Topics covered today on the How to Publish Your Book Show FaceBook Live
• New Books, new releases in the Facebook group How to Publish Your Book, lots of books being published in the group, fantastic
• Stock Photo Site, cool new photo site just found out about, Visual Hunt, https://visualhunt.com/
• Editing Your Book, the importance of doing a final edit on your book, not only the book but also in all your marketing
• Converting Print Books to Kindle, Kindle Kid Creator,
Check out my Easy Kindle Books course and learn how you can create your own Kindle book
http://bruce-the-book-guy.usefedora.com/p/easy-kindle-books https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1002979921
• Designing a Book Cover, learn how I design book covers in 1 hour using a single piece of paper
I received a great email just loaded with questions on publishing, coloring books, CreateSpace.com, Kindle Books, all kinds of things. I thought the best thing to was record a video and share the answers.
Question: I like your Youtube on creating children's books in powerpoint. We followed that video for the Mandalas. You use the same format, correct?
Answer: I use PowerPoint and I use Adobe Indesign. My go to program is Indesign but most people don't have that. But almost everyone has PowerPoint, combine that with Kindle Kid Creator and it is pretty easy to make a book.
Question: Do you put your ebooks on for free for a couple of days on Kindle?
Answer: What you are talking about is the Kindle Select Program. No I am not a big fan of that program because it locks you up for 90 day periods of time and restricts you from releasing content. I am big on releasing content
Question: I notice that on kindle you can put your ebook up for free for a couple of days and it does not really cost you anything, however when I checked out Createspace it gave me a negative when estimated my book on for 99c, so that is not a good idea.
Answer: This is the Kindle Select program, CreateSpace does not have anything like this. CreateSpace creates an actual physical product while Kindle does not. You can't really give it away if it is real
Question: I notice some people are putting their colouring books on kindle. Something about they can colour online on their ipads.
Answer: I have done this also because other people were doing it. Amazon is kind of frowning on this. There is no way to color that I know, mostly they just become picture books. There are coloring apps for smart phones and tablets, don't know if you can feed a pdf into them or not.
Question: Would you put a colouring book on kindle ebook and for how much?
Answer: I think maybe, if it is more of a picture book then maybe so. You use the 35% royalty and sell for $2.99, otherwise you pay for the download
Question: Is it not easier to pirate the colouring books that way?
Answer: This is a common question, I don't worry about books being pirated, just keep moving forward. Most book will never be something that people want to pirate. I don't know how they would do this from a Kindle.
Question: What file do you use for Createspace, also mobi?
Answer: CreateSpace uses high res pdf file for both the interior and the cover, Kindle uses a html for the book and jpg for the cover.
Question: Do you just charge the full price when you put it on Createspace?
Answer: Yes I do, usually around $9.95
Question: I looked at Amazon and there seem to be a lot of complaints about markers bleeding through the pages. Does Createspace give you a choice of
Answer: They do but it is just between white and off white, I use the white. I put images on just one side of the page, seems to work fine, this is how I deal with it.
1. Thickness of paper
What they have is what they have
2. Opportunity to perforate the pages?
No, I wish they did
3. What would be a good thickness?
80lb text? but you would have to print them with a regular printer. Not a fan of a garage full of books. Print on demand is amazing.
4. Is starting an account with Createspace free?
Yes it is, all cost come out of the royalties, same with Kindle
Question: if not, what do you know about Ingramspark?
Answer: It would be the option if books stores are in your marketing mix, I have a good video in the resource area http://brucethebookguy.blogspot.com/p/resources.html
Question: Is starting an account with them free?
Answer: I think it it, but there are costs for each book, see the video or the site
Question: Do they give the above two opportunities?
Answer: Do you mean Kindle and paperback, they do, but there are restrictions
Question: Do you sell many adult coloring books?
Answer: Yes I do, Mandalas books and my Geography books
Question: I notice that you have two sizes: 8.5X11 and 6X8 Which one sells best? Is the 6x8 for kindle?
Answer: This month yes, the smaller size sold more
Question: What is the best way to sell children's books on kindle?
With a good marketing plan, I release a lot of my book content on blogs, websites, Pinterest, and then wrap my own ads around the content.
Question: Which way makes the most money? I attempt to write and my daughter sketches.
Answer: I sell way more print books than Kindle, it depends on the book and your market. I recommend releasing on both platforms, except maybe for the coloring books
Reader Question: Hi Bruce, I just discovered your How to create a children's book with PowerPoint and was blown away at the simplicity of this process. I noticed that the Kindle books do not display any ISBN numbers. Do .mobi NOT need or have an ISBN? I also noticed that your print books DO. Just trying to make sense of it.
Also, is the Print version of your book also produced by the .mobi or some other file format?
I would love to try something like this with a simple project to see how well I could produce a book as well.
I appreciate your public videos. They are so helpful. Please advise @ ISBN nums. Thanks.
Answer: Hi Joyce thank you for watching my videos and for the questions. ISBN numbers are used for tracking book sales. So all physical books, paperback and hardcover, have them. Kindle books aren't tracked by the big tracking agency and are not required to have them. You can add them but Amazon doesn't need them. Physical books are also inventoried so the ISBN numbers are used for that. If you are publishing your book through CreateSpace you can use the free numbers that they will give your your can purchase them yourself and use that one. They cost $125 apiece.
Kindle book are created from html files or once it is processed mobi files. Mobi files and Kindle are really like a simple web page. No ISBN required.
Pretty much all of my print books are published through CreateSpace.com which is the print-on-demand side of Amazon.com. For book production I generally use Adobe InDesign or Illustrator. You can also use MS Word or Apple Pages or even PowerPoint. You might be able to use Scrivener if you can set up a page size at the size needed of your book. Really anything that can produce a higher res pdf file. CreateSpace/Amazon can handle books from 5"x8" up to 8.5" x 11". I will often create a Kindle version of my print books using the Kindle Kid Creator program from the source pdf. If the book is all text then I will format it from MS Word, just like everyone else does.
What image resolution should my pictures be for my children's Kindle picture book, especially if I am using the Kindle Kids Book Creator?
Excellent question from Carlos S. and thank you for asking.
Hi, Bruce,
Last year when I convert my 9 comic books into digital format, Your YouTube instructions using Kindle's Comic Creator (using Abobe Illustrator) was extremely helpful!!
Now, 10 months later, I ready to publish my 10th comic book, I see you are using PowerPoint and Kindle's Kids Book Creator.
Having seen all you YouTube videos, I've used Illustrator and 300dpi for my images.
I couldn't find where you suggest image resolution to use for PowerPoint.
For your experience...
Questions: What in you opinion, is the minimal resolution on a line-art drawing to paste in PowerPoint and will look good on a mobile device? Should anti-alias be used?
Answer: Thank you very much for the question Carlos. If you are staying with just the Kindle and the Kindle Kids Creator, which by the way is an amazing tool, then I would work in 72 or 96 dpi. If you are working with just black/white line drawings I would experiment with keeping the drawings in gray scale instead of going to bit map. If you think you will also be producing that book in paperback with CreateSpace then I would probably go up to 300dpi. PowerPoint will pull in the entire jpg file and the PowerPoint file can get pretty big.
PowerPoint doesn't have the different resolutions for making a pdf like Illustrator or InDesign does.
If you are unfamiliar with the Kindle Kid or Comic Book Creator, they are amazing tools for converting pdf files into Kindle books. If you can make a pdf file you can make a Kindle book. It is just about that simple. Getting graphics into a Kindle book is a pain until this set of free tools came along.
