My eBook eXperience -- part one of many

I just published my first eBook. In the process, I figured out some interesting technical problems. In the interest of saving other folks some time, I'm going to share what I discovered. (Note that I didn't say "share what I learned." I'm not very good at learning from my mistakes, and will probably repeat most of them.)

First, a non-technical issue. (I might not reach the technical stuff in this part, but it will come.) Why did I publish an eBook? I love my publisher. They treat me very well and work hard to promote my books. But one of my other loves is short humor. I've been writing it all my life. Some of my first sales were magazine pieces. So, given that I've been writing professionally since 1978, I have a lot of material on hand. Beyond pieces I wrote with the intent of making a sale, I have things I wrote for my own amusement, or to share with other writers. And I have humor I wrote for my keynotes and other conference talks. Basically, I had a boatload of stuff that I felt was worth sharing with a large audience. But some of it appealed only to special interests. If I tried to do it as a print book, a publisher would be unlikely to want me to include extra sections that had limited appeal. But, thanks to the current world-wide depression in the price of electrons, I could cram as much as I wanted into an eBook. I could also sell it for a low price. (In this case, just $2.99.) So it made sense to take the plunge.

Several of my fellow writers had already ventured into eBook territory. Most notable, April Henry, who published some of her early mysteries, Bruce Coville, who published an assortment of short stories, Pete Hautman, who also brought out an older mystery, and Roland Smith, who published a novel. All of these folks are established writers in the print world. They are also smart. (This isn't surprising, since good books tend to be written by smart people.) So I had some excellent role models and inspiration.

I assembled all my humor pieces, and culled any that I thought hadn't aged well. Then I divided the book into sections, putting all the general interest humor up front, since this is what people would see if they downloaded a sample. Now, I had to decide where and how to publish it. I'll talk about that in the next entry.

Here's more about the book itself: It seemed Funny at the Time.