Ian Lamont's Blog - Posts Tagged "amazon"

For my first technology e-book, Dropbox In 30 Minutes Or Less, I handled all of the production on my own. This includes everything from cover design to uploading the manuscript to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and Nook (PubIt).

I wrote the draft in Google Docs, then switched to Microsoft Word, which is recommended by Amazon and Barnes & Noble for conversion to their respective mobile formats. The weekend of July 7-8 was devoted to taking my Microsoft Word (for Mac) master and preparing it for export to various e-book formats -- Kindle (which required HTML files), Nook (whose PubIt! service for authors uses a .docx file from Word) and PDF (which used Word and a Mac app called PDFOutliner to handle the table of contents).

Of the three formats, preparing the book for submission to KDP took the most time. The issue wasn't KDP or the format that the KDP service accepted, but rather the way that my content creation tool -- Microsoft Word (for Mac) -- handled critical tasks.

(Read the rest of my post on the Digital Media Machine blog)

LendInk is no more. The site, which matched up people who wanted to loan or borrow e-books, featured an easy-to-use interface (see screenshot, below). When a match was made, the parties were sent to Amazon or BarnesAndNoble.com to complete the e-book loan.

Loaning certain Kindle books in this manner is allowed per the Amazon terms and the rights outlined by the publisher. Here's how ...

Read the Q&A with Dale Porter on my publisher's blog site.

I am a fan of Spotify, the music service that streams millions of tracks for free over the Internet. As a listener, I love the ability to find old favorites or discover new artists. Having to put up with occasional ads is not much different than listening to radio. If I had more disposable income, I would pay the $5 monthly fee for Spotify Premium — which does away with the ads and lets you download music to portable devices, such as iPods and mobile phones.

Would I be interested in a Spotify for books? There are such services popping up, like Bookboard for kids books and 24symbols in the U.K. for adult readers. Amazon also offers free downloads for some ebooks.

As a reader, free books are very appealing. I already use the library to borrow books, and the idea of getting free ebooks on my iPad or Kindle is attractive.

But as an author and publisher (The In 30 Minutes catalogue includes Online Content Marketing In 30 Minutes , Dropbox In 30 Minutes , Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes , and Excel Basics In 30 Minutes ) I’m very concerned about any model that ...

I have been dreaming of the day when someone releases a tool that makes it easy to create ebooks that contain video, snazzy layouts, and other interactive features that make for a rich reading and learning experience on a tablet. In my iBooks Author review, I was impressed with the creative possibilities and the ability to include video and high-quality photo layouts. However, I was disappointed with the lack of support for other platforms — there was no way to export a version of the book for the Kindle, the Nook, or Android tablets. So when Gigaom started talking about Kindle Textbook Creator going up against iBooks Author, I was very interested in seeing if Amazon’s new tool could fit my needs. I was disappointed in the results, as you will see from my review of Kindle Textbook Creator ... (read more)