

Laura Rennert (left), senior agent with the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, has taken it a step further, pioneering an indie-publishing path for the agency's authors. The first to debut is a young adult novel titled "Solstice" by P.J. Hoover, an author who previously published a series for younger readers with small press CBAY Books.

Rennert shopped "Solstice" to traditional publishers, and it even went to acquisitions at one house. She said that when it was finally rejected (because it was too similar to another book being published by a big name house), "we realized this was a concern we were likely going to run into elsewhere, so Hoover made the choice, in consultation with me, to go the independent publishing route and be the first to work with our agency in this capacity."

"We are not becoming a publisher," she said. "We're building slowly, figuring things out, and adapting to the changing market and to our authors' needs." The agency handles formatting, conversion, cover design, jacket copy, editing and proofreading, with the author in complete control. "We also aggressively shop all sub-rights, including foreign, audio, and film/TV/performance," Rennert said.

Where's the Money?

It's an interesting paradigm shift -- literary agency as publishing consultant -- and there is no standard.

"I think we may be in our own bucket for the moment. We are not a packager or a publisher, and we are not acquiring or licensing rights from the author," Rennert said in response to my observation that much of these services are provided by companies like Bookmasters. "We are not charging any fees ... Our only compensation after recouping our clearly defined costs [formatting/conversion, cover design, and proofreading] which are agreed upon upfront and which we pass through transparently, is our standard 15 percent commission."

So Hoover -- "a fabulous self-promoter and a very talented author," Rennert said -- earns back her debt to the agency, and the agency gets 15 percent to cover "the hours and months we devote to editorial; figuring out how to position and package the book to reach the right market; the time spent on quality control; seeking out and dealing with high-caliber vendors providing the above services; and locating and vetting professional photographers and cover designers whose work is every bit as good as those used in traditionally published books."

With the agency getting 15 percent, the author earns 85 percent. With this model, authors may soon be flocking to agencies for publishing instead of for representation to big publishers. Is the agent, formerly an ally, becoming the competition for publishers?

"The answer is that authors are driving this trend in publishing," Rennert said, "and it is my job as a literary agent to represent my author's interests ... My role is to help them navigate the publishing landscape and maximize their potential."

While Rennert's agency seems to have settled on a 15 percent commission, Weinstein is still working out various fee-based and royalty services for the myriad of projects his authors need. And McLean charges $500 for a litany of deliverables in her Agent Savant package.

Self-Publishing as Marketing Test

Today, self-publishing has lost its stigma, with agents and big publishers thinking of it as a market test. So for authors who dream of gaining an agent and a publishing house, don't worry that self-publishing will hurt your chances -- though building a platform is essential. Hoover successfully self-published three previous books before Rennert took her latest project. Weinstein looks for platform and the ability to self-promote. If self-published authors sell more than 5,000-10,000 copies of their book, "at a minimum," he said, that gets his attention.

One of Weinstein's authors is Peter Montoya, who he placed with McGraw-Hill, and whose self-published book "The Brand Called You" sold 60,000 copies worldwide.

McLean found her first self-published author, Kait Nolan, by reading her comments on a blog. McLean was impressed by her advice. "So I went to Kait's blog (conveniently appended to each of her comments), read her free e-novella, paid 99 cents for the sequel, and by then I was hooked on her combined strengths of writing style, unique voice, mastery of social media, and gutsy attitude. She also posted that she'd sold 1,000 copies of her 99-cent novella in the first month it was available, so I knew she was on top of the business end of things, too."

The Experiment Continues

For authors faced with choosing a DIY self-publishing package or starting their own small press (with the burden of fronting the expense of editorial and design), it's a clear win. But for the agent? It's too soon to tell. "It's a newer venture for us," Rennert said, "so success isn't yet proven."

These agents are right in the middle of the whirlwind, playing with various consulting services and fee structures to see what works. But they all share one quality: excitement about the ability to help their authors succeed by experimenting with new publishing tools and technologies, paying attention to this rapidly changing marketplace, and creating their own models while the industry nervously watches.

Further Reading

> "Literary agents open the door to self-published writers" by Alan Rinzler, on his blog The Book Deal: An Inside View of Book Publishing.

> "Traditional Versus Self-publishing": Ted Weinstein moderated an online conversation between Amanda Hocking and Barry Eisler on March 28.

Carla King is an author, a publishing consultant, and founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp program providing books, lectures and workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994 and has worked in multimedia since 1996. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and as diaries on her website. Her newest book, The Self-Publishing Boot Camp Guide for Authors, was released in February 2011.

Create Your Smashwords E-Book

Smashwords, which I've written about before, continues to be a very popular e-book publishing service. Open a free account (they take 10% of sales), and provide all the data about your book (title, description, price, key word tags, cover, etc.). Then upload a properly formatted Microsoft Word .doc file containing your book interior. When you hit the Publish button they'll put it through what they call the "meatgrinder." If you've formatted the .doc file according to their style guide, your book will be converted into many e-book formats for most of the e-reading devices, notably PDF and EPUB, and distributed to most of the important online e-book resellers.

Hire Out Smashwords Formatting, Cover Design

Formatting the Smashwords .doc file is simple but tedious and can be a little frustrating to non-geeks, so they've compiled a list of people who will do that for you who charge from $25 an hour and up. My advice is to save yourself the headaches and hire it out. I also always recommend getting professional book cover design -- these people know how to make book art and titles pop even when it's the size of a postage stamp. See the Smashwords FAQ to get both lists. Try to find a designer who can also help you create a back cover and spine for your print edition when you later upload it to CreateSpace. (For more details on book design, visit Joel Friedlander's site The Book Designer.)

Create Your Amazon Kindle E-Book

Unfortunately, Smashwords does not distribute to Amazon Kindle, though a deal seems perpetually pending. (Stay tuned!) But the good news is that the .doc file you uploaded to Smashwords is very similar to the properly formatted Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) file that Amazon requires. Therefore, you can just change the ISBN and make other minor changes. Better yet, if you're also creating a print book, just pay CreateSpace to convert it to KDP format for you, as described later in this article.

Buy Your Own ISBNs and Control Your Metadata

You do need a separate ISBN for each edition of your book, so buy a pack of 10 for $250 from the ISBN Agency run by Bowker. It is very very important to do this yourself and not let any service provide you with an ISBN. You need to be able to log into Bowker with your own credentials in order to create and update the data that is disseminated about your book to all the various markets. So far you'll need three ISBNs, one each for the Smashwords, CreateSpace, and Kindle editions.

Create Your Print Book with CreateSpace

CreateSpace is an author services company owned by Amazon and a direct channel to getting into the biggest bookstore in the world. It's free because they make their money by marking up the print price and from add-on services. It's easy to use their browser-based tool to upload your book interior using one of their templates. It lets you specify headers and footers, pagination, fonts, chapter headings, and all those pesky design elements you didn't know was needed until now. Or if your book has been professionally designed and formatted for print you can simply upload a PDF version.

You could use a CreateSpace template to create your book cover, but this is a task best left to a professional. If you've hired a designer, have them design a back cover and spine according to the CreateSpace specifications. There's a formula for making the spine width right for the number of pages in your book.

Create Your Amazon Kindle E-Book

Once your CreateSpace print book is approved, you'll pay just $65 to order up a perfectly formatted KDP file for the Kindle version. When they send it to you, then you'll create a separate KDP account and upload it to for sale on Amazon.

Get Your Print Book into Bookstores + Online Retailers

Shell out another $39 (and $5/year) for the CreateSpace Pro Plan to get your book into the Expanded Distribution Program. This makes your print book visible to both brick-and-mortar and online book resellers, just like any book sold by a major publisher.

What Does All This Cost?

When all is said and done, you've got an e-book and a print book for around $500. Let's break it down:

$45-$125 for formatting
$100-$200 for a cover design
$250 for a block of 10 ISBN numbers from Bowker
$39 for the CreateSpace Pro Plan

This is my best solution for the cheapest and easiest way to create and distribute your e-book and print book. But if you really believe in your book, have done the market research, and are serious about becoming a bona-fide independent publisher committed to reaching the mass market, you're going to need to spend a lot more time and money on editing, designing, marketing and promotion, beyond just the fast, cheap, easy solution I've outlined above.

What's the Cost of Real Success?

I estimate that the budget required to create a quality self-published trade paperback book is a bare minimum of $5,000. Here's a list of some items needed to put your book respectably alongside those from traditional publishers, with minimum price tags. The lower the price, the more you have to do yourself, so bump it up if you want to be completely hands-off:

$1,000 Professional editing (developmental, line editing, proofreading)
$1,000 Professional cover design
$1,000 Marketing and promotion
$500 Advance Reading Copies (ARCs) and postage
$500 Website design and creation, not including domain name purchases, PayPal shopping cart, mailing list management, and related site costs
$500 Photography, logo design, and other branding items
$65 Membership in one or two professional publishers associations like SPAN

My Self-Publishing Boot Camp Guide for Authors has a page full of budget items and activities that detail each step if you should choose to go this route.

It's Okay to Just Test the Waters

But there's nothing wrong with test-driving your book using the fast, cheap, and easy method sketched out here before committing to investing thousands more. You can use CreateSpace to print many versions of your book, ordering one at a time to evaluate the design and format, to edit and proofread -- before making it available for public consumption. That's what POD is all about, after all -- printing on-demand -- and it can be an exciting and satisfying journey.

Carla King is an author, a publishing consultant, and founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp program providing books, lectures and workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994 and has worked in multimedia since 1996. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and as diaries on her website. Her newest book, The Self-Publishing Boot Camp Guide for Authors, was released in February 2011.

Business content on MediaShift is sponsored by the weekend MA in Public Communication at American University. Designed for working professionals, the program is suited to career changers and public relations or social marketing professionals seeking career advancement. Learn more here.

Whether you're a self-publisher or a large publishing house, you're probably dealing with six to a dozen online retailers to sell your e-books. There are the big players like Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Borders; online bookstores like Diesel and Powell's; and perhaps even specialty retailers like AllRomanceeBooks.com.

But several companies offer go-between services that simplify the process for publisher and retailer. Should you consider using these middleman services?

The barriers to market

Before you can make that decision, consider the hurdles these services help publishers surmount. The current system of uploading to individual retailers is particularly burdensome for self-publishers, who must:

1. format their e-book to the specifications of each reseller (Mobipocket/Kindle for Amazon, EPUB for everyone else),
2. edit the cover and interior of each e-book to reflect the unique ISBN number assigned to each reseller, and
3. manually upload the files to each retailer.

Later -- much later -- you will get your royalty check on sales from each one of those different sites. And then, if you update your book, it can take a while to trickle through. So while version 1 is active on one retailer's site, version 2 may be active on another.

Yeah. Track all that.

Middlemen ease the administrative burden

It's no wonder the expanded distribution programs of self-publishing companies like CreateSpace are so popular, and why Smashwords has been such a smash hit with self-publishers.

Smashwords automatically converts your doc file into various formats and distributes it to all the retailers (except Amazon). You assign a single ISBN number to the Smashwords edition. If you update the book, the book description, or include a review, the company handles the trickle-down of information. You get one payment from Smashwords, and you make 85 percent of retail when sold through their store. When they distribute to Apple, Borders, and others, you make about 45 percent of retail. (To include Amazon you can just reformat your Smashwords doc file to fit Amazon's KDP format, then upload it to the Amazon Kindle store directly.)

Here's another model. Independent Publishers Group created a division for small and self-publishers, Small Press United (SPU). If you are one of the 20 percent of self-published authors accepted into SPU, they will convert your print book to EPUB and Mobipocket/Kindle format for free, and distribute it to the online retailers as well as to brick-and-mortar bookstores. Typically, you make 35 to 40 percent of the retail price in exchange for the convenience of a total print and e-book distribution solution.

Combining print and digital

Then there's the e-book warehousing solution dreamed up by Montreal-based Transcontinental Printing, an offset printing company who decided to expand their horizons by partnering with DeMarque, whose technology powers the e-book. They saw the e-book distribution mess and offered this solution: You upload your e-book to Transcontinental's Digital Warehouse and fill out all the metadata: description, bio, ISBN number, etc. They then deliver it to Apple (and they are in the process of making deals with many other online bookstores worldwide), which displays it in its store as if it was their own. If someone buys your e-book, the retailer's website is used as an interface to reach the file to download the e-book, but the online bookstore never actually housed the file -- it lives securely on the Transcontinental digital warehouse server. Here's how their Digital Warehouse works:

Transcontinental, being the central transaction point, updates your sales report within seconds, credits your account, and adds the data to your stats. When you log into your account you can see all this. When you update your book, the changes are made in a single place. You get paid by the bookstore and -- after the nominal 10 percent charged by Transcontinental, plus the online retailer's fee -- you, the publisher, get about 50 percent of the retail price. You can review all payments with the real-time reporting the service provides.

Transcontinental has only made a deal with Apple so far, but they are in negotiations with others, so watch them. Transcontinental -- being a printing company -- also offers their traditional offset printing services for more than 500 books, and a digital print short-run service for less than 500 books.

A simple solution

"Our goal is to simplify -- to use only one uploaded file for all forms of the book, which retailers pull from the Digital Warehouse and one location for all transactions," said Jacques Gregoire, senior vice president of Transcontinental's Magazine, Book and Catalog Group. Though Transcontinental serves many large publishing companies, they are eager to work with self-publishers as well.

The distribution services provided by companies like Transcontinental, Smashwords, and SPU are providing a middleman model that is good for self-publishers and good for retailers, who are understandably having a difficult time keeping up with the rush to upload e-books. By the end of 2011 we may even see retailers insisting that self-publishers use central e-book distribution services, instead of dealing with them individually.

Carla King is an author, a publishing consultant, and founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp program providing books, lectures and workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994 and has worked in multimedia since 1996. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and as diaries on her website. Her newest book, The Self-Publishing Boot Camp Guide for Authors, was released in February 2011.

Business content on MediaShift is sponsored by the weekend MA in Public Communication at American University. Designed for working professionals, the program is suited to career changers and public relations or social marketing professionals seeking career advancement. Learn more here.

For over a decade I've been speaking at conferences about self-publishing to audiences of dejected, rejected authors. There was always a stigma associated with self-publishing, with many people considering it lower quality vanity press.

But this year, new faces appeared in the crowd: agents, editors, and publishers eager to understand self-publishing. Why? Self-publishing books has finally reached the mainstream, with enough success stories to make it a legitimate part of the publishing world.

Here's more about this and other trends in 2010, plus some crystal-ball gazing into what's coming in 2011.

1. Self-publishing lost its stigma
   In today's tight traditional publishing market, agents, editors, and publishers are now encouraging authors to test market their book by self-publishing. Yay! Self-publishing has finally lost its stigma. So if you've been dissed by agents in the past, 2011 might be your year to try again. Alan Rinzler is a longtime acquiring and developmental editor at major publishing houses and an independent editor with private clients. "Literary agents have been the missing link for self-published writers trying to break through into mainstream publishing," he states in Literary agents open the door to self-published writers. "But new attitudes are taking hold, especially among younger up-and-coming literary agents."
2. Ease of tech attracts traditionally published authors to go indie
   Technology companies have been wholly responsible for providing tools that let authors easily publish in print and on e-reading devices. "Many of our indie e-book authors are outselling, outmarketing and outpublishing the traditional publishers," says Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, who in 2010 helped indie authors publish and distribute over 20,000 e-books. "Self-published authors are finally gaining much-deserved respect, not only from the industry, but from readers as well." Coker adds that the 60-80% earnings from the retail price of their books "has caused many traditionally published authors to go indie." I like a core group of proven e-book creation and distribution solutions, but keep looking to technology companies and partnerships. Just a few to note are Issuu, BookBrewer, and Monocle with its associated Bookish reader.
3. The social graph makes conversations and recommendations easier
   Authors conversant with social media tools will get even more of a leg up in the coming year from technology services. "There's a lot of buzz about reading moving onto digital devices, but people don't talk as much about the consequences of such a shift," says Trip Adler, CEO and co-founder of Scribd. "It's much easier to share what you are reading if you are already reading on an Internet-connected device with your whole social graph right there. Over the next year, you'll see a lot more books, short stories, poems, and other written material recommended to you by your friends and through your likes and interests." Authors who understand this will cultivate relationships with bloggers and other curators who can make their voices heard above the fray. Among interesting offerings here is BookGlutton, which lets readers and reading groups converse inside a book via a widget. Possibilities are vast: authors can upload and discuss them with a virtual writing group. Reading groups, classrooms, and book clubs can discuss books uploaded from the web or from Feedbooks.
4. Online communities and curation continue to grow
   Online writing groups and communities like Red Room and Figment are increasingly valuable resources for authors testing ideas and looking for input. For readers, they can provide much-needed recommendations. Twitter and Facebook are also venues for recommendations from trusted bloggers, blogs of peers, famous people, or sources in vertical markets. For literary books, Goodreads provides a really nice social media platform in their community of more than 4 million readers. Their iPhone/iPad app (over 30,000 downloads) has an integrated e-book reader, rating system, buying, progress reports. They also launched a free author program that lets you upload, sell, and even promote e-books. Look for sites that offer similar services in niche and genre, and more product innovations that make curation easier, like the ones MediaShift's Roland Legrand mentions in his recent post on Storify.
5. Content-rich, relevant tools for marketing are still emerging
   In addition to participating in communities and wooing bloggers, Karen Leland, president of Sterling Marketing Group notes that "one of the most exciting developments in 2010 was the expansion of multimedia into the everyday promotion of books and businesses. YouTube has become the biggest search engine outside of Google. In 2011 I think driving book sales with content rich, relevant video placed on YouTube and embedded in blog posts will expand as a leading source of driving awareness of a self-published book." This kind of marketing also improves book discovery with the proper use of metadata.
6. But book designers are still frustrated
   Joel Friedlander aka The Book Designer has been frustrated in 2010 by too many competing formats and not-quite-ready-for-prime-time design technologies and standards. "My biggest hope and expectation is that we will get better tools for creating e-books in 2011. Great strides are being made in EPUB and other formats but the device engineers and software coders need to finish developing and hand the tools over to the designers. We are eager to use them to create beautiful books and quality experiences for readers." Good news for Friedlander and other design warriors, EPUB3 is scheduled for review and approval in May 2011, and it's got lots of bells and whistles.
7. Out-of-print titles continue to be revived, shared, and sold
   For authors with a stack of out-of-print books, 2011 will be the year to get them into e-book format and recreate an income stream. Among others, the non-profit Internet Archive will scan and run OCR across texts, convert them to the various formats for use in their library for the print disabled (blind, dyslexic or are otherwise visually impaired), and in the free archive. Or, for a reasonable fee, you can exclude them from the archive and get the files to sell them yourself in all the usual places on the Internet.
8. The single-purpose e-book reader phases out
   The iPad was the first multi-purpose e-reader (besides the web browser). More than one pundit thinks that single-purpose e-book readers are transitional devices, and that, in the future, we'll be reading comfortably on book size-and-weight versions of the iPad by a galloping herd of makers including the ones making devices today. Expect some to fail.
9. Transmedia "immersive" books and apps become more common
   Authors who can think "writing" and "movie" and "gaming" are going to love transmedia storytelling. Especially when multi-use devices and books in browsers become the norm. 2010 saw enhanced e-books and magazines, learning materials, and apps based on books on the rise. Watch for continuing growth in the number of startups, a la those Multimedia Gulch CD-ROM development days, to help produce these "transmedia properties."
10. Oh yeah . . . print books
    Author services companies will continue to serve up Print On Demand (POD) books for multi-book authors and the masses of people who just know they have a book in them. It's a great business. Who knows, maybe the Espresso Book Machine will make it into the few bookstores left standing in 2011. But bookstore distribution will continue to be a less viable option to any publisher's income stream as mail-order from Amazon and the other major retailers continue to usurp brick-and-mortar bookstore sales. The new smaller, lighter, better multi-use devices will encourage e-reading. That leaves the rich and privileged to order special limited print editions of books by authors they love. Okay, that may be gazing a few years too far into the crystal ball, but look, some authors are already finding it a trend, nonetheless.

Did I catch them all? What do you think were the most important developments in self-publishing in 2010, and what do you see in your crystal ball for 2011? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Carla King is an author, a publishing and social media strategist, and co-founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp program providing books, lectures and workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994 and has worked in multimedia since 1996. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and as diaries on her website.

Self-publishers can benefit from adding browser-based e-book options to the services they should already be using to sell their books, such as Smashwords, Scribd, and Amazon DTP. This best-of-breed group will get their books in all the dedicated e-book readers, mobile, and multi-use devices, and now, delivered in the browser.

Now here's why browsers are so important, and how to get your books in them.

Browsers: The Forgotten Platform

In the frenzy of formats, platforms, and devices, awareness of the web's importance as a e-publishing platform simply faded into the background. But the Books in Browsers conference in October brought the browser to the attention of many publishing insiders. BIB10 was an astonishingly high-level gathering of 120 people from nine countries, including publishers, librarians, and toolmakers (many of whom were notable and even famous names), for a two-day working meeting. It was hosted by Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, who is largely concerned with building a digital library and providing universal access to books, music, movies and, via the WayBackMachine, its billions and billions of archived web pages.

Rise and Fall of Dedicated E-Readers

Big Name Game Changers

Readers can now buy hundreds of thousands of e-books from Google, or download over two million public domain titles for free. They can access their downloaded books on any device with an HTML5-enabled browser from their computers or via apps for iPhones, iPads, and Android-powered smartphones. Buyers can access the books they purchased on any e-reader based on an open platform, like EPUB, which includes the Sony Reader and the B&N Nook. (The Sony Reader Store is the search, purchase, and download engine for Google eBooks.)

Self-Publishing Strategy

If you're self-publishing, you should add Google eBooks to your list of places to sell books. This will get your book into the largest number of e-tailers and devices, not to mention brick-and-mortar bookstores like Books Inc. and Diesel, who are helping their customers buy digital. In order to make this happen, here are your tasks:

• Upload your book to Google eBooks and promote it through their partner program.

• Upload your book to the Amazon store through Amazon DTP. (If you publish your POD book through CreateSpace they'll give you a DTP formatted version.)

• Upload your book to Smashwords for sale in their store. Distribute in their catalogs: Their Premium Catalog aggregates your book to major retailers and their Atom/OPDS Catalog gets your book in major mobile app platforms. They also provide HTML and text formats easily read in browsers.

• Upload your book to Scribd for social media attention, previews, sale, and distribution to the customer's device or for display in their browser-based reader.

If formatting is not your forte, or you just don't have the time, you can throw about $250 at a service like eBook Architects who will do it for you.

Ignore the Hype

The above covers the vast majority of sales outlets, but that doesn't mean that other products, services, and programs aren't also begging for attention. I try them out as they come along, but mostly give up in frustration due to their difficult, buggy, and largely beta interfaces.

This is a profitable marketplace -- self-publishing is seeing three-digit growth! -- so there is lots of activity and the hype is not likely to die down anytime soon. Meantime, best practices for self-publishers include sticking with the above best-of-breed products and services, and focusing on quality. Participate in membership organizations and communities (like the Small Publishers Association of North America) that can help separate hype from truth, and concentrate on getting your book to (virtual) press, which means paying attention to writing, editing, design, and marketing.

Carla King is an author, a publishing and social media strategist, and co-founder of the "Self-Publishing Boot Camp" program providing books, lectures and workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994 and has worked in multimedia since 1996. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and as diaries on her website.

For those unaware, metadata is data about data, words about words. In the semantically driven matrix of search, all words have a value, and "key" words have more value still. These keywords must be strategically selected and then placed where they can do the most good. Creating metadata tags for your work is a marketing challenge that requires both editing skill and narrative common sense.

"As our digital landscape explodes -- as web search becomes not just one way but THE way readers find what's next on their reading lists -- metadata only becomes more important," wrote Laura Dawson of Authorweb.

It might sound daunting, but if you know who your audience is, and you can fill out a form, you can create metadata for your book. Here's what you need to know about providing metadata for your book record on the Bowker system and for all your web activities.

Identify Your Keywords

First, we must spill into search engine optimization (SEO) territory. The typical self-published author doesn't need to hire an SEO expert. But I spoke with expert Mark Petrakis who helped me create these steps to identifying a solid keyword list:

1. Imagine the words and short phrases your readers might enter into a search engine to find you and your book. Begin to eliminate the less important and more generic words and phrases from your list. Try to keep the number of repeated keywords to a maximum of three. The final list should be no more than 10 to 20 words with a 900 character maximum. This constitutes your "keywords" metadata and can be used for your book metadata, for creating tags on blog posts, and in your social media activities. Most major search engines (like Google) no longer factor in the keyword metatags at all in search results, so this just makes having effective TITLE and DESCRIPTION tags all the more important. (Similarly, your file names should be descriptive.)
2. Once you have your keyword list, edit the TITLE metatag of your web pages, to describe each page in a nutshell. Make it informative to users first and search engines second. Set a maximum of 60 characters, including spaces, and be sure to feature your top keywords.
3. Finally, considering both your keywords and your TITLE, draft a succinct but keyword-rich DESCRIPTION of your book. Make this one informative to search engines first and users second. Keep it to a maximum of 150 characters.

Many website creation software and blog services provide you with simple forms where you can enter these various metatags, which it then inserts for you into the page's HTML "source" code, which looks something like this:

Metadata also includes the rather important "ALT" tags that offer short text descriptions for images. For example, the image of my book cover is tagged with: ALT="American Borders: Read about a solo woman traveler exploring the USA on a Russian sidecar motorcycle."

Also of great importance are the actual words on each web page and, more specifically, the words used in the opening paragraphs on the page, which need to indicate exactly what that page is about. So be sure to use "keyword-rich" sentences in those opening sections. Also, it is wise to begin each page of your website with words and not images.

Those are the basics, but people make entire careers of SEO. For a better understanding of metatagging check out Wikipedia's entry.

Provide Metadata for Your Book on Bowker

Whomever buys your ISBN from Bowker controls the metadata for that book -- so if you're a self-published author, it should be you. Once you've bought it, simply go to Bowker's identifier services page, log-in, click on your ISBN number, and fill out the data in the full title detail form as shown in the example below.

You will have the opportunity to insert gobs of data here -- title, author, description, number of pages, size, language, currency, copyright year, date of publication, contributors, category, title status (out of print, active, etc.) price, currency, and a photo of your book cover. All this information is then disseminated to distributors, wholesalers, libraries, and retailers (online as well as brick and mortar) so they can convey it to readers on mobile devices, e-readers, and on the web. Use the BISAC standard subject headings to describe your book category on your print book and also in the metadata for your book and on the web.

The ability to control and edit the metadata for your book whenever necessary is a key reason you need to buy your own ISBN direct from Bowker and to not let an author services company buy it for you.

Metadata in Documents and Other Media

Believe it or not, search engines look inside your documents and applications for clues about its content. But almost all let you edit that data. Metadata resides in every Microsoft Word document you create, so that readers can find the author and company name (yours, or the owner of your bootlegged copy). To edit the data in a Word document simply open the document and click File > Properties.

If you're publishing audio, video, or any other media, make sure you edit the metadata inside that application, too. For example, Audacity, a free program handy for recording music, podcasts and audiobooks, lets you insert ID3 tags that help identify it to search engines and services like iTunes and Windows Media Player.

Metadata on Reseller Sites

E-book sites like Scribd and Smashwords, and e-tailers like Amazon and B&N want to distribute your book and allow their customers to discover and buy as many books as possible, which is why they make it easy for publishers to insert metadata. For example, if you've uploaded your book in Kindle format to Amazon, you will be prompted to insert the same kind of metadata as for the Bowker identifier services site.

Metadata on Social Media Sites

Use all available information spaces on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube to get found and create incoming links to your book's web presence. Any keyword-rich author bio you can place anywhere on the web (including at the end of guest blogs and articles) is also valuable. An official Facebook page (formerly a fan page, now a "like" page), gives you an opportunity to create more metadata that points to your book and also works nicely to create incoming links.

The Future of Metadata

As "new connections are formed and new data is added its value increases exponentially," wrote pundit Mike Cane in his post, Dumb Ebooks Must Die Smart Ebooks Must Live.

With technical advances that allow us to sort through metadata inside books, readers may be able to search for "all fiction books set on Mars in any fictional year, published between 1940 and 1960," or even order up pieces of books, asking their device to "Show me all first paragraphs from fiction books published in May 2009."

"When you think about it, it seems remarkable that so much content does not have this sort of metadata already," wrote Martin Moore in an article for MediaShift, How Metadata Can Eliminate the Need for Pay Walls. "It is like houses not having house numbers or zip codes. Or like movies not having opening or closing credits."

Metadata automates a formerly labor-intensive task by connecting readers to books more efficiently than ever before. The self-publisher who understands metadata levels the playing field to compete alongside big publishing -- but only if you use it.

Additional Reading

• Metadata is More Important Than Ever
• Dumb Ebooks Must Die Smart Ebooks Must Live
• The ePub eBooks Metadata Mess
• Wired: Why Metadata Matters for the Future of Ebooks
• How Metadata Can Eliminate the Need for Paywalls
• Ebook Hide-and-Seek
• Using the BISAC Subject Codes
• BISAC Subject Headings List

Carla King is an author, a publishing and social media strategist, and co-founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp program providing books, lectures and workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994 and has worked in multimedia since 1996. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and as diaries on her website.

In a nutshell, an e-book is a digital snapshot of a book, an enhanced e-book adds multimedia and interactive features as interruptions to the linear story, and a book app is based on a book but acts more like a game with multiple pathways that require the user to interact instead of simply scrolling and clicking.

Enhanced e-books are also referred to as rich media books, book mashups, enriched, hybrid and amplified books. The media and interactivity is provided by you, the self-publisher, who collects and integrates music, audio, video and color photo slideshows, news feeds, illustrations and background materials. You may also provide searchable text, tilt scrolling, internal and external links and Flash animations into the linear story. (Here are some video demos of these features.) To create an enhanced e-book requires the skills of a web developer.

A book app can do everything an enhanced e-book does, but crosses the line from linear storytelling to non-linear storytelling, allowing the user to choose from multiple pathways and select from a potentially huge number of photos, videos, audio files, illustrations, hyperlinks, and interactivity. Apps are third-party software programs requiring a programmer with C++ or Apple's Objective C programming skills.

Much confusion arises from the fact that so many books are simply bundled as apps so they can be sold in an app store. In April 2010 there were twice as many e-books as games in the iPhone App Store, and it's been posited by one pundit that Apple may purge such e-books as they have purged other overly simple apps. There seems to be little point to e-book app-wrapping when compared with more elegant, library-based e-book stores and their e-reader apps (the iBookstore download to the iBook e-reader app, for example), which gives customers a more consistent user experience and keeps the device desktop uncluttered.

What makes a good enhanced e-book?

A few years ago I produced a multimedia e-zine, Ireland: The Sacred and the Profane. It was offered for download directly from the Wild Writing Women website until I recently found it easier to offer it via Scribd. Though most links, audio and video don't work inside their browser-based reader (they tell me they're working on that), they perform nicely when you download the PDF. The magazine was very time-consuming to produce, but incredibly rewarding and the enhancements offered readers extra value.

What's a good enhancement?

"If it's a book about music history, having music people can play at certain points in the book can be useful," says Amazon's Jeff Bezos, in an interview with USA Today. "You're not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations."

"Enhancements should only be in support of the central proposition of the writing rather than a 'I can do it therefore I will do it' approach," says Peter Collingridge of UK-based Enhanced Editions. New Media storyteller J.C. Hutchins also has some good advice, such as avoiding "self-congratulatory 'behind the scenes' content such as author bios, old drafts of your manuscripts."

The iPad's capabilities quickly made it the enhanced e-book platform of choice. Designers can create endlessly entertaining distractions within a linear story. The "amplified edition" of Ken Follette's Pillars of the Earth promises a huge cache of multimedia, an interactive character tree, video and still images from the Starz television series, the author's multimedia diary with his impressions of bringing the book to the screen, interviews with the actors, director and producers, and music from the series.

How much does this cost in terms of time and money? It took me months to create the Ireland magazine working in InDesign and with my group who painstakingly reviewed and edited every iteration. It would have been a huge project even without the learning curve, so when Collingridge quoted $8,000 to $15,000 for enhanced e-book production, that sounded about right.

Enhanced e-books are not device-specific but it's impossible to optimize for all of them. For example, audio, video and color simply do not work on the Nook or Kindle, and Flash does not run on the Apple iPad. You'll want to format your book for the platforms you think the majority of your audience is using. Popular format choices are:

• Portable Document Format (PDF) is for very highly-formatted publications and can be read on many devices. Readers are forced to view the book exactly as it was designed, which, while it offers design stability, means users cannot reflow the text or change font sizes or colors.

• International Digital Publishing Forum's Open eBook standard (EPUB) is a versatile winner. It's the format used by Apple iPad, Sony's reader, the Nook, and many other vendors. An export feature in the InDesign page layout program (on which your original print book was likely designed) lets you output an EPUB file. The results are not perfect, but they're getting there.

• Microsoft's XPS platform is used by the new Barnes & Noble Blio software platform. They hype their enhanced e-book features and seamless integration with Quark a la the InDesign-to-EPUB export.

• Amazon's Kindle/Mobipocket (mobi/azw) format is great for e-books but not a good choice for enhanced e-books because it does not display color or video.

Yes, the relationship between hardware devices, software platforms and formats is complicated, especially with Google Editions and Copia entering the game this year along with the Blio, and there are rumors that RIM is planning an iPad competitor.

When enhanced is not enough: The book-based app

When you've got so much material that linear is no longer practical, then it might be time to consider an app as an add-on product to your book. (The fuzzy boundary between enhanced e-books and apps are discussed in the Digital Book World webcast eBooks vs Apps: The Pros, Cons and Possibilities).

To start the process, you'll first need to have a deep discussion about multimedia, formats, platforms and devices with the team you hire to do the work. "Book-based apps are more likely to be ancillary products with complex graphics and page layouts that can't be handled in something that auto-flows," says Michel Kripalani, founder of Oceanhouse Media (OM). "That's where you cross the line into the need for custom code." Kripalani assembled a team of former interactive CD-ROM and game developers to start his business, and has built over 100 since the company was founded in January 2009.

"Children's books are especially ripe for apps, and compliment the e-book edition," noted Kripalani in an interview with Book Business Magazine. OM has also created a variety of card decks, calendars, and spoken word apps inspired by books from Hay House and Chronicle Books.

The price tag for a complex, quality book-based app? "In the five-figures," says Kripalini, "and requires a team that "includes C++/Objective C programmers, graphic designers, professional actors and custom narration, music soundtrack and sound effects, interactivity, editors and page layout designers for the different devices."

For the budget-impaired, DIY app builders are emerging. Travel guidebook publishers already know their audience is looking online and to apps instead of to the paper book. For them, Sutro Media has created a browser-based tool to let publishers upload material to a content management system, which then gets ported into Objective C on the back end. Co-founder Kevin Collins says, "these apps do things that books can't possibly do. For example, you can use all the photos you had to leave out in their book versions, and include live maps and hyperlinks, too."

Sutro does not require the author pay any up-front costs, but they carefully evaluate proposed projects. Their payment model is a revenue-sharing agreement with a royalty split of 30% each going to Sutro, Apple, and the author, with the remaining 10% going to their in-house editor.

If you're a technically inclined DIY self-published author, there is a growing list of inexpensive app development options, here are some for the iPhone. And remember, you'll need to decide which devices you want to reach. You can develop for more than one, but that will add to the time and price tag. Today's popular choices are:

* Apple's iBook app for the iPhone and iPad
* The Kindle or Stanza app (both owned by Amazon)
* The B&N eReader, or Kobo (a Borders partner)
* Google's free ebook reader for the iPhone and Android
* The Kobo app for Android

Selling it: The biggest challenge

Once you've created your enhanced e-book or app, how do you get it distributed to e-tailers and to readers? Author Cory Doctorow has long and publicly wrestled with these issues, and has had only spotty success with distribution and sales via the major channels. Digital Rights Management (DRM) has been particularly problematic, as some e-tailers require it.

The enhanced e-book and app space is still all very experimental, but expect industry standards to emerge and the market to adjust to the technical possibilities. Apple is letting self-publishers upload directly to the iPad, as long as they adhere to very strict formatting rules.

Personally, I'm offering enhanced e-books on my own websites and on Scribd, amassing digital assets, paying for InDesign upgrades, studying EPUB, renewing my SPAN membership, and keeping an eye on Mark Coker and Smashwords for an easier enhanced e-book aggregation solution for self-publishers.

Carla King is an author, a publishing and social media strategist, and co-founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp program providing books, lectures and workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994 and has worked in multimedia since 1996. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and as diaries on her website.

The Databases

With your ISBN and bar code from Bowker in hand (read my previous post that told you how to get control of your own ISBN), it's time to register your title and your contact information in their Books In Print and Global Books In Print databases. Registering with BowkerLink is the first step to enabling the industry to discover your book, and it's free.

Ingram is the largest book wholesaler and distributor in the world and if your book is not listed in their ipage ordering system, it's simply invisible to booksellers. You must have 10 titles a year to be accepted into their program, but this article shows you three ways to get in through the back door.:

1. Create a relationship with a traditional distributor whose titles are listed with Ingram, and send them an inventory of offset-print books.
2. Print your book on-demand with the Ingram-owned company Lightning Source, and you're automatically in.
3. Use a self-publishing services company to list your book with Ingram.

No matter whom you distribute with, a 55 percent discount is standard. (You can offer less, but expect few takers.) When calculating your profit margin, factor in printing, shipping, postage, returns and start-up costs like editing and design -- all the costs of doing business. Don't forget ongoing costs like marketing and publicity, giveaways, promotion and accounting. Direct sales is certainly more lucrative than traditional distribution and you give that up when you sign an exclusive distribution deal. So why bother?

Traditional Print Book Distribution

In traditional distribution you (the publisher) prints a large number of books with an offset printer. The books are sent to a distributor who wants to sell mass quantities of your book to wholesalers and retailers.

Unfortunately, your book isn't really sold until it's bought by a consumer, so when -- not if -- your books are returned (a sad fact about the industry), the distributor then returns them to you.

The well-respected Independent Publishers Group has a new branch called Small Press United (SPU) and, if you're one of the fewer than 20 percent accepted into their program, they will present your book to resellers next to offerings from the mainstream press. Also consider Publishers Group West (PGW) and Baker & Taylor (B&T), the most important distributor to the library market.

Big distribution companies have not been eager to work with self-publishers, but that's changing. Still, it's easiest to get in through membership in the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) or the Small Publishers Association of North America (SPAN). Both are worthwhile organizations for self-publishers thanks to their seminars, advice, discounts, and community.

But don't rule out a smaller distributor who specializes in your niche or genre, especially if you need help with design, editing, e-book conversion, and other tasks in order to publish your book. They may be more dedicated and more effective in providing you with personalized service over the years. As with the self-publishing services companies, you pay these distributors; but since they must maintain a good reputation with booksellers, they carefully vet their authors. Check out IPBA's Distributor/Wholesaler Directory and this list of Top Independent Book Distributors to start.

The downside? You relinquish the opportunity to sell your print book and your e-book direct to the consumer. Measure that benefit against the potential benefits of having hired a sales force, paired with your ongoing promotion efforts, to make your decision to go this route.

POD Distribution With Lightning Source

The newer print-on-demand distribution model works like this: If a brick-and-mortar bookstore customer asks for your book, the bookseller finds it in the ipage Ingram database and places an order. Lightning Source prints it and sends it to the store, where the customer picks it up.

These days, customers are more likely to order from an online reseller, which cuts out the middle step. In this model, the customer orders a book from the online reseller, who sends the request to Lightning Source, who mails the book directly to the customer on the reseller's behalf.

Along with many other advantages, there are fewer returns because booksellers don't have to order several and wait to see if they sell. You don't have to worry about returns with print-on-demand.

POD Distribution With a Self-Publishing Firm

Even the most basic, do-it-yourself self-publishing services companies -- think Lulu, CreateSpace and Wordclay -- offer services that includes an Ingram database listing for your book in your publishing company name. But since booksellers are definitely not flocking to what they consider the vanity presses in order to stock their shelves, make sure the publishing house name on the spine is your own. (See my previous article, The Pitfalls of Using Self-Publishing Book Packages.) They may -- invisibly to you and the customer -- use Lightning Source or another POD subcontractor to print and send it, which is fine, but realize you're paying a little more for this service.

A Middle Path

Before you seek out traditional distribution, you might ask yourself if you really need it. Many authors are more easily served by direct sales and POD distribution of print and e-books. Think of these options, for example:

1. Using your website for direct sales via an online store.
2. Back-of-room sales at personal appearances.
3. Consignment deals with local booksellers and retailers in your niche.
4. Using Lightning Source for both printed books and PDF-formatted e-books sold to stores and online retailers in U.S., Canada and Europe.
5. Using Smashwords and Scribd for e-book sales in many formats for many e-readers (See my previous article for details on How to Pair Scribd and Smashwords for an Ideal E-book Strategy.)

You may be one of the many authors who missed the news that you can get into the Ingram database by printing on-demand with Lightning Source, or the newer news that self-publishing services companies now include this in their packages, too. (Yes, do keep looking for even newer news in this quickly evolving industry.) But do not miss the fact that you are responsible for the marketing and promotion that will create a buzz and sell your book.

The defining fact about traditional distributors is that they vet their work, whereas POD services companies will print and distribute almost anything. A traditional distributor will have opinions. Their reputation is on the line and they want to work with like-minded independent publishers dedicated to success. You should consider them a partner. Until then, an on-demand distribution solution should suffice.

Carla King is a publishing and social media strategist and co-author of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp Workbook, which grew out of experiences leading workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and on her website.

After spending time examining the options available, I've hit upon a combination of two vendors that stands out for ease-of-use, breadth of offerings, and fair pricing structures. The magic combination that works right now is to use Scribd for social publishing, marketing and sales, and Smashwords for sales and aggregation to e-book retailers. Here's a look at how -- and why -- it works.

Scribd

Scribd is an easy place for authors to make finished works and works-in-progress available online to the public, to converse with other authors, and to start collecting a reader fanbase. Scribd does not deliver books to e-book retailers; rather, it offers authors a sales and marketing platform via the growing Scribd community. Scribd is all about "social publishing."

Authors upload documents in any format (PDF, doc, PowerPoint, etc.) that readers can then buy or view free. The documents can be read on the Scribd site in slide, single-page or book mode. Additionally, the reader can download the document to their computer or send it to their mobile device.

What makes it social? A widget lets anyone embed the document on a website. Members add notes to each other's documents, subscribe to each other's documents and posts, and "readcast" what they're reading to friends on other social sites like Facebook and Twitter. Members can also become curators by collecting documents on a topic, from the "Best Fiction of 2009" to "Chinese History," for example. These features and functions can help an author spread their work, interact with readers, and build relationships with other authors. All of which can help promote your e-book.

Tool for Promotion

Author Helen Winslow Black uploaded an e-book version of her paperback, Seven Blackbirds, to sell on Scribd and found it sufficient to use the service as her main tool for book promotion.

"Instead of a blog, I publish articles and then people comment on them and I get feedback," she said. "I have conversations and interchange, and since I signed up [in May of 2008] I have over 58,000 subscribers. Scribd is where everybody goes to read me."

Another reason why Scribd is becoming a good option for authors is that it recently partnered with Blurb, HP MagCloud, and Mimeo to provide a print service for documents, magazines and color books. The book printing service isn't yet ready for prime time -- creating covers is awkward and book sizes are limited -- but the company rolls out new features fast, so don't be surprised to see it improve. You can now turn your e-book into a printed product, should the need arise, but not at the same quality that print-on-demand services like Lightning Source or Lulu provide.

Scribd, which has about 50 million unique visitors a month, has published more books than the entire U.S. publishing industry last year. Their send-to-device service lets readers view documents on the Kindle, Nook, iPhone, Android and other devices, but unlike Smashwords, they are not an official aggregator to e-book retailers. That's why Scribd alone won't fulfil your e-book needs.

Scribd wants to be the hub of publishing. Founder Trip Adler told me their goal "is to make it dead simple for anyone to publish original written works and for readers to discover and share this content." They want "authors to use our social platform as a place to share what they are writing and to connect with other writers and readers, and to get their works in front of consumers when and where they want from any device."

Smashwords

Smashwords is the fastest and easiest place for self-published authors with text-heavy books to distribute their e-book in all formats. You simply upload the text of your book -- no page numbers, no headers or footers -- as instructed in their simple formatting guide.

Mark Coker created Smashwords when he and his wife spent two years attempting to get their own book published. They discovered that "the publishing industry is broken." A longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Coker joked that "the solution to all the world's ills can be solved with technology, so wouldn't it be cool if we created an online publishing platform that would instantly let authors upload and sell books directly?"

"The service works best right now for the vast majority of books -- that is to say, the straight-form narrative," Coker told me. The book needs to be in Microsoft Word format with all the headers and footers stripped out. When you upload your book, you choose the formats to which you want it converted and the Smashwords "meatgrinder" churns them out.

But what if you spent a lot of time and money with a designer to format your book with drop caps and special fonts and dingbats?

"As technology evolves we'll be able to bring back some formatting," he said. "It's hard to ask people to devolve their book. Yes, your print book is gorgeous and that 17th century font you chose is perfect. But in the digital realm you need to liberate your words into reliable, reflowable text that can shape-shift easily across all the different devices."

He said it's important that readers be able to customize a book to match their preferences.

"Readers want to maximize fonts, change fonts," Coker said. "They might prefer pink Ariel font against a carved stone background -- they can do that and they are. It helps to remember that people buy your book for your words. When you give the reader the flexibility to murder your book like that you are actually increasing the value of your book."

There's no cost to sign up with Smashwords' Premium program, but your book formatting has to be just right and it has to have an ISBN. They are an official e-book aggregator (distributor) to many retailers including the Amazon Kindle, and they are the 6th largest aggregator to the Apple iBookstore. (Note that if your book is already for sale with an e-book retailer, for example in the Kindle bookstore, it's best not to offer it via this channel, too. There's no current "rule" but if you confuse Amazon they're likely to drop you.)

If you want to print your book you can use Smashwords affiliate Wordclay, an author services company that competes with Lulu and CreateSpace. It's easy and free, but you'll have to format using their templates or upload a PDF. (See my previous article on self-publishing packages.)

As of April 2010 Smashwords has published over 10,000 e-books. So what's next? "We're just getting started," Coker said. "The next three years will be exciting because we'll see e-books breach 25 percent of the U.S. book market. We want our authors and publishers to get a chunk of that."

Where's the Money?

While Smashwords seems very focused on independent authors and publishers, Scribd clearly has bigger fish to fry. They're wooing that market, too, but are also going after traditional publishing, the general document sharing market, and document management systems for the enterprise.

Both companies take a percentage of book sales: Smashwords 15% and Scribd 20% with a 25-cent transaction fee. When Smashwords aggregates a book to a retailer like Amazon or Apple, the author ends up with about half the cover price. In both cases, a much better financial split than traditional publishing.

Scribd recently made a deal with Author Solutions -- the self-publishing service company that owns iUniverse, Author House, Xlibris, and Wordclay -- to sell their customers' books for 50% of the cover price, and have partnered with over 150 traditional publishers for e-books distribution. They're also giving Issuu and Docstoc a run for their money in the business document sharing space.

In both cases, authors get a better deal than with traditional publishing (not counting the fact they have to do all the work), and since their services don't currently overlap, it's a great pairing for indie authors.

The Indie Author's Strategy

Both of these services are non-exclusive and very easy to use, so you don't have to worry about locking yourself in. If you want to combine them to create your e-book strategy, here's a breakdown of when and how to do what:

1. Sign up with Scribd.
2. Start contributing to the community, post some works-in-progress, comment, "readcast," curate, and collect subscribers.
3. When your e-book is complete, upload it to Scribd for sale.
4. Then go to Smashwords to convert your book into all the available formats.
5. Join the Smashwords Premium program to aggregate your e-book to the Kindle, iBookstore, Sony, Nook, and all the other readers.
6. Subscribe to the mailing lists of both companies to stay informed and take advantage of new features as they roll them out.

Photo of Trip Adler by Spencer Brown

Carla King is a publishing and social media strategist and co-author of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp Workbook, which grew out of experiences leading workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and on her website.

On the surface, this seems much easier than finding and hiring a half-dozen professionals to create your book. (For background on the self-publishing industry and author services companies, please read my previous MediaShift article.) But is it worth it? Below are some of the potential danger zones of working with these services, as exposed by authors who were seduced by the promises of quick and easy self-publishing packages. I also offer some advice about avoiding these pitfalls.

Beware the ISBN Acquisition

Larry Jaffee wants his book back.

"Albert Square & Me: The Actors of EastEnders" is based on 18 years of interviews with actors from the popular BBC show. He chose iUniverse to publish his book because "I was looking for a one-stop shop that would run the interference I needed." He bought their Premier program for $899 (on special from $1099), which included the ISBN and bar code acquisition, and distribution in the U.K. Getting into U.K. wholesalers Bertrams and Gardners was an integral part of his marketing plan, as the 25th anniversary of the show was coming up.

"They even talked me into an additional $699 for a program to handle bookstore returns," he said.

The only problem?

"The U.K. bookstores didn't order it because it was a [print-on-demand] book."

Jaffee is planning a second edition of the title, and he intends to do things differently this time.

"I have over 30 interviews that didn't make it into the first edition, so I'll create a second edition with my own ISBN," he said. He'll probably design the book himself in QuarkXPress, and will hire one of his editors to edit and proofread the work. He is considering an offset printer because he fears that printing with Lightning Source will tag it as a POD book, which the U.K. wholesalers reject. (Jaffee need not worry: Lightning Source is a publisher services company whose business model is based on print and distribution. They do not have the same stigma with resellers.)

How to buy your own ISBN and bar codes: Visit Bowker Identifier Services to purchase a block of 10 ISBNs for under $250. Why 10 and not one? Because they're a lot cheaper in bulk (a single ISBN is $125), and you'll need a new ISBN for each form of the book: print, e-book, audio, new editions and, of course, your next book. Also, if you buy just one, booksellers might figure out that you're a self-published author. You can purchase EAN Bar Codes for each ISBN for $25 on an as-needed basis for your print editions. With your own publishing house name on the book, you can print and distribute offset or print-on-demand or short runs, and booksellers won't lump you in with Lulu, iUniverse, and other POD services.

Great Distribution, Paltry Profits

It's important to realize author services companies do not make their money from selling books -- they make money from convincing authors to buy their services. An author services company sells your book through their program to online resellers like Amazon and in their own online store, and they allow you to buy an inventory of your own book for a set price.

For example, when Jaffee sells "EastEnders" on Amazon, he gets about $2 per book after iUniverse takes their cut. That's an incredibly small payout for a book with a list price of $25.95.

On top of that, author services companies rarely receive orders from brick-and-mortar booksellers, unless a customer specifically orders the book.

When Serena Bartlett published the first "GrassRoutes Travel Guide" with subsidy press Lulu, she was impressed that it immediately appeared online everywhere.

"Lulu is really deeply embedded with the distribution companies," she said, "which I thought was great until I wanted to take my book off Lulu and create my own company, maximizing profits with a 'real' distribution deal." (Bartlett eventually made a deal with Sasquatch Books.)

How to get great distribution and a nice profit margin: Get a DBA name and publish your book with your own company name and logo. (Be sure to choose a name that doesn't scream "self-publisher.") Booksellers, distributors and readers are not likely to notice, or care, as long as your book is produced professionally and you have a great website and social media presence. From there, join the Amazon Advantage program to sell your book directly through Amazon.com, or sign up with Lightning Source to get listed in the Ingram database. Sign their print and e-book distribution contracts for U.S., U.K., and Canadian online and brick-and-mortar resellers. If your book is of very high quality and you have a great marketing plan, you can apply for bookstore distribution with a reputable company like Small Press United. You will ship a large number of offset print books to them (the best price breaks occur at 1,000 and 2,500 copies), and they will handle all domestic (U.S.) distribution for you. These channels will all take a 55 percent cut on the retail price, but when you sell your book through your website and personal appearances you receive 100 percent of the cover price.

Print-On-Demand: The Proof is in the Price

Many POD author services companies outsource their printing jobs to the lowest bidder. The result is a lack of quality control. When Bartlett published "GrassRoutes" with Lulu, she was delighted with the ease of the process but said "the print quality was awful. Guidebooks are used -- they're opened and closed and bump around in backpacks. Pages fell out, bindings cracked, covers curled."

Lisa Alpine, a member of my Wild Writing Women group, is a book-birthing coach and author of the upcoming anthology, "Exotic Life: Laughing Rivers, Dancing Drums and Tangled Hearts." She advises using Lulu or CreateSpace only for printing cheap proofs.

"Proofs can cost up to $75 from print companies, but I upload my latest PDF to Lulu, click the print button, and get a copy of my latest experiment in the mail for under $10," she said. "It's an affordable way to learn, to play with the design, fonts, even the order of my stories."

How to print a proof, a short run, get a good POD contract, and a quantity in offset: Use POD author services companies with no upfront costs like Lulu or CreateSpace to print proofs only (do not include the ISBN and barcode). When you're sure of your product, print a small inventory with a reputable short run printer like 48HrBooks (100 minimum), and sign up to print and distribute with Lightning Source, which can take a while, as a representative will need to walk you through the process. When you're ready to print 1,000 copies at a time, find a reputable offset printer. Both Alpine and Bartlett chose Transcontinental. "They're printed on 100 percent recycled paper, have great service, excellent quality, and are priced very competitively," said Alpine. Jaffee may go the same route, but in the meantime he's stuck with the iUniverse contract: He pays $10 per book for a minimum quantity of 500 books.

Marketing and Publicity: More Than a Press Release

Many author services packages that include promotion and marketing cost between $1,500 and $15,000. Karen Leland, a San Francisco Bay Area book publicist and president of Sterling Marketing Group, said clients often come to her on the verge of tears after paying an exorbitant amount of money for just one press release sent to traditional media channels with no results.

"While the best publicist in the world can't guarantee which publication, blog, radio or TV show will run with a review of an author's book, or interview them as an expert, there are certain things a dedicated publicist can do to customize the PR campaign and improve the odds the writer will get picked up by media," she said. "The problem with the generic approach author services companies take is that it's 'one size fits all.' That rarely produces the best results."

How to build your platform and choose a promotion professional: Leland recommends you start promotion activities as many as two years before your book is published. This builds your platform. These activities include getting a website, blogging and taking advantage of social media and networking tools. If you're going to hire a publicist, request a detailed plan that includes the specific projects that will be part of the campaign, the timeline for delivering on these projects, what you as the author are expected to provide to the publicist, and the process by which the publicist will keep you updated on the progress of your campaign. And be sure to ask them to provide other authors as references.

Editing and Design: Big Investment, Big Payoff

The book interior and cover design tools author services companies provide are very easy to use, but they're also proprietary. You have to start all over again if you want to move your book to another company. Also, if you're paying for their design and editing services, remember that their business model is to sell services to authors, not to make your book the next big bestseller.

"It's a crapshoot," said Joel Friedlander, a professional book designer who has spent time correcting bad book covers and interior designs that suffer from poor font choices, inadequate margins, and poorly thought out images. "I have a book from CreateSpace on my desk with the odd page numbers on the left, the even ones on the right, set completely in Times and Times Bold. What a disaster! These companies lead you to believe that you're getting a professional-looking book when all they are selling you is a paint-by-the-numbers standard template that may be completely inappropriate for your book's intended market. It brands the author as an amateur, or worse, incompetent. Find a designer who will respect your work, treat you as an individual, and give you a book that you can proudly sell against the best books on the shelf."

Lisa Alpine's search for a copy editor turned up many who replied to her carefully spelled-out requirements with an email stating, "I'd love to take a look at your book!" and no details on pricing or process. The editor she hired was "the only candidate who professionally returned a price sheet with clear descriptions of the various levels of editing with prices clearly stated for services from proofreading to conceptual editing."

She hired her to edit one chapter to see if their personalities fit.

"The working relationship between editor and author is so close," said Alpine,"that it's essential you're on the same page, so to speak." This is also true for working with designers. Alpine hired Lyn Bishop to consult with her on the cover for "Exotic Life," though she also did part of the work herself since she's competent in Photoshop.

How to get great editing and design: Take a look at Friedlander's articles about book design to get an idea of the complexity of design. For cover design trends, peruse the Book Design Review blog, (though be aware that it was recently put on hiatus). Find an editor by asking around at local writing and publishing organizations, and by asking online groups. Get recommendations and clarity on pricing, and start with one chapter to make sure you're compatible. Print proofs and commit to perfection.

More and more people with serious ambitions for their book are realizing that author services companies aren't necessarily the place to go. More people are starting their own businesses and professionally producing their own books.

In terms of working with consultants, remember that paid professionals are as proud of their work as you are of your own, and they're a joy to collaborate with. For book authors this is, luckily, the more rewarding choice.

"I really savor each step in the process, and getting involved so I don't have to be stressed out and mystified," said Alpine. "You know, we used to throw manuscripts to a publisher and hope for the best. I think it's a real privilege to be able to have control of your own book."

Carla King is a publishing and social media strategist and co-author of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp Workbook, which grew out of experiences leading workshops for prospective self-publishers. She has self-published non-fiction travel and how-to books since 1994. Her series of dispatches from motorcycle misadventures around the world are available as print books, e-books and on her website.