Problem: little known fact: As an independent publisher, you cannot publish to the Kindle store via Kindle Direct Publishing KDP (as has been our plan since we conceived of publishing our little ebook) and put it out there as "free" (ie. using a Creative Commons License). You must charge at least $0.99 unless you are a small publishing company, so that the big bad Amazon Kindle Co can charge a royalty on your product. (grin)
Solution: We shall instead publish our book (I believe in w/e format we want but this is still to be experimented with as soon as I receive a copy of our ebook) at the less-well-known Internet Archive under their text archive page. I tested this out today by publishing a PDF version of a homework assignment I recently did on Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown. Derrick will write a post about how to access these published versions of our ebook on a Kindle or an iPad at his blog.
Problem: Several of the sites we considered distributing our ebook through require an ISBN number. Did you know that you can only get an ISBN number through one of 160 publishing companies and that it takes 15 days to process your request as well as having a service fee?
Solution: We're just not gonna publish at those sites. :P so there.
So in the end our plan is to publish to the Internet Archive and possibly Goodreads.
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(added 6/13 4:38 pm)
Answers to Dr. Burton's questions:
What did your team do?
First, I created a diigo list of research I and fellow classmates had done about publishing our ebook. This list, all about publishing ebooks, might be useful to future classes or individuals who are concerned with this process.
Then, I read through and summarized this research for the class on my blog.
Next, I read through information on publishing via KDP and ran into quite a few glitches which are narrated here and here. You can also read through my notes that help you understand my process at a googledoc I kept open as I read to use to present about publishing later for our class.
What tools did you use?
Diigo, google docs, google search, blog search, and eventually I will use Internet Archive and Goodreads to publish our ebook.
How did this coordinate with the overall effort?
Kept the class informed via posts on my blog and kept in touch with the editing and design team in order to make sure formating was correct for what we were publishing and getting a copy of our book.
What went well or could go better?
See my the beginning of this post narrating the frustrating process of trying to publish an ebook and share it for free.
---------
(added 6/13 4:38 pm)
Answers to Dr. Burton's questions:
What did your team do?
First, I created a diigo list of research I and fellow classmates had done about publishing our ebook. This list, all about publishing ebooks, might be useful to future classes or individuals who are concerned with this process.
Then, I read through and summarized this research for the class on my blog.
Next, I read through information on publishing via KDP and ran into quite a few glitches which are narrated here and here. You can also read through my notes that help you understand my process at a googledoc I kept open as I read to use to present about publishing later for our class.
What tools did you use?
Diigo, google docs, google search, blog search, and eventually I will use Internet Archive and Goodreads to publish our ebook.
How did this coordinate with the overall effort?
Kept the class informed via posts on my blog and kept in touch with the editing and design team in order to make sure formating was correct for what we were publishing and getting a copy of our book.
What went well or could go better?
See my the beginning of this post narrating the frustrating process of trying to publish an ebook and share it for free.
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