Print edition of Read Aloud EPUB for iBooks

This is an exciting day! My Read Aloud EPUB for iBooks Miniguide is now available in print from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It is 48 pages long in full color and includes an index, and explains how to create fixed layout EPUB books with an accompanying audio track that plays while the corresponding text is highlighted. (Read Aloud EPUB for iBooks is also available in EPUB and PDF formats.)

Read Aloud books—which currently work only in iBooks on iPhone/iPad/iPod touch—are perfect for children's story books, but don't stop there. Think about the possibilities of language instruction where your readers can see the words highlighted as the speaker pronounces them (and click on them to repeat as many times as necessary). Or perhaps you'd like to publish a play or poetry and include a dramatic reading. Imagine a travel book in which you can narrate the photographs.

This book teaches you how to create the audio, create and format the text, and then mark both the audio and text so that they play and are highlighted simultaneously. You'll also learn how to create stop and start buttons and a background soundtrack.

Here's what Pablo Defendini of Open Road Integrated Media had to say: “Just took a read through the Read Aloud guide—great job! Hits all the points, and it doesn't look like anything is missing. Also, great, great Grep recipes!”



Because this miniguide focuses so closely on just what you need to know for Read Aloud, some knowledge of EPUB in general and Fixed Layout books in particular is also required. To that end, you may also be interested in my EPUB Straight to the Point: Creating ebooks for the Apple iPad and other ereaders (available both in print and in digital editions) and my Fixed Layout EPUBs for iPad and iPhone (available only digital format, with print on its way).

I would also like to note that this is my first foray into publishing my own books in print and I'm really excited about it. Cookwood Press is just me, and thanks to InDesign and Print on Demand and Lightning Source and distribution, a one-woman operation like my own can now sell high quality full color print and digital books all over the world with very little initial investment or infrastructure (though a lot of experience in writing and publishing!). I am hoping it allows me to get more books out more quickly on a variety of topics.



One of my strategies is to write very short books that cover a very specific topic, and Read Aloud EPUB for iBooks is a perfect example. It is just 48 pages but covers everything you need to know. I hope you enjoy it. Please leave reviews wherever you buy it, even if it's just a couple of words.

Volume discounts are available. Please contact me directly.

By the way, that gorgeous cover with the hand-modeled 3D pencil was created by Andreu Cabré. You can see more of his work on his blog: Everything 3D. His demo reel is particularly impressive.

Apple throws down the gauntlet for ebooks in Europe

Yesterday, 26 new iBookstores appeared in the Territory options in iTunes Connect. All of them are in Europe, most within the Euro zone, but a few (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland are not). Their combined population is 304,866,797 people.

This is a huge development. While Amazon is clearly dominant in the US, it has only a few stores in Europe (UK, France, Germany, Italy, and just recently Spain), and its collection of local language books is, uh, irregular. The Kindle, to my knowledge is sold only through Amazon UK and US, though people in other countries can order it from Amazon US. (Michalis tells us in the comments that Kindle is also available in Germany for sales to that country, Austria, and Luxembourg.)

That means that Apple has a tiny window of opportunity to establish a foothold in Europe by making it easy for publishers to sell books in the local languages of each country. I hardly think it's a coincidence that Apple opened iBookstores in 26 additional European countries mere hours after Amazon announced its new Kindle Fire.

And note that publishers who are already in iBookstore (say in the US or UK) have already signed contracts for distribution in most of Europe. Only Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland require new paperwork. And, Apple doesn't have to bother with paper books like Amazon does.

So Apple has the infrastructure up and running, all they need now is to encourage publishers to make their books available.

Some details:

Just because the territories are listed as options for selling your ebooks does not mean that the iBookstore itself is live. I have heard from readers in some countries that say the iBookstore there is indeed live, and from others that there is some system maintenance going on.

This seems to be an everchanging story, so I'll use this blog post to add updates.

iBookstores confirmed live: Netherlands, Greece, Spain, Ireland, Lithuania, Finland (29Sep11) (and US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, and Canada) If your local iBookstore is live, please send me a screenshot!

Adding your ebooks to all of these stores is straightforward and easy, although the UX is pretty abysmal. Just go to iTunes Connect, go to Manage Your Books, choose your book, click Edit Rights and Pricing, click Add New Territory, choose the desired country, set the price and other options (I just choose Jan 1, 2011 because it's quicker, and it uses today's date), click Save and then go back again to choose the next new territory.

How to create a link to an ebook on a particular iBookstore? The easy way is to use the iTunes Link Maker. Search for your book in the country of your choice, and it'll generate the proper code for you.

Or you can create one by hand. The URL will look like:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn111

Change the country code to the country of the iBookstore you're interested in. Wikipedia has a handy table.

According to Mark Coker of Smashwords, if you click on a link and get to a page in the local language of that store, that means the book exists (and ostensibly the store is live). If you get sent to iTunes, that means the book is not available in that country's iBookstore.

I'll update this post as more information surfaces. If your local iBookstore goes live, please let me know (and/or send me a screenshot if you can).

Apple's iBookstore opens in 26 new countries

Christian Peters just alerted me to the fact that he can choose Spain as a market for his books on the iBookstore. Before today, you could only choose US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, and Canada.

Now, you can add twenty-six new markets for your iBooks: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Replublic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portgal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia,
Spain
, Sweden, Switzerland.

To do so, go to iTunes Connect and open the book whose markets you want to add. Then click the Add New Territory button in the upper left corner:



Then, choose the desired country from the Territory pull-down menu, and set the publication date, price, and so on.



I don't have access to all those stores to see if they've gone live yet, but it's definitely imminent. Get your books in those markets quick!

Note: Would it be so much to ask for me to be able to add all the Euro countries at once, with a single date and a single price?

Another note, since Blogger inexplicably refuses to let me add comments: How about a nice little table with checkboxes and entry fields and lots of places where I can choose "select all".

Yet another update: I'm getting "Not on store" errors for Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Switzerland (all non Euro countries). When I click on it I get this message: "No Contract. You do not have a contract in effect for this territory. Please work with your iBookstore representative to enter into a new contract if you wish to sell your books in the territory in question."

Calling for Submissions to my EPUB Gallery

There aren't enough hours in the day. I imagine you noticed. One of the things that's really hard for me is to have enough time to experiment creating new EPUBs and to have enough time to write about them too and share the techniques discovered therein.

The other day I got a very nice note from David Fox, of Electric Eggplant, who, along with his wife Annie Fox, have just released a book called Are you my friend? It's a Read Aloud EPUB for kids, with a professional narration and charming illustrations. He asked if I knew of any websites that reviewed EPUB picture books and it occurred to me that maybe that was the solution to my problem.



Do you have a well-designed EPUB book that you think would be of interest to other folks working on EPUB books? If you want me to review your book and are willing to let me talk about how you created the effects or design you created, then feel free to send me a copy.

Your EPUB file can be fixed layout with or without Read Aloud or it can be a flowing book. It's OK if it works only in one ereader and if it works in several. You don't have to sell the book DRM-free, but you do have to send me a DRM-free version. And of course, I reserve the right to review only the books I really like, or that have some really well-designed feature.

I'll choose the ones I like best and talk about them in a specially tagged EPUB Gallery, here on my blog, as regularly as I can muster. And hopefully, I can give you some exposure for your book—and your clever, well designed EPUBs.

Borrowing Kindle books from the library

The good news is that it's really easy. I started at the Boston Public Library. I don't live in Boston, but all Massachusetts residents have the right to a free e-library card. (OK, not free, we pay for it with our taxes.)

It turns out, though, that this process is virtually the same for all libraries that lend Kindle books. The parts around the edges will show the logo and information that is specific to your library, but the lists and buttons and things you have to do are all exactly the same.

1 Anyways, start at the BPL and choose Electronic Books under BPL Catalogs.



2 On the eBooks, Audio, and Video Search screen that appears, click OverDrive eBooks down under eBooks. (There are other ways to get there, but this is my favorite.)



3 Click the Advanced Search tab.



4 Now choose Kindle Book under Formats and check the "Only show titles with copies available" at the bottom.



5 The BPL currently has 5594 Kindle titles, but while I was doing this tutorial only 3344 were available. That's nothing like the 22 million plus titles in its print collection, but it's a good start. My local library system has 2614 Kindle titles with 1247 of them available this minute. Hey, but Kindle just went live today, did folks really grab them up that quickly? Probably not. It looks like libraries have a license for a given book in EPUB and Kindle formats, and when someone takes out the EPUB, the Kindle is not available, and vice versa.

6 You can either browse around or use the Search within results field to narrow down your search.



7Once you find the book you're interested in, click the Add to Cart button next to Kindle Edition.



8 On the next screen, you can either go back and find more books or proceed to check out. Let's click Proceed to Checkout.



9 If you haven't already logged in, you’ll need to do that now. The BPL says it will require cardholders to enter a pin starting October 3, but for now all you need is your library card number. Then click Sign in.



10 Next, the library will show you the book(s) you're checking out, along with their formats so you can confirm that you want them. Click Confirm Check Out when you're ready to go ahead.



11 Next, you'll be in the My Digital Account area. You can come back here later by clicking the My Digital Account tab if you need to redownload a book or if you get interrupted. Click the Get for Kindle button.



12You'll be spirited to Amazon's website where you'll have to sign in with your account name and password. Then you'll see your book page with a big Get library book button (where the Buy button usually is). Click it!



13At this point, as long as you have a wifi connection, the book is WhisperSynced into your Kindle, whichever one you chose in the previous step. (If you don't have a wifi connection, you can download the book to your computer and then use the USB cable to connect your Kindle and drag the file over.)



If you download it to a different device than the one you want to read it on, you can find it in the Archived Items folder.

And that's it. Happy reading.



This is a page from the Time Out Barcelona guide that I borrowed in Kindle format from the Boston Public Library and opened up in the Kindle app on my iPad. It's a picture of the square near our apartment in Gràcia. It's now called “Plaça de la Vila”!

Guess I could've called this post “The Thirteen Steps”. Would you be interested in seeing it in PDF format for printing out?