Coding Isis on kobo

 

At the start of this month, I launched Coding Isis as an EPub formatted book on Kobo using their new Kobo Writing Life do-it-yourself publishing portal.

Like Amazon’s Kindle, there are Kobo eReaders (mini, glo, touch, and arc) and also a bunch of free reading apps that will let you read on iPad, iPhone, Android, Mac, PC, Blackberry, and even an Instant Reader that allows you read in a Web browser.

I made the EPub version using Calibre software. I previously blogged about how you could use this software to convert the Kindle version if you have a different reader and when I did this I wasn’t fully satisfied with the result, so I went back to basics and edited the HTML source to strip out some of the non-essential formatting left behind by Word and also produced a table of contents which, on the Kobo reading app allows you to easily see how many pages are left in a chapter (I don’t know about you but when I’m reading I like to finish on a chapter break and it’s nice to know how many pages you have to go).

Kobo writing life is obviously a competitor to Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) but it has a number of advantages for the independent author. For New Zealand authors you can specify a bank account and get paid electronically (although I believe you have to sell some books first, so I can’t be 100% sure this works!) If you want to set your price to free, you can do so at any time, for as long as you want, and without needing to exclude your book from other eBook outlets. Finally the royalty rate is higher than on KDP (currently they have a special offer giving 80% instead of 70%—see previous note about this only being applicable if you actually sell books).

So there you have it! If you know someone with a Kobo reader, please let them know about my book. Oh, and just between you and me, it’s currently free on the Kobo site. Here’s the link to the book.

Christchurch Writing Workshops

What a great weekend. Free writing workshops in Christchurch thanks to the New Zealand Society of Authors and Copyright Licensing Limited.

I presented a session on how to self-publish a Kindle novel on Amazon.com which was very well received. I promised to make the details available and here they are. I made a PDF document with the main part of the presentation and some of the useful resources I talked about. You should be able to download it by clicking the following link:

How to Self-Publish a Kindle Novel.pdf

I also promised to make the Word document template that I used for the book available. You can download it by clicking the following link:

CreateSpace 5 inch by 8 inch template

You might have some fun with the page numbers in this template. The blank pages need to be totally blank (no page numbers), the About the Author section at the end does not require page numbers either. If you find these start to appear check the properties of the sections. This is how I sorted it out. The document uses different sections to handle the page numbering for the front matter, main text and appendices.

If you want to read Coding Isis and have a Kobo, Sony Reader, Nook, or one of many other readers, you can find out how to buy the book and convert it in this blog post: http://davidroys.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/how-to-read-kindle-book-on-different.html 

It was great to meet all of you and thanks to the event organisers for making it such an enjoyable weekend.

Happy Mother’s Day!

OK, so it’s not Mother’s Day quite yet, but I figured I’d drop the price of Coding Isis to 99c to celebrate mums everywhere. I’m going to put the price back up after May 13th.

Thank you to everyone that’s supported Coding Isis since it was published in February. I really appreciate the Facebook ‘likes’ and reviews on amazon.com.

Paperback is now available!

Coding Isis Review on Joanne Ganley’s Blog

Hi all. It’s been less than a month since Coding Isis went on sale and it seems to be gaining some attention. I’ve had 66 sales on amazon.com, 11 on amazon.co.uk, and even 2 on amazon.de, but best of all it’s been getting some great reviews.

Check out this review on Joanne Ganley’s blog. Thanks Joanne.

There have also been 9 reviews posted on amazon.com at the time of writing. Here are some extracts:

[…] what really anchors the story is the well-drawn characters. The poignant relationship between Chris and Michelle is a real standout, as well as the intuitive sleuthing by Ben. Solid writing all around, and the moral conflict is as engaging and powerful as anything I've read this year. John Ling

This is an incredibly well written and tightly written novel. It was fast paced, and had an interesting premise which was seen out to the end. The characters are well written, well rounded and very believable. S. McEwen

Great read, technology aspect is believable given Google’s recently launched Goggles technology. Good twists and very hard to put down, I'd recommend to anyone who likes a good thriller. Kiwilamb

A very good first novel from an author that has taken some lessons from the modern masters of this genre. Helen Thomson

Would definitely recommend this to any reader not just those that read thrillers. S Goeldner

It grabs you in the opening scene and keeps up the pace nicely throughout. Very well written […]
Bring on #2... can't wait to see what else is in store for these characters! lostkiwi

Thanks to all of you.

Guest post on John Ling's blog

Fellow Kiwi author John Ling asked if I'd do a guest post on his blog about Coding Isis and writing.

You can read it here http://johnlingblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/guest-post-by-david-roys

How to read a Kindle book on a different reader in 10 easy steps

 

Free Reader Apps

You don’t need to own a Kindle to read Kindle books. You can now get free Kindle reader apps for iPhone, Windows PC, Mac, Blackberry, iPad, Android, and Windows Phone 7. There’s also a Kindle Cloud Reader that allows you to read books from within your web browser (limited browsers supported).

 

Nook, Bookeen, Kobo, PocketBook, Sony Reader, and more…

A number of people have asked how they can read my book on different reading devices. Fortunately, you can use a free program called Calibre to convert the Kindle book to a format compatible with your reader. So if you have a Nook, Bookeen, Kobo, PocketBook, Sony Reader, or one of many other reading devices, you can follow a few simple steps and be reading in no time at all. 

You can follow this quick step-by-step guide on how to convert Kindle books to your reading device…

1. Download and install the free Kindle for PC reading app (enter your Amazon account details to register your PC as a Kindle reader with your Amazon account)
   
2. Click on the Shop in Kindle Store button at the top of the PC reading app to open the Kindle store in your web browser, or click one of the following links to go to the Coding Isis page in the Amazon store for your country:
   
   Coding Isis from amazon.com 
   Coding Isis from amazon.co.uk 
   Coding Isis from amazon.de 
   Coding Isis from amazon.fr 
   Coding Isis from amazon.es 
   Coding Isis from amazon.it
   
   
3. Buy the book and select your PC kindle reader in the Deliver to drop down box
   
4. Download and install the free Calibre ebook library manager
   
5. In Calibre, click the Add books button in the toolbar. Select the Coding Isis ebook file (for me this was stored in C:\Users\Dave\My Documents\My Kindle Content\ although, for you the location may be different) the file is called B00746OGV2_EBOK.azw which is the ASIN number of the book with _EBOK appended and an azw file type
   
6. In Calibre, click the Convert books button in the tool bar. The Input format will default to AZW, select your required Output format (most modern readers support EPUB as a format but there are lots to choose from)
   
7. Wait for the book to convert (for me this took 18 seconds)
   
8. Transfer the new file to your reading device
   
9. Read and enjoy Coding Isis
   
10. Go back to Amazon store and leave a review

I believe this conversion method will work on many Kindle books and not just mine ;-)

 

Paperback coming soon…

If you prefer paper, I’ll be making Coding Isis available from Amazon.com as a paperback using their CreateSpace print on demand service. Be sure to subscribe to feeds from this blog, or follow me on www.facebook.com/davidroysauthor to get a notification when the paperback is available.