The epublishing process...

It's been an interesting day. Having decided to get my Xannu books published electronically, I entered a world where there are rules and regulations that vary by platform. And to think I thought it would be fairly straightforward to publish my books myself electronically! But I digress. Let's step back a few hours.

As far as I can tell there are three main epublishing platforms: Amazon's Kindle, Apple's iBookstore, and Barnes & Noble's Nook. Okay, that's the bases covered. Yesterday evening I uploaded my first book to Amazon and the process went fairly smoothly. However, today nearly 24 hours later I am still waiting for the book to actually hit the Kindle store. Then this morning I uploaded the second Xannu book and that too is now 'in process.' In the process of uploading the second book I discovered that the Kindle store does not handle the Microsoft .docx format very well. After wasting a couple of hours I reloaded the book in .doc format. That worked a lot better.

Once the Amazon process was complete I tried out the Barnes & Noble process. That actually was very straightforward and my books are already available in the Nook store. Score kudos for B&N!

Lastly there's the Apple store. This is where I hit my first brick wall. Unfortunately you can only publish to the Apple store via a Mac computer. Alas I only have a PC. So, I guess this version will just have to wait until a later date. Grrr!

So there you have it. Several hours of my day taken up with uploading and file conversions. Then, after all this I also downloaded an ebook publishing / converting tool. This enabled me to get a copy of my books onto my iPad with the Kindle app. It also enabled me to see just how the books looked in eformat. Maybe there is a reason why all these publishers have had a monopoly on books for five hundred years!

I will post a further update with links as soon as my Amazon books go live...