E-Learning Provocateur: Volume 3

Hooray! My E-Learning Provocateur: Volume 3 is now available.

This volume comprises my latest collation of articles from this blog. As in the earlier volumes, my intent is to provoke deeper thinking across a range of e‑learning related themes in the workplace, including:

•   Mobile learning
•   Informal learning
•   MOOCs
•   Flipped classrooms
•   Social intranets
•   Open badges
•   Self publishing
•   Augmented reality
•   The future of e-learning

E-Learning Provocateur: Volume 3 is available in both paperback and Kindle formats.

If you enjoy it, please review it on Amazon!

Tips & tricks for self publishers – Part 2

In Tips & tricks for self publishers – Part 1 I shared with you my insights into old school publishers and literary agents.

Assuming you have received your rejections – or more likely, no replies at all – you will now be ready to stick it up their proverbials and self publish.

So please find below Part 2 of my series which explains how to get started with an e-book…

If you can use Microsoft Word, you can publish an e-book.

I started my foray by turning Ryan the Lion into an e-book via Kindle Direct Publishing (then called Digital Text Platform). I chose KDP for several reasons:

• I trust Amazon (the owner of KDP)
• Kindle (Amazon’s e-reader) has sold in the millions
• My e-book is automatically stocked in the Kindle Store
• My commission percentage is healthy, and
• I retain control over my work (to update it, set its pricing etc).

Oh, and it’s effectively free. Basically, Amazon sells your e-book and provides you with a slice of the pie.

A caveat that you should be aware of sooner rather than later is that KDP is Amazon-only. That means your book won’t be stocked in Barnes & Noble, the iBookstore, or anywhere else. It also means your e-book will be in Kindle format (not ePub).

To remedy this situation, I concurrently published my e-book through Smashwords. I originally chose Smashwords because of their distribution deal with Apple, but I have since found them to be a pleasure to work with.

Smashwords can publish your e-book in multiple formats: HTML, PDF, Kindle, ePub, LRF and PDB. More importantly, however, they can ship your book to multiple retailers: Barnes & Noble, iBookstore, Sony Reader Store, Diesel, Kobo, and of course, Amazon.

I opted out of the latter because I had already created my e-book through KDP. I still prefer KDP for Amazon because they accept HTML as the content file, which gives me more control over the structure of the final product. If you aren’t familiar with HTML, you may prefer to forgo KDP for Smashwords.

Strangely, Smashwords doesn’t ship to the Google eBookstore. Nevermind, you can upload an ePub file to Google’s catalogue via their partner program.*

* Well, that’s the theory. I uploaded my ePub several weeks ago but it still hasn’t appeared in the Google eBookstore, despite my validating the file and contacting Google Book Support to resolve the issue. I’m starting to get the feeling it will never appear…

So now you know how to self publish an e-book, you are ready for Tips & tricks for self publishers – Part 3 in which I’ll explain how to self publish a paperback…

The age of the e-book

For about a decade, people from all corners of the globe have been saying “We are now entering the age of the e-book”.

Whenever I heard someone say that, I couldn’t shake off the analogy of the real estate agent saying “Now is a great time to buy”.

It just sounded empty.

Something in my gut told me that it simply wasn’t true. And you know what? Year after year, e-books never took off, despite all the exciting forecasts and fanfare.

However… is the tide finally turning?

The new players

A myriad of reasons have held e-books back from mass popularity over the years.

The most obvious one is that lots of people (and I’m one of them) prefer reading real paper books. You can pack them easily, you can read them on the beach, you can scribble notes in them, you can knock them around, you can lend them to your friends, they don’t need recharging, and you never get radiation-induced eye strain.

But another big reason has been the lack of suitable reading devices. Sure, you can read e-books on your laptop or on your smartphone, but it’s not a lot of fun.

Enter the Kindle and the iPad. The former is a purpose-built e-book reader, and I would argue that the latter is too.

OK, so a couple of cool e-book reading devices are finally on the market. Does that in itself foretell a revolution in e-book readership?

No it doesn’t, but this does:

Amazon and Apple have sold millions of Kindles and iPads.

Not hundreds of thousands. Millions.

With so many people owning an e-book reading device, it’s only natural that they would want to read e-books.

And when they do, they might realise that although they still prefer paper books, e-books are actually quite handy.