So, I\’ve been doing some back-and-forth with various employees of Bookmobile over the past couple days. It looks like they don\’t offer much in the way of advice/help in preparing a book for print (what exactly is \”front matter\” composed of? It sounds something that needs to be excised with a scalpel.) I think I\’m on my own in that regard, Bookmobile\’s services start when I hand them the finalized pdf, ready to hit the presses. So that means more research for me, but honestly I\’m kinda into figuring all this stuff out and learning how to properly format a book (and probably doing it wrong the first couple of times.)
What Bookmobile seems to be offering me, as far as eBook services go, is the conversion of a ready-to-print pdf to a epub or mobi filetype, to the tune of between $1.40 to $2.10 a page. Multiply the cheapest option by roughly 330 pages that Renna\’s Crossing will end up as, and you\’ve got a $462.00 price tag on a process that, based on a rudimentary google search, can be done for free?? I\’m skeptical, but I\’m not sure of what yet. There may well be some complexities I\’m not aware of when it comes to this conversion process that Bookmobile can help with. From what I understand pdfs are sometimes tricky to convert, especially if they have special formatting or charts or what have you. But my book is basically all simple text. So I figure I\’ll give it a go myself, and see what happens; if it comes out looking no worse for wear, I think I\’ll save my budget on that front.
Bookmobile also offers a distribution service where they manage the logistics of selling the product on the wide range of eBook outlets across the web, such as Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), the Apple Store, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and whatever other bizarre crop of indie startups there are trying to get some of that sweet digital-pub pie. Bookmobile skims 20% of the profit you make from the sales of your digital copies. The outsourcing of this distribution process is probably worth it for more prolific writers who blast books out month over month, but I think it would be worth taking the time to learn the ropes myself. You can hit like 95% of the market just with Amazon KDP, Apple and Kobo, according to some basic research. So why bother cutting your profits to make sure your book gets on the fifty-four other boutique eBook distributors, probably with names like Kazoozle or Librelicious or Perusr. (See, the winning formula is to take a common verb and remove one of the vowels, which boosts SEO…)
So yeah, looks like more work and research for me, which I\’m not unhappy about. Also slowly been poking around for potential artists/graphic designers. I\’ve got two urls saved on my list right now, but soon I need to do a deep dive into tumblr.
Happy Halloween errybody. Just remember that the real spookiness comes from the insatiable greed driving our planet to ecological collapse!
*insert living tombstone remix of Spooky Scary Skeletons here*