Tools You Can Use: Ebook Publishing

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt" —Sylvia Plath

By Scoti Springfield Domeij

We've Come a Long Way, Baby

When Gutenberg invented the printing press, it made the Bible and books available to the every day man. In The Wall Street Journal, author Steven Johnson wrote, "While we now possess terabytes of data at our fingertips, we have nonetheless drifted further and further away from mankind's most valuable archive of knowledge: the tens of millions of books that have been published since Gutenberg's day." Read his article "How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write."

Create. Publish. Share Your Own EBook.

Like the digital music revolution, myebook.com, a free eBook creation and publishing platform with social networking features, gives back total control to the content creator and the reader. Some say everyone has a book in them. If that is true, then MyEbook, allows anyone to publish his or her book with a single button and release it to the world before the (virtual) ink's dry.

Once you register and launch the application, you can choose how many pages your book will be and whether you want to use a template or a blank canvass. You can create from scratch, beautifully simple or adventurously complex page designs and covers online, in no time. If you failed to select enough pages, it's easy to add more pages. The many ways to use myebook.com is as unlimited as your imagination.

• Novels
  
• Comics
  
• Leaflets
  
• Brochures
  
• Magazines
  
• Photo albums
  
• Children's books
  
• Instruction manuals
  
• Family photo albums
  
• A child documents a family trip
  
• Personal or corporate publications
  
• A student's short story in English class
  

MyEbook Features

• Free browser-based eBook publishing platform
  
• Upload and publish your eBooks online with just one click
  
• Include beautiful colors and graphics
  
• Link to videos, audio, documents, images and flash files from the eBook
  
• Nothing to install or download
  
• Join and interact with the community
  
• Browse eBooks published by other members
  
• Receive feedback on your eBook
  
• Lists your eBook in their library section
  
• Over 1100 published eBooks
  
• Browse eBooks by popularity or category (Business, History, Travel, etc.)
  
• View and read eBooks online on a sleek eBook viewer
  
• Register to post comments and create your own eBook
  
• FREE
  

Myebook Facebook Application

Add your eBooks to your Facebook profile. Send your eBook to colleagues. Put all your Facebook photos into a slick, page turning eBook with the click of a mouse. Then publish and share it with family and friends.

Ebook Price Comparison Site

If you decide to publish an eBook, how do you price it? Ebookprice.info is an online eBook price comparison site. After evaluating eBooks comparable to yours, you can determine a competitive cost.

Ebookprice.info Features

• Search by author, book title or ISBN
  
• Search results are sorted by device type: Kindle, Adobe, Mobipocket, Microsoft, Palm and PDF
  
• Compare eBook prices across popular eBook stores—Amazon, eBooks.com, Diesel, eReadable and Powell's
  
• No registration
  
• FREE

Google Books and Magazines

"When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened." —John M. Richardson, Jr.

By Scoti Springfield Domeij

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I talked with an editor at the Writing for the Soul writer's conference this weekend regarding Google Books' impact upon publishing. And Google Books and publishing have come to terms to resolve the lawsuit writing organizations filed against Google Books.

Of course, publishers worry that publishing the content of books online could hurt sales. Authors worry their content published online will be stolen. I regularly research topics I'm writing. In fact, I conduct research every day. A Google web search includes searching the Google book index. Reading a few snippets of a book influences whether I buy the book or not. In fact, I've purchased books online I never planned to buy, because the content I read from scanned book intrigued me.

The editor said his publisher was talking with Google Books. In the future, people will be able to buy two chapters from one book and a couple of chapters from another book rather than purchasing the entire book. E-readers—Kindle™, Sony Reader and Plastic Logic (see pictures)— plus online Google books, iPhones and Blackberries will change the way we'll buy, store and read books. To visually look great on electronic devices, it will also affect how writers structure what's written on the page or how a chapter is written. For example, hard copies place endnotes at the end of the chapter. Online content links to the source. With the different reading platforms, page content needs to be an easy read.

For those who love to read and write, the future presents exciting challenges and opportunities. I love Abraham Lincoln's quote, "The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time." Google Books scans older issues of some magazines that can now be read for free online. No more using gas to drive to the library. Those magazines are:

American Cowboy
Atlanta
Baseball Digest
Best Life
Better Nutrition
Bicycling
Cincinnati
CIO
Cruise Travel
Dwell
Ebony
Indianapolis
Jet
Log Home Living
Mac Life
Maximum PC
Men's Health
Mountain Biker
New York
Organic Gardening
Popular Mechanics
Prevention
Runners World
Running Times
Vegetarian Times
Women's Health
Yoga Journal