The Adventures of an Independent Author

How To Create Fixed-Layout iBooks, Part 5

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:14:25 PST

Now that you have a page created for your iBook file you'll need to tell the reading application what to do with it. This requires three separate files to accomplish, but you'll only need to make them once, and then add in additional information for each new page that you create.

THE CSS FILE

The first of these is the css formatting data for the content on the page. In the sample template you'll actually find two style sheets, one named styles and the other page02. If each page in your fixed-layout ebook contains similar formatting for the text you can just create one css file and reuse it for every page. But chances are if you're doing a graphic novel or illustrated book with complex text layouts you'll need to make a different one for every page, as I have done in mine.

However, there will still be certain elements that will apply to every page, such as the page size and full page art positioning. If you open up the styles.css file here's what you'll find:

body {
width: 738px;
height: 985px;
margin: 0;
padding:0;
}

img {
z-index: -1;
width: 738px;
height: 985px;
position: absolute;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
top: 0;
left: 0;
}

This is about a basic a css file as you'll ever see, and more often there will be a whole lot of other stuff in here, providing overall defaults for text styling and placement. For example, you will usually include your chapter header styles and a base paragraph style for the main body text, plus any special formatting you might use in your book, as well as embedded font information and the like. But I decided to save that discussion for the text section instead. For now we'll just set some general defaults for the document.

1. The "body" element

The "body" element defines the page size once again, so these need to match the pixel dimensions you enter in the page content html. This is a bit redundant, but required. The body element specifically defines the overall "container" that will hold your content.

It's also a good idea to set the default margins and padding to "0" just to give you a clean slate to work on. I'll talk about this more when we get to adding text, but in order to fill a page with and image edge to edge you need to remove any margins that might be set by the reading system. Since we're working with one specific program and a limited range of platforms here this isn't really an issue. But in a web based reader, for example, the browser will often add some default settings you don't want, such as base font size and spacing and whatnot. You can zero all that here, but the only one you really need to worry about right now is margin spacing. This way you can add your own margins later when we get to text without having to account for any additional defaults imposed upon your content by the reader.

2. The "img" element

One of the fundamental aspects of a fixed-layout ebook is the ability to precisely place images, and to overlay them with text, or even other artwork. Additionally, fixed-layout allows you to completely fill the page with art, with no white space surrounding it at all. This is called "full-bleed" in the print industry, due to the fact that the image is printed slightly larger than the final size, with some of it bleeding past the borders in order to ensure it reaches to the edge when cropped. Here, of course, your image will be exactly the size you make it.

The "z-index" is how you place your page elements in the vertical stack, with "0" being the default. Thus, in order to place your artwork behind the text, you simply drop it down one level by assigning a negative value to the img element. You could, of course, add a positive number to the text layer instead (or in addition), but since there will generally be only one background image, but a lot of text, it's easier just to change the img default to -1. You can then add other layers above this by stacking them in the css for each page.

Again, you need to enter your page dimensions here if you want to create full-bleed backgrounds, and zero out your margin and padding, as well as top and left positioning. You'll also see a "position" element set to "absolute" here, which allows us to place our images exactly using pixel references rather than placement relative to other elements. All your content can now be precisely positioned simply by giving the number of pixels vertically from the top or the bottom, and the number of pixels from either the left or right. Generally you'll use top and left, but sometimes it's easier to work out placement from the nearest edge.

In order to completely fill the page with art, you simply create an image with the same dimensions as the page (such as our cover art) and it will now be placed by default in the upper left corner at "0,0" and fill up the entire page.

You now have a completed cover page with both content and css. But we still have to tell the system how to find these files and when to display them, and this requires two additional pieces to our puzzle.

THE .NCX FILE

The toc.ncx file is a navigation control xml document which, as the name suggests, tells the reading system how to navigate the file. In this respect it functions as the table of contents for the file, and this is where the elements that make up the functional table of contents come from, that is, the one that shows up in the iBooks drop-down box in the upper menu bar and allows you to jump to another section of the book.

You can also include an actual table of contents as one of your html pages, complete with internal links, but these are generally less useful since you have to navigate to it first before going where you really want to. In addition, illustrated works such as graphic novels and children's books don't commonly employ tables of contents in the standard sense, although heavily formatted fixed-layout ebooks such as textbooks or travel guides will certainly want them.

But either way you will want to (and are in fact required to) include at least a few basic waypoints in the ncx, in particularly the cover and first page of actual story content. It's a good idea to at least put in chapter markers as well for every major section of the book.

If you open up the toc.ncx in the sample template you'll see the standard xml declaration/encoding data that we'll discussed before, followed by a new set of references:

<!DOCTYPE ncx PUBLIC "-//NISO//DTD ncx 2005-1//EN" "http://www.daisy.org/z3986/2005/ncx-2005-1.dtd">

<ncx xmlns="http://www.daisy.org/z3986/2005/ncx/" version="2005-1" xml:lang="en">

The ePub format is actually an amalgamation of several earlier specifications that have been modified and developed through the years, with the .ncx being an artifact from the original accessibility functions inserted by the Daisy consortium to assist users with sensory or mobility impairments. Thus, the ncx doctype and namespace references point to the daisy.org site for their functionality. You don't need to know what any of this means, but just be aware of it and make sure to add it in.

1. The <head> element

The head element contains the document type definition (DTD), a name that is wholly unsuited to its function, as nowhere do you actually define the document type within it, or even within this file. There are four lines of meta data that do need to be included here, however, even though only the first two actually apply to ebooks at all.

<meta name="dtb:uid" content="0"/>

Every ebook requires a "unique identifier" (uid) to set it apart as a separate digital document, not just from all the other ebooks out there, but as a specific version of this document. You will need to replace the "0" content element here with your own identifier. This can be virtually anything, really, from a website url devoted to this book, to a version number string that includes enough data code (title, author, date, etc) to make it unique to any other ebook.

You can also generate a uid code using a web-based resource such as UUIDGEN, which will create a random string based on such factors as your IP address and the date and time. You will also enter this code in the content.opf we will create next, and the two must match.

<meta name="dtb:depth" content="1"/>

This is the only element that actually applies to the table of contents, and simply defines the number of levels in the toc hierarchy. For works of fiction this will almost always be "1" for simple chapter sections, but for non-fiction works there can be several levels of subsections within each chapter. Add one additional number for each subheading you'll be using.

<meta name="dtb:totalPageCount" content="0"/>
<meta name="dtb:maxPageNumber" content="0"/>

These last two are left over from physical print book metadata and are not relevant in ebooks generally, since the number of pages in reflowable ebooks varies greatly depending on the display screen and chosen font size. However, since fixed-layout ebooks do have a specific number of pages, you could enter that information here if you so choose. I'm not sure it will be used anywhere, but as this is metadata it might conceivably be included one day in the iBooks retail page listings for fixed-layout ebooks, so that potential purchasers can know how long the ebook is. This seems quite useful information to me, and since the metadata can be entered one would like to think it might be used.

The "totalPageCount" is the overall number of pages in the file, including front matter and appendices, whereas "maxPageNumber" would be the actual count of numbered pages, minus ancillary material.

2. The <docTitle> element

Here is one of the two places you'll enter the title of your magnum opus. The other is in the content.opf, and the two must match. Enter it as you want it to be listed.

3. The <navMap> element

The "navigation map" section is where you insert the entries in your table of contents, entering "navigation points" for each item you want to show up in the iBooks drop-down menu. Here we have just two, corresponding to the two main elements in our sample template, the cover and first page:

<navMap>

<navPoint id="navPoint-1" playOrder="1">
<navLabel><text>Cover</text></navLabel>
<content src="cover.xhtml#cover"/>
</navPoint>

  <navPoint id="navPoint-2" playOrder="2">
   <navLabel><text>Chapter 1</text></navLabel>
   <content src="page02.xhtml"/>
  </navPoint>

</navMap>

Each navPoint has an id which can be anything, but a simple numbered order is most practical. The playOrder element is what tells the device how to list the entries, although entering them here in any other order than the way you intend them to show up would be simply idiotic, not to mention confusing.

Within the <navLabel><text> element enter the text you want to appear in the table of contents list, exactly as you want it to show up (i.e. capitalized and spelled correctly for those of you who communicate by text these days).

Finally, the content src references the content file you create for that page. You can wait until all you content is created to make the .ncx file, or you can add them one by one, which you might want to do in order to test the file as you progress. It's also often easier to do it bit by bit to keep from getting thoroughly confused.

To create subheadings within the table of contents (as specified in the metadata depth element), you would simply add them below their parent entry, but before the parent entry's closing tag. So, for example, if you want a second level element beneath the Chapter 1 entry, start a new navPoint entry after the <content src="page02.xhtml"/> line, but before the following </navMap> closing tag. You can create as many nested levels as you like this way, so long as you specify the number of levels in the metadata section.

Lastly, you can create table of content entries for mid-page subheadings using fragment references which point to anchors in your document, by adding references after the name of the content source file, such as: ..."page02.xhtml#section2"/>. Of course, you'll need to be sure to add the proper anchor at the specified location in the document, as in <a href="section2>Section Header Title</a>.

[By the way, you might notice an error in the template .ncx here where I used copy and paste to create the second navPoint entry rather than typing it out again, but neglected to delete the #cover anchor, which I had only added as an example, since you would never actually use one there]

And that completes your toc.ncx file. At least until you create more content, that is.

NEXT UP: The Content.opf File

How to Create Fixed-Layout iBooks, Part 4

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:00:06 PST

So finally we get to put some content in our book! The first thing you must know is that in fixed-layout ebooks there must be a separate file for every single page. Because you'll be placing all your content precisely, you must define the area in which you will be working. This is why deciding on the size and shape of the page is so important, and here is where I'll show you how to do it. In addition, every page must be the same size and shape. Only their content will be different.

In this part we'll create the first page you'll likely want to make, which is the cover. Whereas in Kindle ebooks you are discouraged from including the actual cover image in the file, adding it instead during the upload process, in iBooks you must include it yourself.

Since the cover is generally a single full page image with the title text included it will make an ideal introduction into how to create a fixed-layout page. You can, of course, add the titles and any other text as a separate layer, but we'll save that for later and only focus on the artwork here.

I should mention that Apple frowns on using images that include text, requiring that any text within the ebook be created as an active layer. This is so that functions such as dictionary definitions, searches, highlighting, text-to-speech, or any other accessibility features be fully functional. Otherwise there would be no difference between the basic fixed-layout format and a standard pdf. However, this requirement does not apply to outer covers, or to title pages or other places where highly customized text is desired. Bear this in mind in your textual choices.

THE FIXED-LAYOUT PAGE

If you open up the template cover.xhtml file in your editor of choice, you'll see something like the following:

The first few lines provide our language declaration, and note that here we include an additional encoding statement which defines the document as using the "UTF-8" character set. There is also a DOCTYPE declaration which defines the file language as html, and provides the necessary referents.

Finally, there is an xml:lang statement defining the coding language as being written in English. This, of course, assumes you're an English speaker writing for an English audience, which I'll also assume since you're reading this. All of your html files should be encoded with this set as shown. Just copy and paste it as is.

THE HEAD ELEMENT

The next section is where you define the characteristics of the page, and link to the style sheet you'll use to format the page contents.

1. meta name="viewport"

Apple uses a feature called the "viewport" in iBooks to define the actual size of a page. This is not necessarily the size of the iPad display itself, although it can be. As I discussed at great length in the last part, your content is best created at a larger size than the actual iPad screen, for several reasons. Foremost this is so that users can zoom the image up to view more detail, such as reading smaller print. But also as I mentioned so the ebook doesn't become obsolete as soon as a higher resolution screen comes out.

That said, you are certainly free to make your book in any size and shape you wish. If you want to keep your file sizes small and have no need or wish for anyone to zoom your pages larger than the iPad screen, then create each page at the default resolution, as I discussed before, so that a single page will fill the screen in portrait orientation without being zoomed. Don't make each single page the size it will appear in a two-page spread in landscape orientation, because the iPad will zoom it up automatically to fill the screen when viewed as a single page in portrait orientation, and it will look like garbage. But the larger image will look just fine when shrunk to fit beside its opposing page in a two-page spread.

Whatever size you decide on, enter it on the first line here in the "width" and "height" attributes, where the numbers shown are the exact number of pixels that define the size of your page.

2. meta content="text/html"

This may seem a little bit redundant, since you've already given this information above, but here it refers to the actual content of the page and not the coding language of the document. Or so I've been told. Just put it in.

3. <title>

This is utterly pointless, since it doesn't show up anywhere. In fixed-layout ebooks there is no actual header in the upper margin (or footers for page numbers either, by the way, so you'll have to put those in yourself if you want them - see my Ring Saga sample chapter for an example). I imagine this is what that was meant to be, but as I said it won't appear anywhere, so you can put whatever you like there. Use it as a way to describe the page contents if you like, of put some jokes in for curious ebookworms. It really doesn't matter. I'm not even sure it needs to be there, but I haven't tested it.

4. link href=

This is the other line that really matters, as it tells the reading system where to find the formatting information for this page. That data is kept in a separate CSS file, and only the actual page content is located here. CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is a "stylesheet" as the last element declares, which we'll get to shortly. You can create one and put all your formatting information in it, or make a separate one for every page, or even both, but any formatting that needs to be applied to this page must be referenced here.

The href= element is the only one you'll need to change, as it must specify the location of the specific style sheet you want to apply to the content of this page. Beat in mind that the css file location is relative to where this page is, so if you've put the html page file and its css file in the same folder all you have to do is list the file name. But if the css is in a separate folder, as in the example, then the relative path must be given. If they're in separate folders, start the line with ".../" which tells the OS to start looking at the root level (such as ".../css/styles.css" for example).

Obviously, we haven't created any css files yet, so just give it a name that makes sense and use that name when we get to that point. Or leave it as is and come back to change it later.

THE BODY ELEMENT

Now at last we get to the heart of the matter. The body container holds the actual content of the page, and it's written just like any standard website using html. You'll want to know at least the basics of html, but you don't need a lot. There are hundreds of thousands of quick reference guides out there on the web for free. You can open up ebooks and look at the code it's made of to learn how specific things are done. But for now we'll just keep things simple.

1. <div id="cover">

All we want on this cover page is a single image, so our body only has one element, contained within the <div> tags. Normally you'll just call up the divider using <div> all by itself, closing it with </div> after your content. But in order for your cover image to show up as a thumbnail on your iBookshelf you need to add the id="cover" element and attribute. We'll reference this elsewhere - in the content.opffile - and this is where that file reference will find what it's looking for.

2. <img ...

Since all that's on this page is the cover image, chances are you'll want that image to fill the entire page from edge to edge. To do so, all you need to do is create or resize that image to the exact dimensions of the viewport size you chose for your book.

To insert the image into the page, you call it up using the <img tag, followed by that file's location, or "source" (src), which you reference just as you did for your (currently nonexistent) css file. Technically, the image file is nonexistent as well, as I haven't told you to put it in the image folder yet. But you can do that now, or any time you like. The template already has folders for images, css, and fonts as well. You can just drag and drop yours into the appropriate one, and then delete the other.

Warning! If you delete the only file in a folder, it will delete the folder too, so put your image in there first before deleting the ones you don't want. Of course, you can recreate the folder, but I just thought I'd mention it to save you time.

3. alt=

The text you enter into the "alt" element is usually what you would see pop up if you were to hover a mouse over this image. Of course, the iPad has no mouse, and as cannot hover your finger to make this happen, what you write here will never show up anywhere. However, it is used to vocally describe image content to visually impaired readers who are using verbal accessibility features. So give some thought to what you put here. Most people don't, and I imagine it's a great annoyance to those who would enjoy a bit more information than "front cover". It's unlikely very many visually impaired readers will be avid graphic novel fans, but you never know. I haven't done any research on those statistics, so it's probably best to hedge your bets and add a little something extra. That said, it is required to put something there, but what is left entirely up to you. At any rate, that's what "alt" is for.

You can now save your file and close it down. Be sure you've added the closing tags at the end or you'll get some nasty error messages upon loading the file into iBooks. Chances are you'll miss some of these (I always do), and it will be a pain to go back in and fix them, so just take a moment now to look the file over before moving on.

Congratulations! You have just created the cover for your book. Unfortunately, the file will not yet load successfully into iBooks, as you have no css, and you're still missing two other crucial files. We'll focus on those next so that you can start to get your work in progress functional enough to have a look at what you've got.

NEXT UP: The CSS File

How to Create Fixed-Layout iBooks, Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:44:56 PST

Before we can continue building our fixed-layout ebook we'll need some content to put in there. This is, of course, the reason we're here undertaking this project, so I would presume you already have something you want to make an ebook out of, and as we're focusing on fixed-layout format you've likely got some heavy art to include. First, however, you must understand the nature of the medium that you'll be working in.

In standard ebooks the size and placing of elements onscreen can change, which makes everything relative to everything else. But in fixed-layout ebooks everything is...well... fixed, and consequently the size and position of every element is absolute. In order to place those elements accurately, therefore, you must know precisely where you want them to be and how to put them there. This will require a slightly technical explanation, so bear with me for a moment.

DISPLAY RESOLUTION

The current iPad screens contain 1024x768 pixels at a resolution of 132 pixels per inch. However, the pixel density of 132 is irrelevant since the total number of pixels is fixed. In print, a resolution of 100 pixels per inch would make a 1000x1000 pixel image print out at 10" x 10" square, whereas a resolution of 200 pixels per inch would make that exact same image print at only 5" x 5". But on a fixed digital screen both images will appear exactly the same, although a higher resolution image will generally look crisper since the original art will tend to have more detail.

The iPhone4S and iPod Touch have a screen resolution of 960x640 pixels at 326 pixels per inch. With nearly three times the density of pixels, the smaller screen has nearly as many total pixels (614,400) as the larger, but lower resolution iPad (786,432 total), even though the iPhone display is only 3.5" and the iPad nearly three times that at 9.7". This is why the smaller screen has the ability to display almost as much detailed content as the larger one.

To make matters worse, resolution will continue to increase until the larger tablet screens reach the pixel density of the smaller ones. Fortunately for us, 326 pixels per inch is pretty much the upper limit of the human eye's ability to discern individual details, so increasing pixel density further would be pointless. But when the iPad's 9.7" screen reaches the iPhone's level, its total pixel area will be 2529x1897 for a massive total of 4,797,513 pixels, every one of which you'll need to fill with content and color.

Now, some of those pixels can be duplicated, so that, for example, one pixel in a 1024x768 image created today will be displayed by a 4 pixel square in the 264-ppi 2048x1536 display rumored to be coming on the iPad 3 due out this April. Theoretically, the image should look pretty much the same, although in fact it will be zoomed and pixelated and somewhat fuzzy by comparison, since that 1024x768 image will only fill the middle of a screen with four times as many pixels (twice as many wide, and twice as many high), and it will be the display processor that calculates what color to make those extra pixels, not you. Crisp edges will become fuzzy where black meets white and the display logically selects three shades of gray as a compromise for the three new pixels it must fill in.

More importantly, these are all pixels that could contain more detail and present a clearer, crisper image. For this reason it is recommended that you always create artwork at the highest resolution possible to future-proof your hard work against the higher resolution screens that are surely coming. In the iBookstore Asset Guide Apple themselves recommend using images that are "at least twice their intended display size" for this reason, as well as enabling users to zoom in to see more detail.

FILE SIZE LIMITS

Complicating matters are two further issues we must take into consideration. First is Apple's two million pixel limit for each individual image. This is apparently not a hard and fast rule, but images larger than this may not display properly, or cause the iBooks app to crash. Given this restriction, the largest single image size legally allowable in the iPad's 4:3 aspect ratio would be 1224x1633, a total of 1,998,792 pixels. Of course, you can place more than one of these on a page, and two of them side by side makes up a full landscape spread. But this brings up our next consideration, which is total file size.

Since .epub files use .zip compression in their packaging, they must adhere to the zip archive's current 2 Gb limit, and this is a hard and fast rule which cannot be broken. Now, two gigs is a pretty enormous file, so there's really not a lot of concern here. But as files get bigger and enhanced ebooks include more content, it becomes increasingly possible this limit might be reached, particularly if a lot of video is embedded. The 28 images included in my Ring Saga sample chapter bring its total size to over 24 Mb - a long way off from two gigs, but it's only one chapter of a proposed 450-500 page project, each page of which is roughly 1 Mb at a quality setting of 10 in Photoshop. More compression can, of course, bring these file sizes down, and may be necessary for the final complete ebook. But where quality is concerned, the less compression the better. It's a compromise each ebook artist will have to make for themselves. And if screen resolution continues to increase, even these image sizes will be too small.

The bottom line is that when you're creating high quality artwork for a graphic novel or illustrated ebook with full-page images, you should ideally create them as close to the two million pixel limit as possible and work from there. I create my original artwork at upwards of 4000x3000 pixels or so and then shrink to fit. The iPad, by the way, automatically resizes larger images to fit the screen, in whichever orientation it's being viewed. You can double-tap to view full screen, or pinch and zoom to view the image at full size.

ACTUAL IPAD SCREEN SIZE

Although the iPad's total screen size is 1024x768, Apple's "recommended page size" in the Asset Guide is only 985x738, due to space taken up by the faux book pages and menus. Consequently, this is the size I've used in the template to give you the official example. However, since the upper and lower menus go away (leaving blank space above and below the pages), if you want to completely fill a horizontal view with a two-page spread, the actual optimized page size you should use is 1024x682, or increments thereof. At this aspect ratio, the maximum image size within the two million pixel limit would be 1732x1154 (1,998,728 pixels).

Recent updates have included the option to turn off the faux book borders in standard iBooks editions, via the font display menu, but since this menu is not available in fixed-layout iBooks, the faux book pages are there whether you want them or not. This may change at some point down the line, of course, particularly seeing that the new .ibooks format no longer has them (although they may just be turned off in the few textbooks I've looked at). But for the time being, you'll want to take them into consideration when creating your art layouts, as I have done above, since removing them will slightly alter the full page aspect ratio.

SPANNING IMAGES

Fixed-layout iBooks actually allow you to use a single image to fill a two-page spread by spanning the image across the pages. However, given all I've just said I highly recommend against this, since Apple's pixel limit only applies to each individual image. If you use one image to fill two pages, you have effectively cut the maximum size of your artwork in half, with only one million pixels per page. This is still enough to fill up the pages currently, but only just, and tomorrow it will look like crap. Additionally, it's a whole lot of extra effort and confusion to format for no real good reason. It is vastly easier to cut an image precisely in half in Photoshop than to span it across two pages. You have to create two separate page files either way, and the seams match up perfectly. This is what I've done in the Ring Saga sample, so have a look at that as an example.

However, in the interest of giving you a full range of options, I'll include the information anyway, as there may be occasions when it could be handy. For example, if a smaller image runs across two pages of, say, a magazine-style layout, or a travel guide or some such, particularly since this would allow you to adjust the image placement without having to go back in to Photoshop and crop it up again.

But I won't get into that just yet. First we'll build some single pages.

NEXT UP: Creating Your Cover

How to Create Fixed-Layout iBooks, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:51:49 PST

Today we'll be tearing apart an ePub file to look at what's inside, and then starting at the top and working our way down the list of contents one by one. If you haven't downloaded the free template file yet, then do so now, as I'll be using it to describe the contents of a standard iBooks file. You can also download my Ring Saga sample chapter and have a look inside if you want to see a somewhat more complex file. It's encryption-free, so you can open it up and look at all the content.

OPENING THE FILE

As I mentioned previously, an iBooks file is just a slightly modified .epub, which itself is just a .zip archive with the extension changed. Consequently, you can open an .epub the same way you open any .zip file. You can either change the .epub extension back to .zip if you want to, or you can just right-click on the .epub and select "Extract" or "Open with" whatever zip program you use. I recommend 7-Zip, which lets you modify the contents of an .epub without changing the extension or extracting the files. You can also just drag and drop new files into it, and delete ones that are in there. Other compression programs might do this too, but I haven't tried them, so you're on your own there.

The other program you'll want is Notepad++, or something similar which has numbered lines and search/replace functions. Don't use Windows Notepad as it doesn't have these features and will totally garble your files. You can use any webpage builder you might have, such as Dreamweaver or whatnot, but since you'll be opening and closing it a lot and often, you'll want something that loads and opens files quickly. Whichever editor you choose, be sure to add it as the default editor in 7-Zip (Tools / Options / Editor) so that you can right-click and select "edit" to open compressed files in the editor without extracting the files.

THE FILE STRUCTURE

When you look inside the template, what you'll see at the root level is one file and two folders (whose contents I'll also disclose here for a complete overview of where we're going:

mimetype
/META-INF/
container.xml

com.apple.ibooks.display-options.xml

/OEBPS/

/css/

page02.css

styles.css

/fonts/

Storybook.ttf

/images/

bookpage.jpg

cover.jpg

content.opf
cover.xhtml
page01.xhtml
page02.xhtml
toc.ncx

This is the basic ePub file structure, all of which must be in an iBooks file (except for the custom font), although the names of the content files themselves can be unique to your book project, with the exception of the META-INF folder and its contents, which must be named exactly as shown. And of course there will likely be a whole lot of additional files in there before you're done, possibly including a few varieties not listed here. But more on that later. First things first...

THE MIMETYPE FILE

The mimetype file tells the reading system what type of file it's looking at. If you right-click and select "edit" to open this file you'll see a single line of text:

application/epub+zip

This tells the device's operating system that the file is an epub/zip archive, which tells it a lot about it's structure that the contents are compressed. You can create this file from scratch in your editor, but you can also just use this one, as they're mostly all the same. The new .ibooks files have a new mimetype:

application/x-ibooks+zip

which I imagine tells the iBooks application to apply a whole new set of rules to the contents. This also technically makes it no longer an epub file, although the general structure is pretty much the same. As an experiment I changed my Ring Saga mimetype to this and loaded it into iBooks. The file opened with the super-cool new hardback cover animation, but there wasn't anything else inside, so I've got some work to do yet in figuring that out. I'll let you know when I work it out. But from this we can discern that one of those new rules is that .ibooks files get the nice new glossy hardback cover!

If you choose to create your own mimetype file there are three stipulations you must observe:

1. The mimetype file must not be compressed or encrypted
2. There must be nothing else in the file but the one line of text
3. It must be the first file in the zip archive

The best way to achieve these requirements is to create a zip archive with just the mimetype file in it, using no compression when you add it, and then to add in all the other files later, with compression. Encryption is an issue I won't even begin to get into here.

THE CONTAINER FILE

Like the mimetype file, the container.xml must be named exactly that. In addition, it must be in a folder named META-INF, so that the OS knows where to find it. The sole function of the container file is to tell the device where to find the .opf (which seems a somewhat redundant step if you ask me). Looking inside the container.xml file here is what you'll see:

This is the first of many files where we need to explain some things to the computer so it understands what we're saying and what to do with the information.

The first two lines are declarations, stating what language we're speaking and giving a namespace reference (xmlns), which is a specific set of operating rules, more or less:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<container version=1.0" xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container">

Within this is contained the rootfile path, which as I said tells the system where to look for the file that contains a listing of the ebook's contents, and what type of file that is:

<rootfile full-path="OEBPS/content.opf" media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"/>

Looking at our file structure above, you'll see that the content.opf is in the OEBPS folder, just like our path data says here. This file can actually be anywhere and named anything you like, so long as you say so here. The media-type, however, must read exactly as given, since it describes the target's file type, which is an Open eBook Publication Structure (OEBPS) package written in eXtensible Markup Language (XML). We'll talk about the .opf itself later. Be sure to include both the </rootfiles> and </container> closing tags as shown in the image.

THE COM.APPLE FILE

This is a file completely unique to Apple's iBooks, which consists of a set of display options that tell iOS devices how to present the content. I've included all of the triggers that I am aware of in the template file, along with some notes (in green) giving the allowable choices. However, the only ones required are these:

<display_options>
<platform name="*">
<option name="fixed-layout">true</option>
</platform>
</display_options>

The platform name "*" means all devices, with the only two other options being either "iphone" for handheld devices only (including the ipod touch) or "ipad" for tablet only content. This allows you to specify different display options for different platforms. I'll give an example using the remaining options:

<display_options>
<platform name="*">
<option name="fixed-layout">true</option>
<option name="specified-fonts">true</option>
</platform>
<platform name="ipad">
<option name="open-to-spread">true</option>
<option name="orientation-lock">landscape-only"</option>
<option name="interactive">true</option>
</platform>
</display_options>

So here we have one set of options that apply to all platforms and three that apply only to the ipad. This would create an ebook with a fixed-layout and custom fonts on all devices, but which would only open as a spread on the ipad, and only in landscape mode, and which would have its interactive content disabled on handheld devices (since "true" is only chosen for the iPad and "false" is the default).

Most of these have "true/false" choices, with "false" as the default. Taking them one by one:

"fixed-layout" [true/false] - this must be set to "true" for any of what we're about to do to work. This is the tag that tells iBooks to use fixed-layout properties, and so is required.
"specified-fonts" [true/false] - you can embed your own fonts into your ebook if you want something beyond what's offered on the ipad, although you must have the appropriate rights to do so. More on this when we get into the fonts folder.
"open-to-spread" [true/false] - this tells iBooks whether or not to open to a full two-page spread or zoom to a single page size, and is set to "false" by default. However, "false" does not mean you'll see only that single page, but that the starting page will be zoomed to its largest possible height or width, with the opposing page content flowing beyond the edges of the frame. Depending on the size of your book's pages you may see most, if not all, of a two page spread in non-spread mode, particularly in landscape orientation. And most unfortunately, for a cover image the left page will still appear, it will just be blank. This has been fixed in the new .ibooks format, but here there is no way to have just the cover itself appear, nor is there a way to place rear cover content on that blank left page. See my Ring Saga sample for my work around to that. With this option set to "true" you'll see the full two-page spread no matter which way you turn the device. Which brings us to...
"orientation-lock" [portrait-only/landscape-only/none] - this allows you to choose just one orientation in which your ebook can be viewed, which can be beneficial if your book has odd sized pages (such as a photo album with pages wider than they are tall), or you're aiming for handheld-only devices only where you might want single pages viewed in portrait mode only.
"interactive" [true/false] - this is an option which allows scripted content to be added and made active. Again, "false" is the default setting, so you must tell it if you're adding scripted content such as java or canvas. This does not apply to anything that's inherent in iBooks itself, such as pinch-and-zoom or tapping and swiping, but only to more complex content such as finger-painting or movable images that require scripted code.

As mentioned, aside from the "fixed-layout" option itself, you only need to add in others if they apply to your book. Just leave out the rest. But this gives you some leverage in how your work is presented to the world, which can make a lot of difference.

So that's it for the META-INF folder. There are other files that can find there way in here, but none you'll need to mess with, as they mainly involve encryption controls. Some ebooks will put in manifest and metadata files here, but those are best left in the .opf where they belong (and are required). These are all you'll need for now, and that's as far as we'll be going for the moment.

NEXT UP: Creating Your Content

Call for Beta Readers! Rhinegold, Chapter 1 - iBooks Edition

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:04:56 PST

For anyone with an iPad who is interested, you can now download the opening chapter of my illustrated novel project The Curse of the Rhinegold in fixed layout format for iBooks. The file is available for free for a limited time, so get your copy now before it's gone.

The story is based on Richard Wagner's opera The Ring of the Nibelung, which is itself based on old Norse mythology, and was used by Tolkien as both source and inspiration for his Middle Earth stories. While I'm following Wagner's basic structure, I'm also bringing in a lot of the mythological material he left out, including ultimately the final apocalypse of the world known as Ragnarok.

The book is an experiment in creating a full color, fully illustrated novel for an older audience. I use the graphic novel loosely, since this has come to denote a longer work in the comics medium. But I have never like dialogue bubbles, and prefer a lot more narrative than standard graphic novels offer. So my intention here was to try and bridge the gap, to present a proper novel in a highly illustrated "graphic" format. I look forward to your feedback, as it will help me determine if the project has been successful, and to shape its future course.

Chapter 1 is 22 pages long, plus full jacket cover, title page, and an afterword addressed to beta readers. The file is 24.2 megabytes, optimized for the highest quality graphics, with images at 1788 x 1118 pixels (just under 2 million pixels each) to future proof them against increased screen resolution in the coming months. This project is an experiment in creating a full color, full bleed illustrated fantasy novel for a older audience (i.e. it is not a children's picture book, although young adults have read and enjoyed it so far). You can learn more about it on the Fantasy Castle Books website, or just download it and have a look. It won't cost you anything but time.

As with the initial PDF file, I'm extending the beta reader offer to this new iBooks edition. To anyone who sends in a review or critical comments on this chapter I will send a limited edition autographed chapbook of this section, as well as the next chapter in iBooks format as soon as it's complete. The second and subsequent chapters will not be made available online, and will only be free to those who have reviewed the earlier sections. For each chapter you critique you will receive the next one free. For those who send in comments or reviews on all five chapters of Book One, you will earn a signed print edition of the final published book, as well as the finished ebook in the format of your choice.

For more details see the final pages of the sample chapter download.

UPDATE 1/23/12:

For anyone who downloaded the file yesterday but only got a corrupted file, the sample chapter has now been moved to a new host, as Yahoo has doing something funky to zip/epub files. I'm in the process of moving my website to a new host, so I'll update the links as soon as possible. For now you'll have to use the external host's link. Sorry for the inconvenience.

How to Create Fixed-Layout iBooks, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:49:36 PST

With the new iBooks Author application only available for Mac users, the vast majority of us are left to fend for ourselves when it comes to making fixed-layout ebooks. This is probably just as well if you're at all like me and prefer to do things yourself and have complete control over the end result, although it's not all that difficult if you take it step by step and have a fair amount of patience (and good attention to details). While iBooks Author looks like it has some nice features, it requires a trade off in rights to the final product that I'm not willing to make just yet, particularly when there are other options available.

For the past few months I've been working out how to build fixed layout ebooks for the iBooks platform in order to replicate the layout I've created for my illustrated novel project, The Ring Saga. Since my intention is to produce the four-volume series as a full-color print edition in the standard 5.5" x 8.5" "perfect bound" format as well as in various digital editions, I needed to produce the art and page layouts in the print edition aspect ratio and reproduce them as ebooks from that. For a full color, heavily illustrated project such as this, the iBooks fixed layout format for the iPad was the obvious place to start when it came to creating the digital editions.

WHAT IS FIXED-LAYOUT?

The essence of a fixed-layout ebook, from a practical point of view, is that - as the name implies - it allows for the creation/replication of exact graphic design layout which the reader cannot alter, as opposed to the standard "reflowable" formats which allow the end user to change the font and text size, for example. This is incompatible with highly formatted layouts such as graphic novels and magazines, and simply unacceptable to many graphic design departments who've spent decades (if not centuries) refining the arts of composition, typography, and illustration.

Fixed-layout also allows for "full-bleed" (edge-to-edge) artwork and the layering of multiple elements on top of one another, placed precisely using XML, a relatively basic subset of HTML, and CSS for styling. You don't need to know very much of this code to make an ebook work, but of course the more you do know, the more complex and stylized your formatting can be. iBooks also allows both javascript and canvas for incorporating interactive elements, although this requires a far more extensive knowledge of those programming languages than the average author generally has. I'll include a few examples of scripting code that you can copy and customize for your own use as we go along.

Apple's fixed-layout iBooks format is an ePub file with a few additional options and requirements that make it only viewable on iOS devices, but also incorporates all the nice features inherent in the iBooks app, such as pinch and zoom, animated page turns, and automatic reorientation. Both Barnes & Noble's NookColor/Tablet and Amazon's Kindle Fire have fixed-layout formats, but B&N have thus far been very restrictive in allowing anyone but trade publishers to use their format, and Amazon have only just recently released the specs for their new KF8 format, which is still a work in progress, with the comics portion still forthcoming. And of course they both only have 7" screens, which is too small to adequately display more than a single book page at a time. This is not prohibitive, but it isn't ideal either, particularly if you want to reproduce the two-page layout of a print edition.

THE TEMPLATE

My intention here is to share enough of what I've learned to aid you in producing your own fixed layout iBooks from scratch, without the need of an app or conversion service to do the work for you. To make this easier, I've created a sample template file that you can download and use as the starting point for your own projects. In a series of subsequent posts I will break this file down into its component parts and explain them as plainly as possible, giving examples of the various code elements and describing the options available for each.

RESOURCES

There are some good resources available to assist in learning the fixed layout format, but none of them discuss in much detail the formatting options allowed or the reasons for them. I'll try to do that here. But I won't go into HTML or CSS beyond the necessary basics, and a few specifics that apply to iBooks, since the rest is common web code known to most, or easily learned elsewhere. In addition, I won't be discussing anything that applies solely to standard "reflowable" ebooks, or how to format your manuscript with headings and sections and the like. This tutorial is to help you create an illustrated ebook with "live" text, such as a children's book or graphic novel, for the iBooks platform. I plan to do subsequent tutorials for the Kindle Fire's KF8 format, and the Color Nook tablets, if interest warrants.

Before we begin, here are some useful ePub resources you might consult:

International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) - complete ePub specs reference
MobileRead ePub Wiki - discussion and examples of the ePub file structure
ePub: The Language of eBooks - A Primer - guest post by Iris Febres explaining ePub
Build a Digital Book With ePub - tutorial by Liza Daly of ThreePress
HXA ePub Format Construction Guide - outdated and overly complicated, but informative
JediSaber's ePub Tutorial - A bit antiquated, but filled with useful information

When it comes to fixed-layout iBooks specifically, the resources are more scarce:

iBookstore Asset Guide (PDF) - Apple's own documentation, which includes a very sketchy section on creating fixed-layout ebooks
How To Make An iPad Photo Book - the only online tutorial I've found on the subject, with just enough to get you started
Liz Castro has a book out about making ePub files, with a fixed-layout supplement available for five bucks more. Also be sure to pick up her Read Aloud mini-guide, if only so you can take a look at her Aesop's Fables sample.

Other than that, there isn't much information available on how to produce high quality iBooks in this format. I'll cover the essentials, but knowing more about the underlying ePub format is recommended if you really plan to get your hands dirty. To that end, there's nowhere better to go than the IDPF site, where you can read through the entire code specification top to bottom. It's pretty dry reading and hard going at times, but quite enlightening nonetheless.

NEXT UP: The File Structure

iBooks Author Update

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:47:26 PST

So my initial reaction to the release of iBooks Author yesterday was essentially one of frustration. What at first appeared to be a reasonably decent - even exciting - application for creating ebooks for the iBooks platform was quickly rendered mute by its virtual unavailability to the vast majority of computer users, including me. So utterly idiotic was Apple's decision to make this a Mac-only app that it completely overshadowed all other considerations at the time. It just seemed so plainly obvious to me when advance reports began to leak of Apple's intention to seriously compete in the ebook market that the only logical move that made any sense at all to me would be to open up the iBooks platform to a wider audience of content creators as Amazon have done so successfully.

But Apple's intention was, in fact, to make content creators come to them, and not the other way around at all. The astounding stupidity of this is just mind-boggling beyond belief. To think you have that kind of clout when you hold less than 5% of the market you're aiming at is one of the most misguided business notions I have ever heard (and there has certainly been plenty of stupidity in the business world of late). To create a product almost no one can use and expect it to somehow alter the fabric of reality is just complete insanity.

What I hadn't really given due consideration to was the fine print in the end user licensing agreement, which stipulates quite clearly that any content created using iBooks Author can only be sold via the iBookstore: that is, not on Smashwords, not on your own website, not anywhere else...ever. Like many (if not most) potential users I more or less blew this off. Since an iBook can only be read on an iOS device it didn't seem to make all that much difference, as the iBookstore is obviously the best place to sell that content. After all, you can purchase Kindle ebooks all over the place, but the place most readers purchase them is right on their Kindle. Why not the same for iBooks? The difference, of course, is that Amazon does not require you to sell Kindle ebooks on the Kindle, or even on Amazon at all, and aside from the exclusive Library Lending program, you're free to sell them anywhere.

But Apple are taking a different tack entirely, one that might be called totalitarian by some, and just plain dumb by any moderately educated business analyst. Perhaps they think that just because they've made the application free people will rush out and buy their relatively overpriced hardware in droves so that they can use it. And maybe they're right. But I highly doubt it.

The more real and serious implications of this move were pointed out quite clearly in a post by Dan Wineman over at Venomous Porridge yesterday, which boil down to the fact that Apple are in essence claiming sole rights to all output from its software, not just to the use of the software itself. This has vast legal implications for creative content beyond just this instance, which could set a precedent for digital content that might have lasting repercussions that are difficult to reverse. More importantly, it has immediate and practical implications for authors who want to retain full rights and control of their work. If you create content via iBooks Author then Apple gain sole and final distribution rights to that work. One can only imagine the lawsuits just waiting in the wings the first time an iBooks release becomes a million seller and that author wants to add the book to other platforms, or sign with a traditional publisher for worldwide publication rights.

As I mentioned yesterday, I had ordered a Mac Mini in order to upload my content to the iBookstore. Today I cancelled that order. Not only that, but I've started writing a tutorial on how to create your own fixed layout iBooks using a template I have uploaded to my website. I'll post the first part tomorrow, and continue so long as there is interest.

iBooks Author: Awesome & Disappointing

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:54:48 PST

According to many news headlines, Apple "made their bid today" for a larger presence in the self-publishing space with the introduction of iBooks Author, a Mac app that lets content creators do just that: create rich, interactive ebooks with a simple drag-and-drop interface. The new tool was launched at a New York press conference this morning, along with iBooks 2 and an upgraded iTunes U, both of which now feature enhanced textbook sections, as Apple follow up on Steve Jobs' desire to reinvent the education space with digital content.

But while iBooks Author does indeed look promising, it leaves a great deal to be desired, both in terms of functionality and accessibility, and one must question whether it can ever hope to achieve what these latest headlines are touting. While the Author app will likely prove more than adequate for the majority of book content creators, it's essentially a dot-to-dot, fill-in-the-blanks production tool, with templates that are bound to make a lot of its output look alike. For textbooks and most standard fiction this is fine, but it eliminates much of the creativity involved in making content with complex layouts. Based on the promotional images and video released today, it appears to handle full-page images with overlaid text to some degree, and the image word wrap function is impressive. But the font selections are limited to those available on the iPad, and interactivity is little more than simple pinch and zoom and standard tap functions that trigger events like photo galleries and videos. Rotating 3D models are interesting, in a limited way, but I'm curious to see how the glossary feature works, and there's a lot that can be done with layered images and some scripting if you know how (java and html code are allowed, but not something many authors are familiar with). But of course, I can't really know how well it works, since I'm unable to use it. Which brings me to my main point, concerning accessibility.

Source: netmarketshare.com

The primary mark against iBooks Author as a useful tool for content creators in general, and self-published authors specifically, is its immensely restricted availability: it's only being released through the Mac app store, for OS X Lion only (not even Apple's own iOS), leaving 93.6% of the world's computer users out of luck. Had Apple at least made it available as an iPad app they could have targeted well over half of the tablet market, particularly given that their Pages word processing app is already on there, providing authors with all the tools they might need to create rich content for the iBookstore right on their iPads. But with only 6.4% of computer users (and thus, one must infer, authors) having access to a Mac, one can hardly call this a "bid to own publishing's future," as today's L.A. Times business section put it. The figures are even more skewed in the education field that Apple seems to be aiming for here, with less than 5% of schools and offices using Macs.

Still, it's a really sweet looking piece of software which is bound to lure in at least a few new Mac OS users. I can say that with some certainty because I bought my first Mac today, in the form of a Mac Mini, which is about the cheapest you can get into an OS X product. I had been contemplating this for some time, not as a jump to Mac, or even because of this new app, but simply as the only practical means of uploading my content to the iBookstore when it's ready, since iTunes Connect is also only available for the Mac. People complain about the proprietary nature of Amazon's Kindle format (with some justification), but Apple is truly even worse, since you can at least read Kindle ebooks on other hardware via apps, and Mac users can create and upload Kindle content. Not so with Apple. With them it's Mac or nothing. Which is why they have just 4% of the ebook market currently, and will never come close to competing with Amazon in terms of publishing. They may sell a lot of tablets, but they'll never sell very many ebooks until they open up the platform to all of the people who produce them.

You can learn more about this new app and view a promo video on the iBooks Author page.

Ebooks Take Over USA Today Top 50

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:26:09 PST

This is part of a new graphic put out by USA Today this week, showing the rise of ebook sales up the bestseller charts. The full chart shows dates running back to July 2009 when Amazon's ebook sales were first added to the bestseller charts, but entries in the top fifty were essentially non-existent until last January, so I haven't included that portion of the chart here. However, you can click though on the image to view it over at USA Today.

The only important points missing from the truncated chart above are the inclusion of Barnes & Noble ebook sales in December of 2009, and Sony's in February 2010, plus the singular event when I, Sniper by Stephen Hunter became the first ebook to crack the top 50, coming in at #48 on January 1st, 2010.

Points noted on the chart above include:

First ebooks crack the Top 10 as post-holiday sales explode
Kobo ebook sales added (no significant impact in the U.S.)
Ebook sales begin to dip as holiday shoppers buy print books as gifts instead (and a whole lot of e-reading devices)
Ebooks outsell print editions for every title in the Top 10, including 42 of the top 50 best selling titles

As with this week last year, ebook sales have increased exponentially after a holiday season in which literally millions of new e-reading devices were received as gifts. Forrester Research estimates that Amazon has sold some five million Kindle Fires since its launch in mid November, with Barnes & Noble adding two million new Nook Tablets to the fray. Apple, meanwhile, sent out around forty million iPads last year, although it's difficult to determine how many will be used to read ebooks.

With digital editions overtaking print for the top spots on the bestseller charts, print is destined to decline even faster in the coming year, as print sales have largely been held up by the million-selling titles. Initial figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that print sales fell by 9% in 2011, due in part to the demise of Borders, who sold their final book in September. But if post-holiday ebook sales remain as stable this year as they did throughout the past year, ebooks might well achieve market dominance this year.

Amazon Reveals Library Loan Royalties

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:59:02 PST

In a somewhat unprecedented move, Amazon has publicly revealed some very specific financial figures in a press release today. These concern the Kindle Library Lending Program and its fledgling counterpart, Kindle Select, in which authors are given a share of a half million dollar pot each month for every ebook they have enrolled in the program that is borrowed, based on the total number of loans that month.

December was the inaugural launch of the Kindle Select program, and until today no one knew how much to expect each loan to earn, as there were too many unknown variables, such as how many total loans there would be, how many titles would be enrolled in the program, and how those loans would be distributed among the current offerings. Would the top ten ebooks get the lion's share? Would everybody get a little? And how would anybody really know if Amazon never offered up the numbers? I floated some estimates in a post last month, but made no predictions. Amazon used the figure of 100,000 ebooks borrowed for their example.

The actual figure was 295,000. Thus, dividing the $500,000 pot by 295,000 loans results in a payout of $1.70 per ebook borrowed. And thus ends the speculation.

Now let me put that in perspective a bit. On a $2.99 ebook with a 70% royalty, an author receives $2.09 for each book sold, minus the download fee, which is .10 cents per megabyte. My "Complete Edition" ebook is 2.31 Mb, so .35 cents is taken out, leaving me with $1.74 - only four cents more than I now make when the book is loaned instead of purchased. This effectively increases my revenue, and brings new readers to my work. It's a win-win situation.

Let me put it in even more perspective. On a .99 cent book with a 35% royalty (the only royalty allowed for that price point), the author receives .35 cents. Total. But for each time that same ebook was borrowed in December, they will receive... yep, $1.70. More than the cost of the ebook. Nearly five times the royalty paid out for a sale of that same ebook. Thus, rather than having to sell 100 books you can now loan out just 20 and make the same amount of money.

Now let me put this in another light. The average royalty for a traditionally published author is 10% on hardback sales up to 250,000 copies (12-15% for higher sales volume), and 6% for paperbacks. Minus 15% taken by the agent. Thus, for a $25 hardback the author receives $2.13 per copy sold ($2.50 minus 15%), but only when and if their advance has earned out (a $20,000 advance, for example, would require sales of over 9390 copies to start paying royalties; until then the author receives nothing beyond the advance). For a hardback book sold to a library to loan out innumerable times, that author receives... yep, $2.13. Total. Regardless of how many times that book is taped back together and checked out of that library. And that hardback is only available for sale for a short period of time, giving them a small window of opportunity to make that advance. After the paperback comes out our same author receives an average royalty of 6%, which on the average $6.50 title is just .39 cents... $1.31 less than our ebook author has just received for loaning out their title via Amazon.

For anyone that doesn't understand what Amazon is doing here, let me spell it out: they are buying authors. They are drawing authors in and stocking their shelves with exclusive content by paying out the best royalties in the business, giving them the best terms, the best tools, and the best distribution platform you could ever want: instant access, everywhere. Because of this, 75,000 titles are now enrolled in the Kindle Select program, up from 5000 available on launch. Exclusively. Meaning, you can't get those ebooks elsewhere. That is a requirement of the program.

And, just to make it more enticing, they have now just sweetened the deal: $200,000 more has been added to the pot for January, bringing the total to $700,000 that will go out to authors enrolled in the Kindle loan program this month. That would bring the royalty for those same 295,000 borrows to $2.38 instead of $1.70, more than the average traditionally published authors earns for selling hardbacks.

Of course, the more hardbacks an author sells, the more they earn. In this case, the more ebooks are loaned out the less each one earns. But for those that are loaned out in large numbers, the paycheck can be quite nice. Today's press release offered a few examples:

The top ten borrowed authors earned a total of $70,000 in December
Paranormal romance author Carolyn McCray received $8250
Romance writer Amber Scott's paycheck will be $7650
16 year old children's book author Rachel Yu will get $6200
Plus, sales for KDP Select authors have risen by an average of 26%

Other publishers and book distributors are going to have a really tough time competing with this kind of stuff. Complain all you like about the megalithic empire that is Amazon, I defy you to name a single other entity that has done so much to get so many books in front of so many readers, and pay those authors for it.

Oh, and by the way, my payday will come to just a little over twenty dollars.

KF8 & KindleGen2 Released

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:18:01 PST

Amazon today finally released to the public the long awaited and much anticipated tools to produce ebooks in the new KF8 format, including a new Kindle Previewer, an upgrade to KindleGen 2, and a plug-in for InDesign that allows for KF8 export (minus a few of the enhanced features, such as Text Pop Ups and Panel Views). Links to each of these are provided below, as well as the associated documentation.

In addition, Amazon sent out a new survey to self-published authors today, which seeks to gather data on what they are looking for in a self-publishing service, what their past experiences have been, if any, with their own or other services, and asks for ratings of Amazon's offerings in this area if any have been used. So collectively it appears as if Amazon are poising themselves to actively champion the self-publishing cause, via a new enhanced format, new devices on which to distribute them, the tools with which to create them, and information on how best to serve the needs of content creators. I have, of course, completed the survey, with ample notes and commentary.

With the new format specs and tools having just come out today, it will take me a few days to sort through it all and test it out. I have nearly completed an iBooks fixed layout edition of my opening sample chapter, which I plan to upload early next week for your perusal, and as soon as I work out how to create an accurate KF8 version I'll upload that as well. Meanwhile, here are the links Amazon provided today, should you wish to go cavorting through some ebook code yourself...

Kindle Format 8 Home Page - now includes links to the Previewer, KindleGen, and Guidelines
KindleGen2 - Comand-line application for creating KF8/Mobi ebooks from X/HTML and EPUB
Kindle Previewer - Graphic interface for the viewing, converting, and validation of KF8 ebooks
Kindle Previewer documentation (PDF) - just in case you want to read it first
Kindle Publishing Guidelines (PDF) - newly revised to include the KF8 format, with complete instructions on how to self-publish on Amazon
Kindle InDesign Plugin (Beta) - includes KF8 support, minus enhanced features mentioned above, but with updates to be forthcoming
Kindle Plugin for Adobe InDesign documentation (PDF) - again, for perusing first to see if it's what you need
Simplified Format Guide - A step-by-step online reference for building KF8 ebooks from Word documents (the link to an HTML-based version isn't currently working)

The Growing Value of Reader Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:44:53 PST

Carrying on from where I left off yesterday, it has become increasingly apparent that with the mass influx of new reading material on the market the average reader is rapidly becoming overwhelmed with choices. In a sea of three million new titles sorting out what's good from what is utter dreck is getting harder every day. This is the primary reason people tend to read the same few authors and titles that everyone else is reading, which is to say, what's currently being promoted heavily by the major trades via talk shows and magazine ads. It helps us sort through the ever-growing pile of work of only minor value or peripheral interest, works for which in business terms the potential return does not justify a large investment to promote. Consequently, more mainstream books are promoted, and works of "lesser interest" are left behind to wallow in obscurity.

Of course, many of those "minor" works are truly great. Not every great book has a huge potential audience: some genres and subjects are by their very nature smaller than others. But that does not imply no good work can be written on those subjects. Young adult vampire novels, for example, have a very large audience, while stories about, say, Sumerian mythological deities do not. That does not imply that all vampire novels are inherently excellent, and all (if there are any) newly written fiction concerning ancient Mesopotamian myths and legends are inherently bad. The latter will just never be read (or likely even published) because no viable publisher would ever put much effort into promoting it (unless it's been turned into a modern-day archaeological thriller by a major author, that is). Because of this, subjects of significant literary interest have become very narrow and overburdened with replicated content (much of it utter rubbish), while subjects with just as much potential literary value have been ignored and overlooked, even while some of it is extremely good (and often more imaginative).

This has been the state of affairs for much of the modern era, with a few narrow subjects such as crime thrillers and horror stories being promoted with lavish budgets and high praise from mainstream book reviewers while the vast majority of subject categories go unnoticed, aside from a handful of literary book reviewers who might take a fancy to a work of a more quirky nature. There has been, for example, an earnest and heartfelt effort to support small press publishers who produce works of social or personal drama, with the occasional Oprah selection of the month gaining incandescent notoriety. In general, though, the bestseller lists are populated with the same old dreck just written with different words.

That condition has been exacerbated by the literal flood of unfiltered material now inundating the world through self-publishing venues, much of which is drivel, but some among it bound to be quite good, if not astounding (while also odd, unconventional, or geared toward a rather narrow audience). Until now, one could place at least some minor faith in the traditional system which gleans (however inefficiently) through a virtual mountain of submissions to filter out the "best" of what's been written. Or so we would like to think. Define "best" how you like, but for the major trades this means "most potential return on investment" since they are, after all, first and foremost a business. However that may be, the enforcement of that filter has now been removed altogether (or rather, bypassed, as it were), and a veritable landslide of literary muck has been unleashed upon an unsuspecting public.

The question then, is how do we now discern what is of value when the traditional system has been usurped? Of course, the traditional system is still there, slogging away, so one answer is simply to keep doing what we've always done, and read what everyone else is reading, which is to say, what the six main publishers promote. Eventually all this other stuff will go away if no one pays it any mind, and we can go about our business knowing greater minds are deciding what is best for us in a comfortably Brave New World (ironically, Huxley postulated a world in which "the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance,"* where the general populace, unable to distinguish literary value for themselves, are reduced to passively accepting what is given them) [*Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death, 1985]. Sadly, that is not too far from the truth today.

But there is an alternative. There is another system already in place that can help us with our burden. It is built upon that most sacred and cherished of all commodities we possess: our own opinions, and those of others like ourselves. This system is made functional and relevant via the vast network of reader reviews on public sites like Goodreads, LibraryThing, book review blogs, and most importantly, online book retailers such as Amazon, whose reader review and recommendation engine is unparalleled. The more you read, the more you rate and review, the better the recommendations you receive. Social circles such as Goodreads help you discover books by seeing what others with interests similar to your own have read and rated. And of course, blogs that review books are a fundamental source for learning what is good and why.

In a world where every reader rated or reviewed each book they've read no good book would ever go undiscovered. Even in a year with over three million titles published, very few of those will go entirely unread by someone. But a great many of them will remain unreviewed, leaving the rest of us to wonder as to their quality, and casually pass them by.

The value of a book review is difficult to understate (and here I should specify that I mean reviews by readers unaffiliated with, and thus uninfluenced by, the publishing world, which casts a wide shadow over the media empires they control, including periodicals and TV stations). Even a simple one-to-five star rating tells the next potential reader much, particularly when it's an average based on a larger number of ratings. It also helps the author quite considerably in determining how their writing is received, and thus in trying to decide whether or not to bother writing another. A book that has no stars and no reviews is a book that few will ever read. It's an unknown quantity, an unnecessary risk in a world of opportunity, a gamble with those two other great commodities most of us have in short supply: our time and our money. But a minute spent rating a book that you've just read can save another reader (or yourself when selecting a book that others have rated and reviewed) a week or more of wasted time reading something that should never have been released in the first place, self-published or otherwise.

The days of benevolent gatekeepers looking out for our literary welfare are long gone. Regardless of whether it's independent or traditional, there is no one now evaluating the actual merit of what is being published but ourselves. Trade publishers tend to look at monetary rather than literary value, and self-published works are released regardless of value. Any given book published today can span the gamut of value, both monetary and literary. There is no real way to know unless someone has actually read the book and made the effort to give it an honest review.

And lest you think perhaps nobody pays attention to reader reviews, let me offer this bit of wisdom from personal experience: when Amazon recently added U.S. reviews to their U.K. site, my sales multiplied virtually overnight. No one in the U.K. had bothered to add a single review or rating to my debut novel, even though I'd sold well over a hundred copies there last year. With my U.S. reviews now available on the U.K. site my sales increased sevenfold, and I am currently on track to sell 780 copies this year just in the U.K. alone. Of course, some of that increase is likely due to holiday Kindle gifts that would have occurred regardless, but the effect was immediate and obvious when the reviews first appeared: seeing the increase in my sales report is what caused me to go looking at my book page on Amazon UK in the first place, to see if they had put the book on sale or something. They hadn't, but by adding the reviews they were helping to promote it in a very significant way.

So please, for your own sake, and the sake of every dedicated reader out there, take two minutes to rate each book you read this year, so that all of us can gain a better sense of what is out there worth our time. Better, take ten minutes and write a short review, describing what you liked or disliked, and why. This is particularly important for books with few or no reviews, as your opinion will carry a lot of weight with future viewers of that page. That being said, the opposite is true: if there are already over a hundred reviews don't bother adding your own as it will only be drowned out by the cacophony of voices, and clearly one more opinion is not needed. Certainly write one if you feel you have something of value to add to the conversation. But one more review of The Hunger Games won't convince anybody one way or the other, so save that for the fan sites. Instead, spend the effort posting your reviews of lesser read material, whether good or bad. Who knows, maybe you'll discover the next great work and start a literary landslide.

P.S. To all the book review bloggers out there, my heartfelt thanks and keep up the good work. You're serving a critical social function that's becoming more important every day.

Book Publication Statistics 2002-2010

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:42:17 PST

Just ten years ago, in 2002, a total of 247,777 new books were published in the U.S. That figure was well over double the 104,124 titles published nine years earlier in 1993. A virtual literary boom one might say. Until one compares the statistics of today.

According to the running tally over at Worldometers, 23,653 books have been published worldwide thus far, in just the first 7 days of this year. In the U.S. alone total book publications for 2011 are estimated to have reached a staggering 3,092,740, according to Bowker's latest ISBN registration data. And that's just for titles with official ISBNs: a large percentage of self-published titles released via Amazon and Barnes & Noble (among others) are never assigned an ISBN, and thus are not tracked by Bowker or included in these figures. Meanwhile, aggregators such as Smashwords hand out ISBNs like Halloween candy to anyone that wants one: Smashwords alone produced 92,500 titles last year, up from 28,800 in 2010.

*Non-traditional consists largely of reprints, often public domain, and other titles printed on-demand.

The chart above is taken from the latest Bowker stats, which I've truncated from a larger version showing every year from 2002-2010 (available in pdf here) to highlight a few major points along the way. From 2002 to 2006 book production was fairly flat, remaining below 300,000 titles released each year. But in 2007, the year the first Kindle was released, new book titles jumped to 407,646, skyrocketing within two years to well over a million for the first time, and nearly tripling again just a year after that, bringing us to our current state of affairs: a market literally awash in literary matter. Thus, in just a single decade the number of books produced annually has increased by 1148%, most of it in just the last two years.

But even more telling is the second line from the bottom on the chart, which shows the number of "non-traditional" books produced, a figure that has leaped exponentially from just 32,639 titles released independently ten years ago to a mind-boggling 2,776,260 last year - an 8406% increase! According to Bowker's note, while many of these are public domain and back-list titles being hauled out in new editions (mainly in ebook format to take advantage of the Kindle/iPad boom), a great many are new self-published works being released for the first time via ebook or print-on-demand services such as CreateSpace and Lightning Source. If you compare these numbers with the total figures for each year (or the subtotal on the line above) you'll see that they make up the lion's share of growth within the industry: traditional print accounted for only 316,480 titles released last year (just 47% growth over 2002), compared to 2.7 million non-traditional titles.

Of course, these are unit figures, not sales statistics. While traditional print publishing is in decline (see my last post for stats on that), it still accounts for a large majority of book industry revenues. But that is changing rapidly as well. If each non-traditional title published last years sells on average just five copies each, that's nearly 14 million books sold, which is nothing to scoff at. And that is something Amazon clearly understands: they don't care who wrote them or produced them or who gets the royalty check...it could be one publisher or half a million different ones, it's all the same to them. A million candles burning steadily make a great deal of light, while the scattered illumination of random bonfires burning here and there cast fleeting brilliance that soon fades.

And that's something career authors also understand. The retirement fund won't come for most of us from selling millions of a single title or from small advances that won't ever pay out, but from slow and steady sales on a growing catalog of backlist titles you control and a fan base that will read each new book you put out. Looking at the numbers from this chart would seem to suggest the plight of independent authors is hopeless as their small output is swallowed up by an ever-growing sea of titles readers have to choose from. But in fact, just the opposite is true, because ten years ago the hope most authors had of being read was even less. It's estimated that the odds of getting published via the traditional submission route are less than 1% (the average literary agency receives 150-200 queries a day, follows up on less than 50, reads no more than the first three pages of most, and accepts no more than one per agent per week to represent, of which a good agent can sell 1 in 4, meaning the average agent sells less than twelve manuscripts to publishers each year). That leaves roughly 99.5% of manuscripts to rot away in the slush pile, unread.

But America is now the great slush pile, and the reader is the literary agent who buys or passes on a manuscript. Traditional publishers are no longer the arbiters of literary opinion, as the end user has the final say, literally, via online book reviews and ratings. I had originally intended to title this post "The Growing Value of Book Reviews" ... or, "The Increasing Importance of Reader Opinions" or some such, and talk about how the end consumer has now become the great literary filter of our culture. How at last it is the readers who decide what books are worthy of their time and attention (and their hard earned pay). How every author has just as much opportunity to reach an audience as any other, and will succeed or fail based solely on the merit of their work. But I'll save that for another day, as this post has gone on long enough, and I've got another book (or two) to write.

Print Book Sales Continue to Decline

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:15:16 PST

Print Book Sales Comparison 2010 to 2011 [Source: PW]

Neilsen BookScan have reported their final print book figures for 2011, and as you can see by the numbers in the column on the right, it's not good news for traditional print. Overall decline was double that of last year's 4.5%, in large part due to Borders closing. A slight pre-holiday rise in print sales was offset by a 30% decline in the final week of 2011 as owners of new e-readers turned their attention to ebooks.

Hardest hit this year were Adult Fiction and Mass Market Paperbacks, with each declining by double digits, at -17.7% and -23% respectively. These are, of course, the categories with the largest increase in digital sales. We should see the AAP stats in the coming weeks, which will give us the figures for ebooks. This will tell the other side of the story, which should all be positive.

BookScan data represents roughly 75% of the book trade, with a quarter of the market not reporting. Aside from total income, non-corporate entities are not required to report their sales data, so these figures don't include the tens of thousands of indie publishers out there. However, they do account for the majority of book sales and consequently tell us much about the current trends and trade winds.

Those winds are blowing fiercely in a fairly consistent direction. According to Publisher's Weekly sales of Mass Market Paperbacks have fallen 60% since 2008. Meanwhile, this summer's BookStats report showed ebook sales had grown by 1039% between 2008 and 2010, with revenue increasing 1274%. And 2011 will likely add a fair amount to that.

Amanda Hocking on USA Today [Updated]

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:41:10 PST

With the first book of her Trylle trilogy being published by St. Martin's Press today, USA Today did a nice long piece on Amanda Hocking this morning. The self-pubbed rags-to-riches princess signed a seven figure deal ($2 million) last March for four new books and the rights to reprint the Trylle series that held positions on the USA Today bestseller list for 50 weeks, selling well over a million copies.

Nine months after signing with St. Martin's, the first book in the series, Switched, comes out today in new print and ebook editions containing "extended scenes and bonus content" according to the press materials, which for this first part consists of a new short story entitled "The Vittra Attacks." The print edition is getting a first printing of 250,000, which is, I think, frankly overzealous for a book that almost everyone interested in already owns. The remaining books in the series are due on Feb. 28 and April 24, with a Hollywood movie in the works (which means at least a year away). Her first new book for St. Martin's - Wake, part one of the 4-book Watersong series - is set for release on August 21st, and is about as guaranteed a bestseller as there could ever be. Expect to see a first printing in the millions on advance orders alone.

I only mention this as news due to Hocking's origins as a self-pubbed author and the subsequent whirlwind of publicity her success has caused. I thought it might be interesting to follow up on what has happened since. As you can see from the picture above the cover has received an update - the sickly green covers of the previous editions were frankly lame, and these new romance-looking ones will appeal more to the younger female audience that made Twilight such a success. Her website has also received a professional polish, and according to the article she's being prepped for an "international media blitz," so expect to be seeing a lot of her on talk shows in the near future.

The books are being released at $8.99 for both print and ebook versions (the ebook was $2.99 before, and originally only .99 cents as I recall), and currently list on Amazon's rankings at 14,000 and 12,000 respectively (as of noon Eastern Time). That means she's only sold about 10-15 copies of each edition so far today, give or take (from personal experience I can tell you that ten copies in a day will put you at about 10-13,000, depending on how many other books are selling at the same time - right now I'm at 23,000 having sold ten books in two days). So not a great rush to read the new "bonus" short story going on so far. Of course, almost everyone who's interested in this genre has already bought the book, so one bonus chapter won't likely entice very many to spend three times as much as they did for the entire story in the first place.

UPDATE: Later That Same Evening...

Switched is currently #18 in print and #786 in ebooks, so that goes to show you how little I know. A lot can change in a day.

SECOND UPDATE: Sometime Around Noon the Next Day...

After its initial surge last night sales of Switched have slackened off somewhat, dropping it to #615 in print and #1228 in ebooks. Meanwhile, my book continues to sell steadily in moderate quantities, bringing me to #16,997 in ebooks, which isn't bad considering I only have the one title published, but leaves a lot of room for growth.

Apple To Offer Self-Publishing On iBooks?

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:37:13 PST

Rumors are floating about like Autumn leaves in a blustery whirl today (it's an Apple tree) as speculation swirls around Apple's announcement of a press event later this month in New York, apparently aimed at publishers. Numerous tech blogs (AllThingsD, GoodEReader, TechCrunch, CMSWire) are reporting that "sources" have confirmed the event will focus on improvements to iBooks and the iBookstore publishing platform. As always, however, no specifics are forthcoming as yet (that's what the media event is for), although one source states that Apple plans to launch a new self-publishing program to compete with Amazon KDP and Barnes & Noble's PubIt, among others, so of course this is what most of the rumors are about.

However, one other possibility no one has mentioned yet is ebook lending. If Apple's intention is to battle head-to-head with Amazon's new exclusivity agreement for the Kindle Library Lending Program, there is a possibility that they have reached agreements with at least a few of the major trades to offer ebook lending via libraries. This is pure speculation, of course (but then so is everything else), but it would make great sense given Apple's relatively close ties to the Big Six and their need to respond to Amazon's efforts to draw away top authors with the lure of lending royalties. After all, a six million dollar pot is a pretty big carrot. Were I an Apple executive in charge of iBooks content I would want to nip that in the bud right quick. Garnering ebook lending deals with publishers who have rejected Kindle lending would be a massive shot across the bow of Amazon's flagship.

That said, a self-pub program would make the most sense, and certainly be most welcome to a great many independent authors, as Apple are the most locked down retail avenue out there. Getting ebooks into the iBookstore is difficult at best, requiring a $250 up-front fee and a Mac running OSX, or a third-party aggregator who take a cut of profits, whereas Amazon has gone to great lengths to make it as cheap and easy as possible for everyone to publish to the Kindle. In this respect, Apple have fallen ever further behind, even while the iBooks format surges ahead in terms of format quality. But if they truly want the iBookstore to succeed, they need to open it up to a larger market, and that includes independent self-pubbed authors who use Windows.

Whether or not this will happen is yet to be seen, particularly given Apple's penchant for relatively strict "quality" control, and it's unlikely they will ever completely open the floodgates, since (unlike Amazon) they've always had very rigid gatekeepers and high admission fees. But until they do it's unlikely that they'll ever gain a serious hold on the ebook market: the recent Aptara survey I discussed last month shows Apple with only a 4% share of the digital trade book market while Amazon has 56%, even though Apple sells vastly more iOS devices than Amazon sells Kindles. Granted, Kindles are designed primarily as eReaders and free Kindle apps are available for every platform, but even so one would think that Apple could sell more than 4% after nearly two years in the business. Clearly their strategy has failed and it's time to rethink the future.

Predictions for 2012

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 08:31:46 PST

And here are a few thoughts on what we might see in the coming year...

1. EPUB 3 will fail to heal the digital format fracture

As much as authors and publishers would love to see a standard one-size-fits-all ebook format, that’s just never gonna happen, because the business interests of ebook retailers can overrule it via proprietary e-readers. Even ePub based fixed-layout books are already fractured into multiple formats with their own unique specifics, and that trend will continue for a good long while so long as Apple, Amazon and B&N hold the cards. The high ideal of a single universal standard for all ebooks is unrealistic, if only because it is simply too constraining for the pace of today’s artistic exploration. By the time EPUB3 is fully integrated into the next generation e-readers, technical advances will have rendered it outdated. The pace of universal adoption is just too slow to keep up with individual discovery and invention. My prediction is that the ebook market will fragment even further as the power players move to consolidate their hold on their segment of the market and others move in to claim their share.

2. Conversion services flourish as pubs embrace fixed layouts

Graphic designers and art departments have been cringing since the advent of reflowable text, which removes their ability to determine the final look of an ebook page. This is fine for prose works and basic textbooks, but leaves much to be desired for true art book aficionados and typographers. A well crafted book layout can be a work of art, a thing of beauty, or just functionally efficient. With fixed layout formats all those book designers can now rest easy knowing their art departments are no longer in danger of disappearing or being downsized. Not only that, but there is a new burgeoning market just now opening up (exploding might be a more descriptive adjective) that didn't even exist four years ago, and that is the service of converting authors' manuscripts into digital editions. The advent of fixed layout - and its requisite set of unique skills - is creating a new market for artistically inclined code writers and graphic designers with web building skills. The major trades are in the midst of building (or revamping) in-house departments, but all those millions of independent self-pubs need somewhere to go that does more than just grind their document into e-burgers.

3. The Kindle 5 will have a color Mirasol/eInk screen

The Kindle 4/Touch will be the last black and white eInk reader we'll see from Amazon. Color reflective technology is good enough now to be acceptable to ebook readers, both in terms of speed and image quality...or at least it will be by the end of 2012 when the next Kindle line is due. Grayscale screens are the black and white televisions of today, and they'll all be junk tomorrow (or at least by next year anyway, since a lot of people tend to keep their old TVs around awhile). Consequently, there will be a smaller lineup of models next time, with a low-end color touchscreen reader and a mid-ground Fire 2 update. Buttons will be gone for good (and good riddance to them, too).

4. 10" Kindle Tablet will debut at $399

Amazon will also introduce a new high-end full size tablet this year to compete directly with the iPad. The Kindle Fire is a nice mid-size sedan, but the iPad is a Hummer. With a growing app store and a full complement of multimedia content, the color Kindle Fire just cries out for more legroom. It's a nice one-handed reading device and suited better to small kid's hands for games and movies than a full size tablet, but it's just too small to do much else with comfortably for any length of time (and woefully poor at doing some thing altogether, although it will improve with updates). In addition to which, illustrated books and magazines simply demand a larger screen to fully appreciate and enjoy their page layouts, and since Amazon is first and foremost a book retailer, they would be remiss in addressing this segment of the market. The price point is a reasonable guess as a competitive price that's low enough to be a good deal and high enough to be conceivable.

5. Publishers will come on board for library lending

The public is just too demanding to ignore, and they want to borrow ebooks plain and simple. Being able to gift or resell your used ebooks is still a few years off so I'll reserve those predictions for another day, but library lending is an issue that needs to be dealt with now. 2011 was a watershed year for libraries as they finally came to grips with the changing landscape and began to confront the many problems it presents. But publishers have not been helping and so their hands are tied. But as print becomes less cost effective publishers will begin to see the light. Why print an expensive hardcover for a few thousand libraries when a digital file beamed out will cost you almost nothing and net you just as much? Libraries don't get ebook licenses for free, so it's just a matter of time before the major trades realize they're sitting on a cash cow here. Surveys show consistently that readers increase consumption as access becomes easier. More loans = more licenses = more good word of mouth from happy readers = more potential sales. It's really not a hard equation.

6. Ebook prices will increase, stabilizing into three pricing tiers

As print book sales decline ebooks will simply have to fill the void, so ebook prices will go up. More and more of the overall production costs (i.e. editorial, layout, marketing, etc.) will be laid on the shoulders of the digital editions, making their effective costs increase. Ultimately ebooks must pull their weight and pay their fair share. But those costs are not the same for every title or publisher across the board, so they will fall into three main categories and be priced accordingly:

.99 / $2.99 - These are your self-pubs and independents looking to gain entry and build or maintain their following, as well as daily specials and discount backlist titles and classics
$7.99 / $9.99 - Mid-list authors and backlist titles by top authors, as well as a handful of the top selling independents; successful self-pubs will start to move up into this category
$12.99 / $14.99 - Bestselling titles by top authors and new releases by trade pubs, as well as major author catalog and new enhanced ebooks

There will still be ebooks listed at every other imaginable price - particularly in the $4.99-$5.99 range for overzealous self-pubs - but few of these will sell more than a handful. The major trades just can't afford to go much lower than $7.99 and hope to support their massive infrastructure, and they don't want to drop new titles below ten bucks. But readers have shown they won't buy books much over that by anyone but the top draws, so eventually $12.99 will become the go-to price for new releases, with mid-list coming in just under ten. It may take another year for this to solidify, but that's the direction it will be heading in due time.

7. A self-pubbed author will reach the N.Y.T. Top 10 with a $9.99+ title

While several self-published authors have achieved Top 10 status this year on one list or another, they have mainly been for bottom-tier price point titles, with a few $4.99 or so oddities thrown in. Nearly all top selling self-pubbed titles go for .99 cents, with a reasonable amount at $2.99. But for the first time a self-pubbed author will climb the New York Times bestseller list on the back on a top tier price this year, and I'm not talking about someone who's jumped ship from traditional publishing to go it alone on the strength of their name - I'm talking about a full-fledged independent up-by-their-bootstraps kind of author who did all the work themselves and has not yet found success. And it may very well be someone who's all but unknown today. They will make beaucoup bucks and trigger an exodus of mid-list trade pub authors to independent publishing.

8. Ebooks will account for 50% of the trade book market by year's end

This is almost a no-brainer. We hit 20% a year ago (23.5% in January), and given the continuing trend of exponential growth throughout the year, coupled with rapidly declining print sales, when 2011's final figures come in it's almost certain to be close to double that. I'm guessing 35% to be conservative. Of course, it depends on if you're counting units or dollars (ebook dollars add up much slower due to their lower average retail price), but either way we're fast approaching market dominance for digital, which will occur within the next two years, if not this year.

9. Major trade publisher files for bankruptcy

This is just a wild throw that I'm tossing out there on a lark. It's bound to happen eventually given the volatile and wildly unpredictable nature of book successes and failures, and the unstable nature of the market. The digital transformation is certain to unhinge the stability of at least one of the more conservative major trade publishers, who will flounder under badly outdated leadership and get left behind as they cling to a broken business model. The trigger for this might be the departure of a star author (or three) who goes solo when better ebook terms cannot be met, or just the failure of several expected hits. Don't laugh. No one thought Borders would go belly up (or Circuit City or CompUSA, for that matter). Yes, publishers are huge. They have tons of money. But it takes a lot to keep them going, too. Of course, it would take years to get to the bankruptcy stage, but the seeds are already planted and things are moving swiftly. A few missteps in business and things can turn from bad to worse right fast if you're not careful. Unlike banks, publishers are not too big to fail. And you know the saying, the bigger they are...

10. An all-new breed of e-book emerges

This is actually something I'm very excited about, as regular readers of this blog should know. The fact that ebooks are in fact an entirely different medium from print books will stimulate creative minds to find altogether new and unexpected ways to present content. Authors will begin to look at ebooks as the starting point, rather than something a book is turned into. And when you start with the digital format as your palette, all manner of possibilities present themselves. New forms will evolve that are neither book nor game nor social media, but all of them combined with something more to take us places that we've never been in ways we've never got there. I can't tell you what it will look like, because no one knows what it will be yet - but when it gets here we'll all know, because everyone will want one and everyone else will try to copy it.

These are just some thoughts on the direction things are going. Some are more plausible than others. Some are wild hypothesis and others almost certain. Many of them are certain to be horribly off their mark, as the target just keeps shifting every day, bringing an endless stream of surprises. But then, that's what makes predictions so much fun. If they were certainties, this would be a news report instead. Come back next year and we'll see what the world really looks like.

The Publishing Year In Review

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 09:54:19 PST

A quick look back at the mile markers of 2011:

January

Post-holiday ebook sales spike to 23.5% of all U.S. trade book sales
Amazon now selling more ebooks than paperbacks
Kindle Singles launches
Amazon extends 70% royalty option to Canada

February

U.S. ebook sales up 202% over previous year
Barnes & Noble selling twice as many ebooks as print books online
Apple begins enforcing new in-app purchase rules requiring 30% cut
Apple and the "Agency Five" publishers come under investigation for price fixing
Random House last of "Big Six" to adopt the agency pricing model
Harper-Collins caps library ebook loans at 26, to the chagrin of everyone else

March

iPad 2 launched: it sells in massive numbers without slowing throughout the year
Amazon launches Appstore (and is subsequently sued by Apple over the name - unsuccessfully)
Google Books settlement rejected by Federal judge
Self-pubbed author Amanda Hocking signs 7-figure deal for four books
Self-pubbed author Barry Eisler turns down half million dollar deal
The New York Times bestseller list includes self-published books

April

Amazon offers local library loans through OverDrive

May

Amazon now selling more Kindle ebooks than all print books combined
Amazon hires trade vet Larry Kirshbaum to head its publishing division
Barnes & Noble launch the eInk Nook Touch ereader
Kobo also launch an eInk touchscreen reader
Random House reaches 2 million ebook sales
IndieReader introduces list of bestselling self-published books

June

Pottermore launches (without any content or apparent plan)
John Locke becomes first self-published author to sell a million Kindle ebooks

July

Borders is liquidated
Amazon buys The Book Depository
Google launches the iRiver Story ereader, but no one cares

August

Amazon launches a web-based reader to counter Apple's in-app purchase policy
Amazon launches Kindle Indie Bookstore, featuring Kindle Direct Publishing titles
Apple and the "Agency Five" publishers hit with multiple civil lawsuits
Steve Jobs steps down as CEO of Apple
John Locke signs deal with Simon & Schuster for print distribution

September

Amazon launches the new Kindle line, with prices ranging from $79 to $199 for the 7" Kindle Fire tablet
Barnes & Noble stocks plunge as a result
Prices of ebook readers plunge as well

October

Death of Steve Jobs
Wall Street Journal launches ebook bestseller list
ePub 3 spec finalized
Amazon announces KF8 (Kindle Format 8), but doesn't release the specs
Kobo releases the Kobo Vox 7" tablet reader
Apple partners with Bookwire to include European content in iBookstore

November

Kindle Lending Library launches as part of the Amazon Prime program
Penguin pulls new titles from Overdrive library lending program
B&N launch the 7" Nook Tablet, but inexplicably keeps making the Nook Color
Amanda Hocking joins the Kindle Million Club

December

EU begins investigation into Apple/Agency 5 price fixing
Amazon introduces KDP Select, an exclusive library loan program for KDP authors
Amazon buys 450 Marshall Cavendish children's titles
Amazon price check app causes flurry of retailer agitation
Amazon selling over a million Kindles a week
Sales continue to decline at Barnes & Noble, dragged down by fading print book sales
More than a million ebooks were published this year, eight times that of the previous year

And those are just some of the main events of 2011. All in all a rather busy year. Stay tuned for the next round...it's shaping up to be a doozy.

SkyNews on the Rise of eBooks

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 11:57:48 PST

SkyNews HD brings us this video report from the UK concerning the rapid rise of ebooks...

iPad 3 Screen Specs

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:54:41 PST

The All-New Frameless Holophonic Projection iPad 3D
[Source: Someone's Imagination]

As always there has been a lot of grist and speculation being churned out lately by the rumor mill about the many possible improvements we'll be seeing when the iPad 3 debuts this spring. With some honest competition finally appearing in the form of the Kindle Fire (albeit not directly, but for a portion of the market nonetheless), Apple can now start bringing out some of the innovations they've been holding in reserve for just such an eventuality, such as higher resolution display screens.

But while many (if not most) of the rumors floating about remain just that - rumor only, and nothing more - at least two of them have received some support of late, and one a reliable debunking. According to Apple supply sources there will be no 7" iPad going toe to toe with Amazon et al. in 2012, supporting Steve Jobs' assertion (at least for the time being) that the smaller form factor does not lend itself well enough to the tablet environment for Apple to pursue in earnest. That move (if true) will leave Amazon with at least a year of market domination in the 7" sector (barring a late-year release of a 7" iPad), and possibly delineate a reading / personal entertainment tablet sector from a broader computing / multi-use tablet market by year's end.

And while rumors suggest Apple will continue to provide the iPad 2 at a lower price after the introduction of the newer model, it's extremely unlikely to go lower than $399, which is still fully twice the price of a Kindle Fire. But you never know. It's possible the entry-level iPad 3 will debut at that price with the iPad 2 reduced to $299 or so. But I doubt it. Still, everyone was fairly shocked when the first iPad hit the street at $499, so Apple's not exactly behind the curve here. But this is all mere speculation, just more grist for the ever-grinding mill. Chew on it as you see fit.

As for what we will most likely see (rated "high probability" by CNET), the supply chain source corroborated earlier reports of a higher resolution screen in the form of a QXGA standard 2048x1536 display (produced by Sharp, Samsung and LG), which retains the prior models' 9.7" size. That fully doubles the current screen resolution of 132 ppi to 264, making it the first truly high resolution tablet capable of displaying HD video and images (by comparison, the iPhone/iPod Retina display packs in 326 pixels per inch). This will provide both opportunities and challenges for content creators who don't want products designed for the iPad 2's lower resolution to show up pixelated on the newer screens as have iPhone apps installed on an iPad in the past. In addition to this news, the source reports that Menebea will provide dual-LED backlight units to enhance the tablet's brightness, supported by batteries with up to 14,000 milliampere-hour capacity (current iPad batteries are rated at 6500 mAh).

Finally, Samsung will continue to supply the iPad's processing power in the form the quad-core A6 chip rather than the iPad 2's dual-core A5. This additional computing power (and battery life) will be relied on heavily to display four times as many pixels just as smoothly on the iPad 3 (2x2 = 4 pixels where there was only 1 before; thus, 1024x768 = 786,432 pixels, while 2048x1536 = 3,145,728 pixels). So while the increased quality of a higher resolution display is truly exciting, it poses a serious dilemma for graphic artists and illustrators working to produce ebooks with a file size that's not outlandish. There is, after all, only so much memory available for storage on these devices, and even with Apple's current 2 Gb limit on file size, fully illustrated ebooks and graphic novels of even half that size will fill up 16 gigs right quick.

Now, it would take a fair amount of hi-rez images to reach 2 gigs, but with enhanced audio and video and some animations it's not outside the realm of possibility that we will start to hit those limits in the not too distant future. The recent Yellow Submarine ebook comes in at 320 megs, and that was done with vector graphics for the most part (which are suited to that style), whereas my Ring Saga project is all full color bitmapped images that create even larger file sizes: just 22 pages and an outer cover at 2700x3375 resolution comes in at 48 Mb with high quality jpeg compression. Those sizes may have seemed a bit excessive before, but now a full-bleed image for a two-page layout will need to be at least 2048x3072 in size in order for each half to fill the screen in vertical orientation on the iPad 3 (presuming these specs are accurate). I'll obviously shrink those hi-rez images for the final iPad version anyway, but nowhere near as much now as I would have done before this news came out. And I'm glad it did, because it may have saved me a whole lot of work in the coming months redoing everything that I've just done.

UPDATED 1/30/11 to include current iPad battery specs, Retina display pixel comparison, and today's CNET analysis.

ePub File Icon

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:34:46 PST

Lately I've grown tired of seeing the default Windows system icon representing .epub files, and decided to go looking for a new one. Since the official ePUB logo was revealed well over a year ago - way back in April of 2010, in fact, when Ralph Burkhardt's design was chosen as the winning entry - I would have thought by now an official icon would appear on .epub files in system folders. But sadly that's not the case. Not only that, but I couldn't readily find a good one based on the official logo. So I made one. Now all my .epub files are represented by this readily recognizable little green "e", to which I've added a bit of style in Photoshop.

Right-click the image above to download the linked icon file (not the .png image itself, but the file it links to), which is a 256 x 256 .ico file. For Windows 7 users you'll have to use a file manager such as FileTypesMan to change the default icon, since the "change icon" option is for some inexplicable reason no longer available in folder options or context menus for anything but shortcuts. In lieu of an official icon this should hold you over in the meantime.

New KDP List Price Requirements

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:25:30 PST

The new pricing structure for Amazon KDP's 35% royalty option [Credit: Amazon]

Authors distributing their works through Kindle Direct Publishing should be aware that Amazon has recently altered their ebook pricing structure for the 35% royalty option to include restrictions based on file size. As you can see from the screen cap above there are now three divisions within the 35% option, requiring new minimum prices for files over 3Mb in size, with $1.99 as the new minimum list for those between 3 and 10 megs, and $2.99 as the lowest allowable price for files over 10 megabytes in size.

Until now there were no conditions set on the size of an ebook file in the 35% margin and no delivery charge associated with the file delivery, so that for a .99 cent title an author receives .35 cents, regardless of the file size. Ebooks receiving the 70% royalty have always been subjected to a .15 cents per megabyte bandwidth fee for the initial download, which is one reason the minimum price for this option has been $2.99 from the start. By comparison, at .15 cents per megabyte a .99 cent title at the 35% royalty would cost more to deliver than its profit margin affords at sizes over 2.3 megs. As a practical example, the file for The Saga of Beowulf is 2.31 Mb (640 pages in print, with a half dozen images), which deducts exactly .35 cents from my profit for each purchase.

With ebook files beginning to increase in size (often dramatically) as multimedia content is added, the logic here is obvious: Amazon is looking to a future when ebooks sold in KF8's more content-rich format will frequently contain enhanced audio-visual content, and thus require greater bandwidth to deliver - the addition of a single video, for example, can swell the file size to 50 megs or better depending on its length and compression ratio, and even shorter graphic novels will be hard pressed to come in at much less than that and keep the image quality decent. But since Whispersync delivery is free to users, the added cost must come from somewhere. Consequently, Amazon is making something of a preemptive move here as it eyes the future.

The most obvious and practical result of this new policy is that for titles with files larger than 3 Mb the .99 cent price point is now no longer an option. Amazon is essentially stating that going forward .99 cent titles are restricted to basic text-only ebooks of a reasonable length (or very short works with a handful of images). In essence, there will be no such thing as a .99 cent enhanced ebook on Amazon. For larger books, prices must be higher.

But the most interesting thing about this structure change is that while at first glance it appears to put a heavy limitation on the 35% option, in fact the 35% rate is by far the more profitable for larger files. A 10 Mb file at 70% will cost the author $1.50 in delivery fees, leaving only .59 cents on a $2.99 title after Amazon deducts their 30% share, whereas the same ebook at the 35% rate would net the author $1.05 - .46 cents more! And of course, the difference only goes up as file size increases: a 50 meg file at 70% will cost the author a whopping $7.50 for delivery alone! This effectively eliminates the 70% royalty as a possibility for enhanced ebooks, which is why Amazon has just raised the bottom line for the other option.

KDP Royalty Rate Comparison for Various File Sizes

As you can see from the table I made above, in practical terms 7 Mb is the dividing line for a $2.99 list title. At that size the 70% royalty nets $1.04 after delivery fee is charged, a penny less than the same $2.99 title with the 35% margin chosen. One can always raise the price, but that has drawbacks of its own each author will have to justify for themselves. For an ebook listed at $4.99 the dividing line increases to a 12 Mb file, with the 70% royalty netting six cents less at that point than the 35% option, but sales will also likely drop by half due to the higher price, depending on your popularity as an author, so you'll have to take that into consideration as well. Of course, if you're a well known author none of this will matter to you much, as you're probably charging $15 or better for your books, and unlikely to be reading this anyway.

Kindle Updates

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 12:29:30 PST

The Kindle Fire has been out for just five weeks now, and Amazon this week released its third firmware update, to version 6.2.1. As with the first two, this one installs automatically "over-the-air" while the Fire is asleep, so there's no need to install manually (although you can), nor do you need to "ok" the update: it rolls out whether you want it to or not as long as you're in wi-fi range.

It may seem unusual to update a product so often, and so soon, after its release, but I take this as a sign that Amazon is listening to customer feedback and working rapidly to effect repairs. That they want to continually improve the device rather than make their customers wait for next year's revision is a major benefit for users, who can purchase the Kindle knowing they'll receive continued product support. Unlike most hardware devices on the market today, the Kindle Fire is a continually improving machine, not just something you buy today and throw away tomorrow. The device I have today is better than the one I purchased last month, which is a trend I hope to see continue.

Improvement #1: UI

The primary focus of this latest update was to address issues with the user interface, from inconsistent touch response to the touchy carousel, and this is the first and most obvious fix this update has changed. The interface is much more smooth and consistent, and the carousel now stops much quicker on a chosen item, allowing it to be selected more easily. Before, the carousel moved so smoothly that it was difficult to stop, which often made for a frustrating experience. In addition, you can now remove items from the carousel by clicking and holding on its image.

Improvement #2: Password Lock

One of the complaints parents in particular have had is the inability to restrict access to Wi-Fi so as to keep young fingers from wandering where they ought not go (or buying what they shouldn't using one-click purchasing). This certainly makes sense for a multi-user household where children might use the device for reading and playing games, but in order for them to watch movies Wi-Fi would have to be turned on, since there's not enough memory to store more than one or two videos onboard.

Improvement #3: Browser/Streaming Performance

Which brings up the streaming/browser issue. I've only watched a few movies on the Fire just to check it out, and it's always worked flawlessly for me, so I can't quite understand the few complaints I've read of burps and glitches in the video, or slow browser performance. My guess is that the video glitches are due more to low Wi-Fi bandwidth, since to stream video smoothly on any device you need a 7 Mb or better connection, which many people don't yet have, and no hotels that I've stayed in. I have a 12Mb connection at home and the browser loads just fine. Side by side tests with my iPad 2 have had the Kindle Fire load pages faster than the iPad for sites I visit regularly, though not for others (and the 7" size is often an issue with selecting links). This tells me the "Silk" aspect of the Kindle browser is functioning just fine, anticipating my next move before I make it. The more you use the Silk browser, in fact, the faster it gets as it learns your preferences and pre-loads them for you behind the scenes. I suspect that users will begin to find it loading faster as time goes by, and will assume it's due to the firmware update. At any rate, this new update has supposedly improved video streaming performance for those who have had issues, but I can't corroborate that since I haven't had any myself.

Complaint #1: Rooting

The new update comes with one drawback for some users, which is that it undoes previous hacks that allow access to the Fire's inner workings, and prevents some of those hacks from being reintroduced. To me this is a completely bogus complaint, firstly because it only applies to a tiny fraction of Kindle Fire users, and secondly those users are trying to make the device into something it is not, and has never been intended to be. Amazon is selling a product with a given spec, openly divulging what the device contains and how it is intended to be used before you buy it. It is certainly the owner's right to modify a product they have purchased, but to expect the manufacturer to support those actions is ridiculous. If you want to remove the airbags from your car and turn it into a rally racer that's your business, but it voids the warranty and expunges the company of any responsibility for what occurs thereafter. If you want to root around in your device, then complain that Amazon's updates undermine your efforts to do so, then turn off your Wi-Fi and have at it; but you'll have to do so at the expense of all the other features that it offers, like Whispersync and Cloud storage, because Amazon only offers those under certain terms, and they say so right up front. It's the height of folly to think that Amazon's software engineers are going to work their updates around user hacks.

Kindle App Updates

Amazon also rolled out updates to the Kindle app for iOS this week, which includes Kindle Cloud access and Send-To-Kindle email function, support for the Kindle Fire's line of 400+ periodicals, as well as support for PDF and Kindle Print Replicas, which is Amazon's own PDF format, used primarily for textbooks with complex layouts. Unlike standard PDFs on Kindle devices, KPR allows you to annotate and highlight text just like any other Kindle book, as well as allowing them to be shared. All PDFs now have support for Table of Contents and Thumbnail browsing, as well as vastly improved page turn and render speed. Finally, a few new tabs in the main library screen allow you to isolate your personal Documents, Newsstand, or eBooks, as well as showing All Items as before.

October Sales Figures Are In

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:16:02 PST

January-October Book Sales 2010 vs. 2011 [Credit: AAP via GalleyCat]

The AAP has just released updated sales figures for the publishing trade through October, which shows a continuing trend toward digital. While overall revenue is down slightly for the year (-4.5%), ebooks once again gave the strongest showing with an increase of 131% over the same period last year, while all print sectors were down (religious titles are not broken out between print and digital, so the ratio here is unknown). Digital audio downloads also posted a gain of 28.8%, while their equivalent physical editions fell by 10.6%.

For October alone, ebooks actually lost a bit of traction, showing only a "modest" +81.2% gain, their worst month this year, and the first drop below a 100% gain. For the record, here are the monthly gains for ebooks so far this year:

January: +115.8

February: +202.3

March: +145.7

April: +157.5

May: +146.9

June: +167

July: +105.3

August: +116.5

September: +100.9

October: +81.2

However, while digital continues to climb, it should be remembered that it still makes up a fraction of the overall book market, with all sectors still including in the single ebook figure while print is divided out among its several categories. The chart below gives a bigger picture of the current situation, showing ebook sales gaining rapidly, but as yet accounting for barely 20% of total sales. Still, it's the only one that's going up, and that's not likely to change for at least a few more years.

Total Sales Volume YTD 2010 vs. 2011 [Credit: paidContent.org]

Charlie Brown Christmas Free eBook App

noreply@blogger.com (R. Scot Johns) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:33:10 PST

Click to get the app!

Today's free app for the Kindle Fire is a really fun and festive interactive ebook app that recreates the classic animated short as a digital pop-up book. The story is narrated by Peter Robbins, the voice of the original Charlie Brown character, with additional dialogue from the original TV feature. The digitally remastered illustrations appear as beautifully rendered pop-up cutouts, all of which can be interacted with in various ways to enhance the story, triggering character-specific dialogue and actions such as opening a mailbox or throwing down a megaphone.

Other features include a paint can that lets you finger paint on the screen, a lesson that teaches you to play Jingle Bells on Schroeder's piano, and a game in which you decorate a Christmas tree. Snowflakes can be caught and stars sent shooting across the sky with musical accompaniment. The final choral singalong allows you to add additional vocal notes by tapping each character, causing them to join in with the carol. Along the way there are twelve special ornaments to collect which are hidden among the scenes, with one being "unlocked" each day in a countdown to Christmas; collecting all of them rewards you with a "spectacular prize" at the end, and since there are only two days left till Christmas, all but one of the ornaments can now be found. We'll have to wait until tomorrow to find the last of them and discover what surprise is revealed.

The ebook app was created by Loud Crow, the makers of the award-winning PopOut! Tale of Peter Rabbit. Both for kids and kids-at-heart this richly illustrated storybook is sure to bring much joy and kindle inner warmth this Christmas season.