1. Self Publishing 101

2. http://www.slideshare.net/chadmairn
@cmairn

3. Agenda
• Understanding formats and DRM issues
• Highlight some publishing tools
• Options for distributing and selling

4. Express
yourself

5. Success Story
Source: http://goo.gl/4oGHd
Self publishing author Colleen
Hoover with copies of her
books. Hoover's novels have
made the New York Times
bestseller list!
www.colleenhoover.com

6. Fill these three roles
and the potential
benefits are greater
than with traditional
publishing!

7. Formats and DRM

8. E-formats
• We have an alphabet soup of formats:
– AZW, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, TXT, DJVU, LIT, etc.
• For a thorough explanation/comparison, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats
• The big ones (right now) are EPUB, PDF and AZW/KF8 (Kindle).
• “Everyone” else uses EPUB and PDF.
Official ePub logo,
International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)

9. Dueling Formats
The cassette/CD format difference is easy for
people to see and understand. But .EPUB vs
.AZW/KF8… ? Not so easy.

10. Dueling formats
AZW EPUB

12. Is it legal to convert e-book formats?

13. YES and NO

14. “You might be tempted to look for some
way to remove DRM from e-books in
order to facilitate conversion. A word of
warning about doing this: In the USA
there is a law known as the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This
law makes it illegal to circumvent a copy
protection system (DRM is such a copy
protection system). It also makes it illegal
to produce tools, distribute tools, and aid
in circumvention. Not everyone lives in
the USA, but many countries have similar
laws. Check your local laws and realize
that even though you may only want to
read an EPUB book that you’ve legally
purchased on your Kindle, it may not be
legal to do so. If you don’t like this
silliness—and I don’t—then speak up to
whoever in your country makes the
relevant laws.”

15. So, what’s this DRM thing?
• Digital Rights Management.
• A software “lock” that controls access to a file
(e-book, e-music, e-movie). You must have the
correct software “key” to unlock it.

16. Is DRM a good thing
or is it an evil thing?

17. Yes!

18. • Like speed limits and banking regulations,
DRM schemes can be a good thing and can
protect an author’s livelihood.
• Like speed traps and unreasonable lending
practices, DRM schemes can infuriate and
frustrate our readers.

19. Same Format, Dueling DRMs
EPUB w/ Adobe’s ADEPT DRM EPUB w/ Apple’s FairPlay DRM

20. Dueling Formats and DRMs
AZW using Amazon’s DRM
EPUB using Abode’s DRM

21. What?!

22. E-books, I hope, will
eventually be like CDs
(i.e., they can be
played on most any
CD player).
Do you think this will
happen? If so, when?

23. DRM-free e-books
http://drmfree.calibre-ebook.com/
http://overdrive.com/
http://www.gutenberg.org/
http://openlibrary.org/

24. Publishing Tools

25. Upload local content to
“Community Reserve.”
createspace.com
kdp.amazon.com
calibre-ebook.com
vook.com/
mobipocket.com

26. What is calibre?
calibre is a “free and open source e-book
library management application developed
by users of e-books for users of e-books.”
http://calibre-ebook.com/

27. What can calibre do?
• Find an e-book and transfer it to a device.
• Manages your e-book collection.
• Convert a DRM-free e-book to another format.
• Over-the-air (OTA) e-book transfer to a Kindle Fire and others.
• Syncs to a variety of e-readers.
• Downloads RSS feeds & converts to an e-book.
• Comprehensive e-book viewer.
• Content server for online access to your collection.

28. More info: http://goo.gl/Ng0zM

30. Note: Some titles are NSFW!

31. live
demonstrationCalibre
CreateSpa
ce

32. Source: http://goo.gl/AcVNM
Source: http://goo.gl/f9ttC
self publishing for tons of other resources!

33. Want to
Hangout?
gplus.to/chadmairn