These are the references from the endnotes to How to Write an Ebook.
Preface
Endnote 1
Endnote 1 has links to useful articles on ebook sales.
Publishing with Love‘s article is titled ‘The Ultimate eBook Industry Analysis’. It notes that information from the Association of American Publishers shows ebook sales declining, but points out that their data doesn’t include self-published books.
The article has tables showing the ranking of categories of books on Amazon, for fiction and non-fiction.
It also includes the top five countries in terms of ebook sales:
- USA
- Japan
- China
- UK
- South Korea
Authormedia has an article titled ‘State of the Kindle 2020’, and it is an interview by Thomas Umstattd Jr of Alex Newton (of Kindle market research resource K-lytics.com).
Newton echoes Publishing with Love in saying that numbers from the American Association of Publishers show ebook sales declining, but they don’t include independent sales via Amazon.
By looking at the Kindle Global Select Fund, Newton estimates that Kindle book sales grew 14% in 2019.
Endnote 2
Endnote 2 refers to a blog by PublishDrive. The blog has an analysis of ebook sales through PublishDrive, and of general sales.
The general sales information includes a graphic from authorearnings.com showing the market share of Amazon, Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble and others. It shows Amazon’s dominance in the US and UK, with more than 80% of sales.
Interestingly, the blog suggests that dedicated e-readers are a dying breed, as most Americans are reading ebooks on tablets, phones or laptop/desktop computers, not Kindle devices.
This could lead to the end of Amazon’s dominance of the ebook market, as those who own iPhone or Android tablets or phones go to the Apple or Google stores for their books.
Chapter One: What Should I Write?
Endnote 3
Endnote 3 refers to the same Publishing with Love market analysis as endnote 1. Here, my book describes the method they used to create tables ranking categories of ebook.
Endnote 4
Endnote 4 has a link to ‘10 Best-Selling Non-Fiction Book Topics‘ by Geoff Affleck.
He used the ranking (relative to the whole Kindle store) of the top five books in each of ten non-fiction categories to work out a ranking for each category.
He thus produced a top ten of the most popular non-fiction categories of ebook. Religion & Spirituality, Biographies & Memoir, and Business & Money were the top three.
He also found that non-fiction books did better in print than in ebook format.
Endnote 5
Endnote 5 is a reference to a Make a Living Writing blog post. It suggests shorter ebooks, and writing a series.
Endnote 6
Endnote 6 links to a HuffPost article by Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords.
Coker explains that his company is an ebook distributor, and when he looked at the data he found a strong preference among ebook buyers for longer books.
The top ten best-sellers averaged 121,000 words; the average word count of books published on a particular day was 37,000.
Endnote 7
Endnote 7 is a link to a Book Cave article about ebook word count. It has a useful estimate of words per page (300-350).
The author of the article, Catia Shuttock, says that fiction tends to be longer than non-fiction.
Endnote 8
Endnote 8 links to Joanna Penn’s article, How to Self-Publish an Ebook.
She has lots of advice about various aspects of self-publishing an ebook, and one point she makes is that having multiple books in a series is a good way to gain reader loyalty.
Chapter Two: the Front Matter of Your Book
Endnote 9
Endnote 9 refers to Wikipedia’s article on the pilcrow, which has a short but interesting history of the use of the symbol.
It originated in Ancient Greece, and stood for the Greek word paragraphos. The symbol was adopted elsewhere in Europe, and scribes would leave a space before a new train of thought in a text, for ‘rubricators’ to add the pilcrow symbol.
The same technique was adopted by printers, but rubricators couldn’t keep up with printing presses, and spaces left unfilled by pilcrows led to the convention of indents at the start of new paragraphs.
Endnote 10
Endnote 10 is another reference to Wikipedia, this time to its definition of a Preface.
A Preface is an introduction to the book written by the author. It explains how the idea for the book was developed, and can include thanks and acknowledgements.
Endnote 11
Endnote 11 defines a Prologue, with the assistance of Dorrance Publishing.
A work of fiction can have a Prologue, containing an important element of the story that took place some time before the book’s main plotline.
Chapter Four: Footnotes/Endnotes
Endnote 12
Endnote 12 is to the KBoards forum, where a post by Eltanin Publishing has helpful information about inserting endnotes into a Word document which is to be turned into a Kindle.
Chapter Five: Images
Endnote 13
Endnote 13 relates to image file formats supported by Kindle.
As a general rule, you should use JPEGs as you write your book, because images will be turned into JPEGs anyway when converted to Kindle.
Kindle Format 8 (.kf8), which is used for ebooks delivered to Kindle Fire devices, supports other image file formats: GIF, BMP, PNG, and SVG, as well as JPEG. See Kindle Help ‘Image Guidelines – Reflowable‘.
Endnote 14
Endnote 14 refers to the same Kindle Help page as endnote 13. It gives advice about captions. The advice is to put a caption in a separate ‘div’ below the image it describes, if writing in HTML.
There doesn’t seem to be any advice about captions for those writing a book using Word.
Endnote 15
When you realise you’re not the only person suffering, it makes you feel better.
That’s part of the value of William Spaniel’s article ‘How to Format Images for Kindle‘. It begins ‘Formatting images for Kindle is a huge drag’ and continues in the same vein.
Spaniel highlights the fact that whatever you do to your images, they aren’t going to look very good when your book is converted to Kindle. A specific issue he raises is that Kindle eliminates lines of pixels from images, which can make text in some fonts illegible.
Endnote 16
Endnote 16 contains a link to Literary Hub’s ‘A Brief History of Book Illustration‘.
Endnote 17
The main text of How to Write an Ebook discusses the history of book illustration, and this endnote links to a Park West Gallery article about illuminated manuscripts, first created in the early Middle Ages.
Endnote 18
Endnote 18 links to an article on CreativIndie by Derek Murphy.
He points out the problem with a large file size – that you lose Royalties, because Amazon charges you Delivery Costs. He runs through some of the steps he took for a client, to reduce the file size of her ebooks.
Endnote 19
This is a reference to an article by Derek Haines on Just Publishing Advice, in which he covers Delivery Costs.
He points out that image-heavy ebooks can make more on the 35% Royalty (because there are no Delivery Costs) than the 70% Royalty.
Endnote 20
Endnote 20 has a link to John Doppler’s article about KDP Delivery Costs, for selfpublishingadvice.org.
He points out that the file size of your manuscript before upload to KDP isn’t necessarily a good guide to final file size and therefore Delivery Costs.
He identifies images as the main factor in file size, and suggests compressing them. He says that the book cover shouldn’t normally affect file size, but to be on the safe side it’s better not to embed it in your manuscript. Just upload it separately.
Endnote 21
Darcy Pattison’s article about images and Delivery Costs on Fiction Notes is really helpful. She did some great detective work, to find out the best way of reducing image file size and therefore Delivery Costs. Thanks for sharing the results of your work!
She recommends submitting JPEGs at 1000px wide (because that’s what Kindle delivers to readers) and a quality of 40. This should reduce file size and Delivery Costs.
Chapter Seven: the Book’s Cover
Endnote 22
This is an opportunity to quote from Mark Twain’s European travel classic, A Tramp Abroad. In Chapter XI, he describes the result of his taking art lessons with some of Germany’s greatest painters.
‘Whatever I am in Art I owe to these men. I have something of the manner of each and all of them; but they all said that I had also a manner of my own, and that it was conspicuous. They said there was a marked individuality about my style,-insomuch that if I ever painted the commonest type of dog, I should be sure to throw a something into the aspect of that dog, which would keep him from being mistaken for the creation of any other artist. Secretly I wanted to believe all these kind sayings, but I could not; I was afraid that my masters’ partiality for me, and pride in me, biased their judgment.’
A Tramp Abroad, by Mark Twain, Chapter XI
Chapter Nine: Uploading Your Book to KDP
Endnote 23
It’s easier to find out how many people have Amazon Prime accounts than how many people have Amazon accounts. Probably, Amazon want to publicise Amazon Prime, so they release information to journalists.
Nat Levy’s January 2019 article on GeekWire reports on a survey showing that Prime membership in the US was at 101 million, representing 62% of households.
Endnote 24
Endnote 24 refers to an article by Sarah Butler in the Guardian from March 2019. It reports on research showing that 90% of UK shoppers use Amazon; 40% have access to Amazon Prime.
Endnote 25
Endnote 25 is a reference to KDP’s ‘Create a KDP Account‘ Help page.
Endnote 26
Endnote 26 is a reference to KDP’s ‘Getting Paid‘ Help page.
Endnote 27
This is on the topic of Kindle Pre-orders. Lois Hoffman’s article on Happy Self-Publisher has some good lines that sum up how pre-orders can be used to advertise a book in advance of release, and generate anticipation.
Endnote 28
Endnote 28 refers to a goodreads discussion forum, to explain why readers pre-order books. One forum participant says she pre-orders “gotta have it” sequels.
Endnote 29
Note 29 links to a KDP Community forum discussion about DRM.
One author is relaxed about the possibility of his book files being shared illegally, and another is against this form thieving.
I tend to think that any files shared illegally probably don’t represent lost sales, and that most people abide by the rules most of the time. With more experience, I might change my mind!
Endnote 30
Endnote 30 refers to Wikipedia’s Mobipocket article.
Mobipocket was a French company founded in 2000, and bought by Amazon in 2005.
The MOBI file format was the basis for KDP’s ebooks, and the older .azw file format is almost identical to .mobi.
In 2011, KDP introduced the Kindle Fire 8 format, which ‘supports a subset of HTML5 and CSS3 features’. In other words, the newer .kf8 format is very much like a modern web page.
Endnote 31
Endnote is a gratuitous reference to my favourite Appendix, Appendix D of A Tramp Abroad.
Laughing at Twain’s description of learning the German language should be prescribed to anyone who has ever struggled with the difficulties of that tongue.
I could have picked out almost any paragraph of Appendix D, but I stumbled on this one, with Twain’s suggestions for improving German.
‘In the first place, I would leave out the Dative Case. It confuses the plurals; and besides, nobody ever knows when he is in the Dative Case, except he discover it by accident,-and then he does not know when or where it was that he got into it, or how long he has been in it, or how he is ever going to get out of it again. The Dative Case is but an ornamental folly,-it is better to discard it.’
A Tramp Abroad, by Mark Twain, Appendix D
Endnote 32
Endnote 32 is a reference and link to KDP’s Digital Pricing Page, which includes their Delivery Costs.
Chapter Ten: Making Changes After Publication
Endnote 33
Endnote 33 is a reference and link to KDP’s Timelines Help page. It tells you how long you’ll have to wait for changes you’ve made to go live.
Endnote 34
Endnote 34 refers to Amazon’s Automatic Book Updates – a setting you can choose to ON via the Manage Your Content and Devices section of your Account settings.
If that doesn’t work, I suggest a workaround so you can get the latest version of your Kindle ebook in your Kindle Library.
Chapter Eleven: Promotions
Endnote 35
Endnote 35 refers to an article by Alison Thompson on theprooffairy.com about the results of running a Kindle Countdown Deal.
It boosted sales a lot during the promotion, but didn’t have an enduring effect after the Countdown Deal finished.
Endnote 36
Endnote 36 refers to a discussion on the KDP Community forum entitled ‘What Is the Most Effective Promotion You’ve Ever Done?‘
The Top Rated Answer is sending out free review copies to appropriate blogs and magazines.