Jay Nelson‘s Guide to Self-Publishing n o t s o B k c n a r F / o t o h p k c o t S i Publishing Your eBooks and Magazines to the iPad and Other Digital Devices — Without Programming! What’s in This Guide This guide is intended to help self-publishers of magazines, journals, newsletters, books and other publications understand the current Digital Publishing landscape. It explains the most popular formats currently in use for digital publications, provides some advice about how to convert or create those publications, and gives a breakdown of their costs. It also describes several ways to distribute and market your digital publications. While it does mention a number of content creation tools, it focuses prima rily on using QuarkXPress to create digital publications in EPUB format and to publish iPad apps. At the end is a brief list of additional resources and a glossary of terms. This guide is not intended to teach you how to write, edit, or specifically for mat your publications. It does not include every way to promote or mar ket your publications. For that, you may want to explore some of the items in the Further Resources section near the end. About the Author User magazines and speaks at Jay Nelson is the editor and industry events. Jay was also publisher of Design Tools Monthy involved in and the editorial director of publishing PlanetQuark.com. He’s also several books, the author of the QuarkXPress 8 one of which and QuarkXPress 7 training titles received a at Lynda.com, as well as the “Benjamin training videos Quark includes Franklin” in the box with QuarkXPress 7. award for In addition, Jay writes regularly layout and for Macworld and Photoshop design. 2 | JAY NELSON’S GUIDE TO SELF-PUBLISHING Table of Contents Overview 4 Print Publishing vs. Digital Publishing 7 iPad, eBook, EPUB, or…? 8 Marketing Your Digital Publications 11 Converting Existing Print Publications 12 Creating Digital Publications From Scratch 14 Tools to Create Digital Publications 15 eBook Publishing 17 How Do I Sell My eBook? 19 Basic Rules for eBook design 22 How to Create eBooks with QuarkXPress 24 Costs and Margins for eBook publishing 26 iPad Publishing 28 Before you get started 30 App Studio Step-by-Step 33 Understanding App Studio Factory and Templates 36 Costs and margins for iPad publishing 39 We Are The Future 41 Further Resources 42 Glossary 44 JAY NELSON’S GUIDE TO SELF-PUBLISHING | 3 OvERvIEW Overview Step One: Relax! It may seem that all the big publishers are converting their publications to digital. Some of your friends may already be publishing in digital format, so you may feel an urgency to get your publication into a digital format as soon as possible. You may also feel impossibly challenged by everything related to this new medium — hey, join the club! This is an entirely new world of publishing, and nobody knows the “best” way to do it because we’re making it up right now! Today’s situation is much like “desktop publishing” in the late 1980s, or cre ating websites in the late 1990s. The tools are evolving, the workflow is evolving, and even the intended result is evolving. So relax and simply absorb as much as you can, knowing that whatever you learn today will be helpful in the years to come. Step Two: Get Excited! You may be generally aware that Digital Publishing is taking off in a big way, and that mobile devices are quickly becoming a preferred way of reading books and other publications — and you would be right! In fact, here’s the numbers showing just how right you are. 4 | JAY NELSON’S GUIDE TO SELF-PUBLISHING OvERvIEW In 2011 alone, it is projected that people will buy: ■ 450 million smartphones ■ 366 million desktop computers ■ 62.7 million media tablets (38.9 million iPads and 23.8 million of other brands) ■ 20 million dedicated e-ink readers (Kindle, Nook, etc.) (Data sources: RBC Capital Markets, Gartner, Barclay Capital) Unless you have no pulse, these numbers are going to get you excited about publishing — or re-publishing — your content for digital devices. Adoption of digital devices in 2011 iPads dominate tablet sales JAY NELSON’S GUIDE TO SELF-PUBLISHING | 5 OvERvIEW Step Three: Get Going! Right now is the perfect time for self publishers, small publishers and even hobby publishers to get their publications into a digital format that can reach a far broader audience than previously possible through traditional print publishing. Today we’re participating in the second generation of the democratisation of publishing. The first was in the 1980s when Apple introduced the LaserWriter, making it possible for anyone to publish their work without owning a printing press. However, publications were still tied to paper, with all the costs and limitations inherent in printed publications — consum ables, inventory and limited marketing and delivery options. With digital publishing, the obstacles to small publishers have all but been removed. The tools are inexpensive and easily available, there is no cost for consumables or inventory, and “shelf space” in digital bookstores is infinite. In fact, the cost and risks are so low, many authors are re-publishing their out-of-print titles and generating significant income from them! How’s your pulse doing now? 6 | JAY NELSON’S GUIDE TO SELF-PUBLISHING PRInT PUBlISHInG vS. DIGITAl PUBlISHInG Print Publishing vs. Digital Publishing You may be thinking: “Great. There may be a goldmine in the sky for my publications, but I barely understand the requirements of making a printed publication, let alone a digital publication. It must be consider ably more difficult.” Well, not really. The technical considerations of Digital Publishing can be as simple or as complex as Print Publishing — but instead of being concerned with image formats, colour profiles, page count, binding options, and so forth, you’ll need to pay attention to device (reader) limitations, audio and video formats, user interface conventions, and consistently applying the log - ical connections between headlines, stories, images or videos, and captions. In Print Publishing, a printed piece can be as simple as black ink on white paper, or you can use a variety of special treatments such as varnishes, foils, embossing, die cutting, or even lenticular art and scented inks! The situation is quite similar in Digital Publishing — your book can be as simple as a long series of paragraphs with some inline images, or it can be highly formatted, with interactive media and live content from the Web! In print, an image box can only contain an image, but in an advanced eBook or iPad app, the box may contain a slide show of multiple images, a video, an audio file, an animation, or even live content from the Web! In print, a page may contain only as much text as can be printed on the page. But in an iPad app, a text box may contain text of any length, or even entirely different layouts — in that case, the content scrolls as the reader reads it. For a magazine, this means that an article that would require multiple pages in print can fit onto one digital page. JAY NELSON’S GUIDE TO SELF-PUBLISHING | 7 iPAD, eBOOk, EPUB, OR...? iPad, eBook, EPUB, or…? The options for Digital Publishing are evolving, but for now there are three options, in order of increasing richness of content: EPUB, eBook, and apps. EPUB is currently the most limited in terms of layout, but is the easiest to produce and has the broadest acceptance. It’s perfect for publications that have a simple, one-column layout, where illustrations flow within the text. If all you want to deliver is a Table of Contents and a long column of user- resizable text with inline pictures, EPUB will do nicely. Your readers will be able to use EPUB’s “Reflow” view to adjust the size and style of the text to make it easier for them to read. (The upcoming EPUB 3 standard is more robust: see Glossary at the end of this book.) EPUB also has the advantage of being an open format that isn’t controlled by any one company. There are many ways to read an EPUB document, including dozens of handheld devices, smartphones, applications for desk - top computers and laptops, Barnes & Noble’s NOOK, and Apple’s iBook reader for iPad, iPhone and other iOS devices. Notably, Amazon’s Kindle does NOT read the EPUB format (but EPUB files can be converted to Kindle’s format). 8 | JAY NELSON’S GUIDE TO SELF-PUBLISHING iPAD, eBOOk, EPUB, OR...? eBook is a general term that includes not only EPUB, but also various proprietary formats that allow you to include multimedia (audio, video, slideshows, HTML, etc.), rich layouts, and interactivity. Blio, from K-NFB Reading Technology, is one example, as is Adobe’s Digital Editions. These formats can be especially useful for animated children’s books and other media-rich books, but they can also be created as iPad apps (see below). Blio readers are currently available for Windows computers, Android devices, and iOS devices (iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch). A desktop reader for Mac OS X is in development. Adobe’s Digital Editions reader is available for Mac, Windows and Android, but not iOS devices. Apps for devices such as the iPad and Android tablets are the most flexible option, with the most advanced features. You have complete control over the appearance of the book or magazine, as well as the user’s experience. However, producing an interactive book requires quite a bit more work than the other two options.