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Book Endorsements Publishing

Book Endorsement Planning: Creating a Schedule Strategy

Getting quality endorsements quickly is not always possible. The desired readers may be unavailable and the publication schedule may not allow enough time. Nevertheless, endorsements are so valuable and important for selling books that it is a good plan to continue to collect them whenever possible.

Even when you have three or four high-quality endorsements for a book cover, there is value in adding pages of endorsements to the front-matter pages and even replacing endorsements with better endorsements when the book is reprinted.

Never stop getting endorsements. Create an endorsement schedule strategy. The time to get endorsements divides into three stages:

Manuscript stage

Pre-publication design stage

Post-publication stage

Manuscript stage: If you want to get endorsements in the manuscript stage, always consider how the selected readers will react to a manuscript compared to an actual book with a professional design, even if it is a PDF rather than printed copy.

If you have published before and readers can see your name on a quality book, you can start looking for endorsers during the manuscript stage (pre-book design stage). If, however, you are a first-time author, readers may be reluctant to put their names with endorsements on your book if they don’t know how professional the book will be when it is published. For that reason it is beneficial to show them the book after it has been designed, but before it is printed. This is especially true for self-help and how-to books because, if the book is designed and produced well, readers will have less trouble reading and understanding the content.

If the book is highly technical, similar to an academic book, or purely literary, readers will likely be more focused on your evidence or writing ability than on the concerns about professional publishing and design quality. Nevertheless, if a reader sees the book when it has already been professional designed, the endorsement will likely be stronger.

Pre-publication design stage: The most common way to show a book before publication is to create an ePDF for review purposes. This is a PDF of the complete book or a portion that has been enhanced for review purposes. The front cover is inserted at the beginning of the file. At the top, a notice is enclosed with the words “For Review Purposes—Not for Sale or Distribution.” Each page in the book is watermarked in the margin with the same notice. The PDF has “no edit” security added so that the notice cannot be removed. Additional security can also be applied, such as no printing or password to open. Usually, it is better not to require a password to open because this is not a good reader experience and may result in fewer endorsements.

A second way to show a book before publication is to use print-on-demand (POD). This can be done for both review and endorsement purposes. Print only the number of copies needed. Once you have received review suggestions and endorsements, you can both make adjustments to the book as well as add the endorsements to an updated cover file and the front-matter pages. This is a low-risk and low-cost method for testing a book before switching to offset printing (offset usually requires ordering 1500 or more books to make it worthwhile). It is also a low-cost method even if you continue with POD.

(WARNING: Read the POD terms carefully. Never use a POD supplier that automatically connects the POD service to an online retailer page and doesn’t allow you to change suppliers for that retailer. If you are working with a publishing consultant, they should be aware of this hazard.)

Post-publication stage: Whether you use POD or offset printing, you may want to eventually update the cover and front matter pages with newer endorsements. Adding endorsements in the post-publication stage usually happens when a book is selling well and there is a need to reprint more copies. The endorsements are added to the new printing. Bear in mind that a new print run is not a new edition. A new edition is an edition that has significant changes or additions, such a foreword by an important person. Additional or different endorsements do not constitute a new edition.

 

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eBook Creation ebooks Publishing

How eBooks are Created

Most authors today write their books using text editing software. Book designers and publishers import the final edited texts into professional page layout software. The book is then designed and exported as an ebook. This export process has a number of limitations, so the file (which is actually a folder containing many html files) is then unpacked so that the code can be edited by a person skilled in code editing (html and css). Once the digital files are adjusted the book is ready for testing and publication.

man reading ebook
ebooks are often popular with people who travel.

In 2012, Apple introduced iBook2 and the free iBook Author software. This software offered ways to add enhanced features to ebooks without the need to edit the code. This looked very promising for textbook publishers. However, after the new iBooks software was introduced, users noticed and began to complain about the required license agreement that clearly warned users that they could only sell the .ibooks ebooks through Apple.

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ebooks ehanced PDF format Publishing Viral Marketing

Selling eBooks Without DRM

When you sell your ebooks through online retailers such as Amazon, Barns & Noble, or Apple iBooks, a percentage of what you make goes to pay for the Digital Rights Management (DRM) and tech support they provide.

Would you pay for an ebook if a pirated copy was available?
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DRM - Digital Rights Management ebooks ePub format Kindle Mobi Format Publishing

Monetize Your eBooks with DRM

Just as software companies want to protect their intellectual property and monitize it, many authors want to do the same. To make this possible, online retailers, such as Amazon, Apple, and Barn & Noble, have created DRM (Digital Right Management) software that allows readers to buy and transfer ebooks from the internet to special devices or to desktops that run their software.

Print and ebook version
Books by authors, such as this book by Evan Howard, are sold online using Digital Right Management (DRM) software that allows retailers to sell and distribute ebooks while protecting the publisher’s distribution license.

While some people point out that this software can be hacked, most consumers use the software legally and authors are able to receive a royalty payment for their work. And some authors have done very well making money from ebooks.

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ebook marketing ebooks ehanced PDF format Publishing Viral Marketing

PDF eBooks and How to Use Them

Enhanced PDF eBooks and How to Use Them

Enhanced PDF design for marketing brochure
The PDF easily captures and preserves the greatest range of design and layout capabilities.

The term PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It is a file format that captures all the elements of a digital document so that you can view it, navigate it, print it, and easily share it online. Many software programs allow you to convert files into PDFs, such as Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, Apple Text Edit, and many others.

A book that has been beautifully designed for print can be saved as a PDF, and the PDF will—if created correctly—preserve all the book’s features exactly as they are. In many ways, such PDFs are a type of eBook, and the most economical type to create, provided the print book already exists.

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ebooks ePub format Kindle Mobi Format Publishing

ePub and Mobi eBooks

ebook and prin edition of Brenda Dickson's Memoir
eBooks can be purchased and downloaded immediately, eliminating the need to wait for a book to be shipped by post.

The two most popular ebook formats used by publishers and online retailers are ePub and Mobi. Because some retailers carry only ePub ebooks and others carry only Mobi, most publisher will publish two ebook editions, one for ePub and one for Mobi. Both of these formats offer essentially the same appearance and functionality.

Both formats allow the book page to take the shape and size of whatever screen they are displayed on. Likewise the type can be scaled by the reader to suit personal preferences. These two features enable ePubs and Mobis to be read confortably on numerous devices including cell phones.