Creating eBook- part 1

Name of Book? Heading & sub-heading

Cover

I’ll need identifiable revit symbol and some gears, something showing automation, other IDEAS for front cover image?

Canva templates

Book Description

See what other ones have on Kindle and Barnes & Noble, Kobo etc

Keywords/Categories

Look at testing those, these need research to bring up list . Kindle Book Search. Publisher Rocket a bit expensive, don’t use. Book Search

Need category and keywords- Revit, Revit programming, needs deeper exploring

Pricing?

See some of the stuff below

General intro

I watched part of this vid

and it mentioned a specific formatting for a kindle , so I looked that up kindle formatting I’ll try and see if I can set that up to begin with.

Marky came over so I have to drop this for a while. Am onto text and symbols , which will include UTF-8 stuff but I want to keep the advanced stuff for later. I’ve sort of lost momentum with Marky coming around and me doing his site stuff, good to do a bit of basic modelling though. Also stuff for hospital procedure.

Become a published author, sounds swanky

Book features & process

Thought about putting other examples in the back so that there are extra resources of code.

Need to pull finger. I also need to see how ts formatting in eBook if on a kindle, so I’m on chapter 4 now, have some content, now need to see how it will upload and look if someone reading it.

So I stopped doing the writing and saved a copy and decided to see how to upload a file. Also how to create a contents page in Word too.

So for the Word contents I followed this tutorial, which did main chapters but no subchapter numbering (maybe I have to do that):

Also to give Heading numbers and subheading numbers

Kindle Create- Amazon Book Publishing

I found there is a Kindle Create App that is free to use, I think it allows you to save the book as an eBook that can only be read in Kindle format, sneaky. Still, as a first time effort I’m happy for any support going. Link to Kindle Create Download page

I’m glad I haven’t formatted the text as it requires a bit of work to tidy up and there are other processes, like using Kindle create to

Other items

• About author
• Back cover
• synopsis
• price – do some research on it
• Where to publish ? Amazon, can you publish elsewhere?
• Royalties – you only get a percentage (65% on Barnes & Noble ) epub
• reFlowable (so reformats depending on device size)

Other items to add to the book:

Creating Cover – suggest someone else do , look on canva and also Kindle have cover creator.

ePub Format

ePub Format

There is free software sigil for this but it seems that its HTML based so you have to do a lot of cleaning of word doc and assets (images etc) are held seperately.

I tried using Zamzar online converter and it did an OK job on the basic file I was using from Word to test the Kindle create.

Alternative Barnes & Noble

A good article overview of ePub for B&N – ePub article. One issue with this is you need US bank account, could use Zoe’s or else go through 3rd party to let them take a commission. Once you’ve created book you need maximum market exposure, so different sellers help.

Alternative SmashWords -85% commission (but pretty unknown)

SmashWords. Might be worth signing up to though

Other places

This from ePub create & publish, and tools. Some EPUB softwares are designed to link you directly with an eBook store, such as Apple iBooks Author, which encourages you to upload your completed EPUB for sale on the Apple iBooks Store.

Other major eBook stores* that you can check out are:

• Amazon (Kindle)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Lulu
• Smashwords

*A word of caution—different eBook stores may require different sizes and resolutions for your EPUB cover, so be sure to check out the store’s requirements before uploading.

Draft2Digital

https://publishdrive.com/

Rethinking Book style & content

Create eBook publish only and add video links

On content, I’m having trouble writing the code , I want to demo it, and the best way is to do short video tutorials. In a written book you can’t use links but in an ePub you can, so why not add lots of links to video content, use the eBook as the link resource?

Make the decision to only publish an eBook for this topic. Then you can do a video to demonstrate the code. So make lots of short videos as training steps. Test out YouTube Shorts (but will need to setup OBS for Portrait format)

I tested a couple of books on kindle on PC , one I found had video content and it didn’t show up so could not be used (2nd image below) but all the URL links seem to work fine in the Kindle eBooks. So that means it will take you to a website. So if you are on PC then it should let you download material (eg code) and should have links to videos.

It just says there’s video content but you can’t access it. Not that helpful.

So maybe just plan to link to YouTube instead.

Write in Word and add images there, not in Kindle Create so can make different formats and different sellers

If you use Kindle Create it will lock you into their formatting, best to create content in Word and then push to each site to do final formatting on each site. That way you can push content to lots of different places.

Plan Title, cover and other stuff

Extra stuff needs to be done, as Revit 2023 coming out the Revit symbol will be updated, use that one for cover so it looks new and shiny. Maybe can update later. Need separate pages re author to advertise the book, the Udemy course and the website and code too. Need to start those so that you can have a few goes at them

Put code up for people to download- Github open to public, so not the best place.

Need to have it in different locations , especially for simple open on Github. they could then go to next repository and grab the more complicated stuff, so not pay for it . Maybe Google Drive- Create account or use a Max Account – Only a small bit of code, so not big files.

YouTube Shorts (60 sec or less)

This may be a way to record examples of code.

Email before Downoad

One vid link from 2012-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bb5Lo-KBPQ

Initial pricing- technical Revit books

Book Royalties 101: How They Work

Article Book Royalties 101: How They Wor & also Is Amazon’s KDP Select Worth it? the KDP is Amazon Exclusive for 90 days (3 months), maybe you get more from it.

The royalties look crap, you getting only a small percentage eg 35% of what price they get. So if $20 you get 7$. So do research for technical books – they want info, you give them tangible value. They pay for it.

So make your information easy to access, videos and code- make it downloadable so they have basis for using it. So can copy/paste examples.

Thoughts on pricing

Sell the first book as a loss leader for the 2nd book- in cheaper range so more accessible- <$10, then more expensive, so people come for first book but the useful/productive information is in the 2nd book, like X, at 35$

Shape of the book, Sunday 10th April

After a few days playing and exploring and researching I’m starting to get an idea of how I want the book to look and work. Links is da’ key!

Rather than explaining lots, I think links to YouTube shorts (or longs) will be useful, also links to code for them to download with examples, just put examples in links, so don’t even show in book (easier to write and update)

So I need to test/learn about OBS and Shorts to see if the format will work. – See Article