Author: blueZhift (Page 7 of 10)

Publishing eBooks On The iPad

March 22, 2011 / blueZhift

My first two eBooks, Anime Aftershocks, and Rolled Up Dimensionality, are now available on the iPad! While it is true that the Kindle and Nook versions of these books can also be read on the iPhone and iPad using their respective reader apps, going forward it is important to have an iBooks version available as well.

Despite its higher price, the iPad has become an important eBook reader and platform. And after what I saw at C2E2 this past weekend in Chicago, the iPad is likely to become the dominant eReader for digital comics and manga. So how does one publish an eBook on the iPad? The short answer is with money and some effort. Right now it is harder and more expensive to publish on the iPad relative to the Kindle or the Nook.

Think Different

The first thing you’ll need to publish on the iPad is a Mac capable of running iTunes Producer. This is the application you will use to actually bundle and upload your book to the iTunes Store. You’ll have to join iTunes Connect to gain access to iTunes Producer. So if you do not have a Mac and are not comfortable or inclined to the technical side of things, then you’d be best served to publish your eBook through a 3rd party such as Smashwords which publishes on multiple platforms including iPad. Obviously, this will reduce your share of any sales, but it will take the messy technical stuff out of the equation for you.

Running the Numbers

Next, you’ll need to buy ISBN numbers for your eBooks. Even if you already have an ISBN for a print version of your book, you’ll need to get a unique number for the eBook version. Currently, you can buy a block of 10 numbers for $250 USD from the Bowker web site. The process is relatively straight forward and while you can buy a single number for $125, clearly if you plan to publish more than one book in your lifetime, it is more cost effective to buy a block of numbers. Publishing on the Kindle or Nook doesn’t require an ISBN, but if you feel that you may want to publish on the iPad at some point, it’s a good idea to just bite the bullet and buy the numbers up front. I look at it as added incentive to write more eBooks!

Checking It Twice

In my case I already had my eBooks in ePub format which Apple requires for iPad books. And because these books had already passed muster on the Kindle and the Nook, I thought I was home free to publish on the iPad. This was not the case. I discovered that Apple has more stringent requirements than Barnes & Noble or Amazon. To figure out why my eBooks were failing the ePub checks during my upload attempts, I used the ePubChecker app from Rainwater Soft. The cause of the errors turned out to be pretty minor. In one case it was caused by a missing alt property in an image tag and in another, a div tag nesting issue. This is somewhat reminiscent of how early versions of Internet Explorer allowed some pretty messy HTML that other browsers would not be too happy to display properly. This made it easy to write pages for IE at the expense of teaching some pretty bad page authoring habits. So while finding and correcting the errors was a hassle, the lessons I learned will yield higher quality eBooks in the future.

Wait For It

Once I fixed the errors, uploading my eBooks to the iTunes Store was easy. Then it was time to wait for them to be processed and approved by Apple. As one might imagine, Apple likely receives hundreds, if not thousands of submissions per week. It took about 10 days before the books cleared and went on sale in iBooks. I did not receive a notification email to inform me of this. You just have to keep checking your book status on iTunes Connect.

Link It Up

Now on sale, it was time to do some marketing. This article describing how to link to books in the iBooks Store made it easy for me to construct the proper links to my iPad eBooks. The format required is as follows.

http://itunes.apple.com/[country code]/book/isbn[your book’s isbn]

So my links are

Anime Aftershocks:Â http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9780983358503

Rolled Up Dimensionality:Â http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9780983358510

That’s All Folks!

So that’s it! The first time through was fairly challenging, but having done it, I’m confident now that supporting the iPad won’t require much additional effort. Indeed, it’s actually improved my overall eBook publishing process!

C2E2 And The Future Of Comics

March 18, 2011 / blueZhift

Today is the beginning of the 2nd Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2). In addition to having fun, I’m hoping to see something of the future of comics in the digital age. There are already a number of ways of reading comics on various devices, but the number of titles is limited. And right now the lack of a digital comics standard means having to juggle applications going from my Nook, to my Mac, to my PSP or iPhone.

I hope that perhaps I can get some hands on time with the different comic apps and see for myself how they stack up. And, hearing from industry insiders about the direction that publishers are moving in should be interesting as well. Right now I suspect that Apple’s iPad has the inside track on becoming the preferred future home of digital comics. The following list would seem to bear that out.

New Manga On The Nook: Lots Of Yaoi!

March 15, 2011 / blueZhift

This morning’s Digital Manga Newsletter brought the welcome news of new DMP manga titles for the Nook and Kindle. Since my eReader of choice is the Barnes & Noble Nook, I’m always happy to hear of new manga titles for it. And because DMP publishes a lot of Yaoi titles, it didn’t really surprise me that nearly all of the titles listed below are of the popular BL (boys love) genre.

A lot of new titles have been added to our digital storefront! There are so many, we’re just going to list the titles here.Â Titles now available on the Kindle: Right Here Right Now 1&2, Love!!, Kiss Blue 2, Endless Comfort, No Touching At All, The Spiral of Sand, Yokan 1&2, Maiden Rose 1&2, Let’s Draw Manga: Sexy Gals, Il Gatto Sul G 2&3.Â Titles now available for the B&N Nook and Nook Color: Candy, Right Here Right Now 1&2, Love!!, Kiss Blue 1&2, Endless Comfort, No Touching At All, The Spiral of Sand, Yokan 1&2, Maiden Rose 1&2, Let’s Draw Manga: Sexy Gals, Il Gatto Sul G 1-3, The Day I Became a Butterfly, Little Cry Baby, Lost Boys, and Same Cell Organism.

Yaoi manga has been on the Kindle for a long time now, and the Kindle still boasts a lot more of them than the Nook. But it is interesting to note that yaoi manga are not available for sale at Barnes & Noble retail bookstores. At least, I did not see any at the Chicago area bookstores the last time I visited. By contrast, Borders carries a lot of Yaoi and BL manga. But with so many of those bookstores closing, the amount of retail shelf space for Yaoi must be rapidly shrinking. Needless to say, going digital is becoming a matter of survival in the already distressed manga market.

I don’t know how big the yaoi manga market is, but from what I’ve seen in online forums and the anime convention circuit, yaoi has a legion of hardcore, mostly female, fans. So there is a good chance that it is a profitable niche to be in. And of course, an eBook of sexually explicit material can be more discreetly purchased online than in person at a bookstore. Just as pornography has often been the driving force behind the mass adoption of new entertainment media (e.g. VHS, DVD, the Web), perhaps Yaoi is paving the way for manga eBooks.

TokyoPop Manga May Be Coming to iPad, Kindle, and Nook Soon

March 12, 2011 / blueZhift

Recent tweets from TokyoPop indicate that the company is in the process of bringing its manga library to the iPad and other eBook readers soon. When asked on Twitter about creating an iPad manga app like competing publisher Viz already has, TokyoPop responded that one was coming soon. And indicated in response to other questions that Kindle and Nook support was also in the works.

TokyoPop eManga Tweets

The global recession coupled with the twin challenges of piracy and the transition to eBooks have put a lot of pressure on the publishing industry. The Borders bankruptcy has been particularly hard on small independent publishers who may not be able to easily write off millions of dollars in book shipments that may never be paid for. TokyoPop cited the Borders bankruptcy in its most recent round of layoffs and restructuring.

TokyoPop already sells manga online via Zinio, but the rising popularity of the iPad and the need to make up for losses may be accelerating its move to support additional digital formats. It is notÂ publicly known just how successful iPad manga has been for Viz, but with fewer and fewer places to buy manga at retail, digital may be the only avenue left for growth. For small publishers, digital may be a matter of life or death.

In Progress: A Parent’s Guide to Anime, Manga, and Cosplay

March 9, 2011 / blueZhift

As popular as anime has become in the United States, it is still not mainstream entertainment. So many parents are at a loss to understand this thing that their kids have an interest in, and sometimes an obsession with. In this vein, I often get questions from other parents about what anime their kids might enjoy. While I certainly have an opinion on what I like in anime and the shows my own kids enjoy, it isn’t always easy to translate that into recommendations for another family.

So, with some gentle prodding from my wife, I’m writing a parent’s guide to anime, manga, and cosplay. I’m not looking to make specific recommendations of which anime series kids should be watching, so much as giving some background and general guidelines. There are a number of such guides on web sites across the net, but many of these focus only on anime. And I think an eBook might be a more effective way of reaching a target audience more comfortable searching for books than searching the web. Â My hope is to produce a concise guide that will allay much of the fear that American parents have when it comes to anime, manga, and cosplay.

It is true that Japanese anime is created in a culture that necessarily has a different worldview than American culture. But Japanese parents love their children just as much as American ones do. And they wrestle with the same challenges raising their children. My hope is to show that not only is there nothing to fear in anime, but maybe American parents should get into it too!

Back To The Future: Neighborhood Bookstores

March 8, 2011 / blueZhift

Now that winter is giving way to spring, I was eager to get back outside for my customary lunchtime walk abouts. A lot has changed since the last time I engaged in these jaunts. In particular, the Borders bookstores that used to anchor my routes downtown and in Hyde Park are no longer open. So what is a bibliophile who needs fresh air and exercise to do now?

Powell's Books in Hyde Park

Fortunately, my neighborhood, home of the University of Chicago, has no shortage of small bookstores that were here before the appearance of Borders and have now outlasted it. As a student, I spent a lot of time in the bookstores that line 57th Street, so I decided that now would be a great time to revisit and rediscover these treasures of my youth.

First I visited Powell’s Books which sells mostly used books. This was my most frequent destination during my college years and in many ways has scarcely changed at all. Upon entering, I was pleased to find that my favorite sections were exactly where I remembered them to be. I swung by Physics first and found some pretty cool books, including a primer on electric propulsion. Yeah, ion engines! Then I headed straight to the basement corner containing Science Fiction where I was pleased to find a great selection with paperbacks priced from about $2 – $5 on average. I also found a small selection of manga including Evangelion Campus Apocalypse Volume 2 for $5, over 50% off of the $10.99 cover price! Back upstairs in the graphic novels section, I would find my best bargain of all, Alter Ego: Avatars and their creators, brand new and sealed for $4.95, 83% off of the $29.95 list price!

Powell's Basement Sci-Fi Corner

After leaving Powell’s, I passed by the O’Gara and Wilson bookstore. Old habits never die, I rarely visited O’Gara’s as a student because they usually didn’t have the science fiction books I was looking for. I’m glad to see they are still in business, but I will visit them another day!

57th Street Books

My final destination was 57th Street Books, part of the Seminary Co-op. This was, and still is, a small bookstore selling new books and magazines. It also has regular reading and other events that one generally expects of a bookstore. I wanted to check out their magazine and manga selection. eBooks are great for books that are mostly text, but graphic novels and magazines are still a week spot. So I still buy those in physical form usually.

The magazine section wasn’t quite as big as I remembered, though it was never all that huge anyway. Nice selection, but I couldn’t find any web design magazines today. The graphic novel section was quite good, though manga itself was pretty light. I did find a copy of Tezuka’s Ayako, but at almost $30, still too expensive for me. They had some volumes of Black Jack too! The staff was really friendly too. I ended up just buying a copy of Wired magazine and, thanks to the helpful staff found that my wife still had a membership there, from more decades ago than I care to admit to! The membership was good for a 10% discount.

Further west, Barnes & Noble runs the University of Chicago bookstore, which I visited last week. The general bookstore is pretty small with only a tiny manga section. But other than that, it’s like any other B & N, and since it’s farther away than the other bookstores, I won’t be getting over there too often.

I haven’t given up on eBooks, but for now at least, neighborhood bookstores will continue to play a role in my life as a reader of books.

My Bookstore Spoils

Borders Epitath: Bad Romance

March 7, 2011 / blueZhift

Today is the last day for the Borders bookstore in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. The kids are out of school today, so I decided to take them there to see what might be left and to say good bye to the store.

Throughout the closing process, the staff had maintained a very neat and orderly store as was still the case on this last day. The second floor had been cleared of books and closed off since last week. That was when I bought what would prove to be my last arm load of manga for $1 per book. At that time there was still about a bookshelf full of manga and about twice that of science fiction. Today there was nothing left except 3 shelves of romance novels.

We were all rather disappointed that all remained were romance books. Or as my oldest daughter loudly proclaimed, “trashy novels!” We did eventually find 4 or 5 sci-fi novels amongst the trashy ones, but nothing we wanted to buy, even at 50 cents each. So we left the store for the final time and got pizza at Cholie’s nearby.

On the way home, my oldest son expressed his belief that it was eBooks that killed the Borders. While this is certainly a part of the story, I could not help but wonder if all of those unsold romance novels were taking up space that should have been used to sell books people actually wanted to buy. Watching the end of my neighborhood Borders has also convinced me that paper books have become too expensive. When the closing sale began and the book prices were cut %30, people came in droves. People always come out for closing sales, but maybe if the books were 30 or 40 percent cheaper all the time, there would not have been a need to close the store at all.

Viz iPad Manga Madness

March 1, 2011 / blueZhift

I just received an email announcing Viz Manga Madness Month. To celebrate their 100th volume, Viz has cut the price of all volume 1 iPad manga to $0.99 for the month of March. This is a great deal for titles that are normally $4.99, but always being one to ask a gift horse lots of questions, first I wonder why. Then I wonder why shouldn’t each digital volume be $0.99 every month?

Previously, I’d wondered just how successful iPad exclusive digital manga could be given the probably small overlap between the manga reader and iPad owner demographics. Most iPad owners are older people who probably do not read Viz manga. And lately there have been a number of stories relating the difficulty of maintaining the readership of iPad magazine editions, such as Wired which after a great debut crashed spectacularly.

Viz Manga Madness Month

Not knowing anything else, the $0.99 volume 1 price is clearly intended to attract new readers to Viz’s iPad offerings. Current iPad edition readers would already have the first volume. So Viz is looking to dramatically increase readership and perhaps test the viability of the $0.99 price point.

I think the iPad is a great machine, but unfortunately this manga reader, like many others doesn’t own one. So while I wish Viz all the best in attracting new readers, I still hold out hope that they will release manga for the other popular eBook platforms as well. And of course, Viz does have a number of titles that can be read online, though mostly introductory volumes at this point.

With fewer and fewer bookstores in which to sell printed manga, coupled with a youth skewed demographic that cannot easily buy them online from Amazon, all roads point to digital manga.

Barnes & Noble’s Conquest of Space

February 25, 2011 / blueZhift

The growing popularity of eBooks, the success of online bookseller Amazon, and the implosion of Borders would seem to argue that large bookstores are more liability than asset. But Barnes & Noble is seeking to refute that logic by hosting in-store events to promote PubIt authors. PubIt is the eBook self-publishing platform Barnes & Noble launched back in October of last year. Michael at Good eReader writes,

Barnes and Noble is taking advantage of their tangible retail spaces and large book stores, that are a great place to showcase their own authors and build their brand internally. Meanwhile Amazon has a virtual website only and cannot put its own authors in the forefront, while their Digital Text Platform continues to be THE most popular self authoring program on the internet.

Marketing eBooks has been a concern of mine from the very beginning of the Learncrest venture. The online avenues are apparent and easily available, but how does an eBook author cross over into 3D space to promote his/her digital works? Now it looks like B & N is providing just that bridge and going somewhere that Amazon cannot easily follow.

In another current promotion, Barnes & Noble is offering a free cup of coffee to anyone who comes into their stores and tries out a Nook Color eBook reader. Again, this isn’t something Amazon could easily match to promote the Kindle. But I think it may also reveal that B & N’s underlying strategy is not very different from that of a movie cineplex. As high as movie ticket prices may be, that’s not really where a cinema makes its money. Movie theatres make most of their money from concessions sales. The profit margins on soda and popcorn are very high, and I suspect that the same can be said for the sales of eBooks relative to paper ones.

People spend a lot of time on the internet, but we are still physical beings living in 3D space. Free Wi-Fi and in-store promotions that encourage customers to bring their Nooks to the store with them, coupled with events to promote eBook authors is a powerful one two punch to promote your most profitable products. And, of course, it doesn’t hurt to have good old fashioned books on the shelves to be purchased in either physical or digital form.

How well this strategy plays out against Amazon remains to be seen. But with Barnes & Noble’s eBookÂ market shareÂ having risen to 25% and strong sales of the Nook Color, they must be doing something right.

Are Physical Books Really Dead Yet?

February 23, 2011 / blueZhift

A new Amazon Kindle ad has Crave writer David Carnoy speculating that Amazon has pronounced the physical book dead. Long live the physical book! He writes,

By saying that the physical book “lives on,” Amazon is implying that it died at some point. That’s not exactly true, of course, but the messaging seems pretty clear, and expect to see more of it going forward.

It seems rather obvious that physical books continue to be printed and sold to millions of readers. But you know what? I think Amazon is on to something here. As an avid book lover, my heart has been torn by my growing love of eBooks and the accelerating disappearance of bookstores most recently due to the Borders bankruptcy.

As I sort through the remains of the store closing sale of my neighborhood Borders, I am filled with the same ambivalence about physical books as I’m sure was in part responsible for the store’s demise. I love the printed book, but these days I prefer eBooks whenever they are available, and in many cases, I am more than willing to wait for an eBook version to come out. As a result, the only printed books I buy now are graphic novels and manga because they are still mostly unavailable in eBook form, at least legally that is.

So maybe Amazon is right. Somewhere along the way physical books died, at least in my heart, but the soul of the book lives on. It lives on in Kindles, Nooks, iPads, and anything that can display the printed word. If that’s not going to heaven, I don’t know what is!