In recent years, sales of e-books have started to soar thanks to the release of Amazon's Kindle, Samsung's Galaxy Tab and Sony's eReader, to name a few. Many publishing houses and authors alike had their reservations about the success and (undoubtedly) profitability of e-publishing. As more and more people started to prefer the convenience of carry their ten favourite books on a single device in electronic format over lugging ten printed books with them, it became clear that e-publishing is the way of the future.
A couple of months ago, I toyed with the idea of skipping the conventional method of publishing (getting an agent and finding a publisher) and self-publish my books as e-books. There are numerous self-publishing companies out there, though, after a bit of research, you'll soon discover many of them are nothing more than vanity publishers. Any author worth their work will tell you to stay well clear of such companies. If you're required to pay them to publish your book, they're a vanity publisher. Many new authors take this route just so they can get their work published, only to be gravely disappointed by the result and the experience.
Even though self-publishing is largely frowned upon by the publishing industry, nowadays, thanks to the internet, it is a fantastic way for new authors to "get a foot in the door" and get their work out there for people to read.
So, I decided to look into this option. Thanks to a suggestion from a friend at work, I downloaded and tried Calibre, a free and open source e-book library management application. It allows you to manager your e-book library, but also to convert it into readable formats for the numerous e-book readers available in the market. After hours of painstakingly working through the User Manual and trial and error, I managed to convert one my short stories into two of the most common e-book formats: ePub (most common and readable by most readers) and MOBI (used by Amazon's Kindle). Thus the task began to reformat my adult novel (What Friends Are For) into an e-book. Realising that it might not be suitable to many people's reading preferences, I also combined several of my short stories into a collection (Random Musings - A Collection of Short Stories).
Then, out of the blue, my Significant Other asks me on Saturday where to get my books from. I had to admit that I have set up the necessary links for people the buy these two books, but I never made it available on the website. Asking why the sudden request for the links, I was told that it has been promoted on Facebook. Needless to say, frantic panic set in as I had to make sure all the links still worked, that the details of the books were correct on the website before they were made public.
Today marks that very exciting day. The day that Garth Elliott takes the plunge and publishes his first novel and a collection of short stories, albeit self-published in e-book format. Visit the BuyBooks page to buy your copies today!
Even though self-publishing is largely frowned upon by the publishing industry, nowadays, thanks to the internet, it is a fantastic way for new authors to "get a foot in the door" and get their work out there for people to read.
So, I decided to look into this option. Thanks to a suggestion from a friend at work, I downloaded and tried Calibre, a free and open source e-book library management application. It allows you to manager your e-book library, but also to convert it into readable formats for the numerous e-book readers available in the market. After hours of painstakingly working through the User Manual and trial and error, I managed to convert one my short stories into two of the most common e-book formats: ePub (most common and readable by most readers) and MOBI (used by Amazon's Kindle). Thus the task began to reformat my adult novel (What Friends Are For) into an e-book. Realising that it might not be suitable to many people's reading preferences, I also combined several of my short stories into a collection (Random Musings - A Collection of Short Stories).
Then, out of the blue, my Significant Other asks me on Saturday where to get my books from. I had to admit that I have set up the necessary links for people the buy these two books, but I never made it available on the website. Asking why the sudden request for the links, I was told that it has been promoted on Facebook. Needless to say, frantic panic set in as I had to make sure all the links still worked, that the details of the books were correct on the website before they were made public.
Today marks that very exciting day. The day that Garth Elliott takes the plunge and publishes his first novel and a collection of short stories, albeit self-published in e-book format. Visit the BuyBooks page to buy your copies today!
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