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While researching an article about iPhones, I was contacted by Cheryl Kaye Tardif, best-selling author of numerous novels such as Whale Song. Tardif has embarked on a new project: writing a complete novel on her iPhone – the first major mainstream author to do so.

I kind of stumbled onto this by accident. One night while watching TV I was inspired by an idea for a new novel; I’m a bestselling suspense author with 3 published novels.

This new novel idea hit hard and fast and I didn’t want to lose one thought, so I reached for my iPhone 3G, which at the time I’d had for a week or so. Opening the Notes application for the first time, I started typing in my ideas. This led to opening a new file in Notes and actually writing the first paragraph or two of the novel.

Then I discovered I could email my Notes to myself. I did this and later that evening after the TV show I was watching was over, I rushed upstairs and opened the email on my PC. Copy and paste brought it into an MS Word doc, and ta-da! I’d officially started a new novel.

The novel, Finding Bliss, is still in the “fermenting” stage, says Tardif – she’s wrapping up another novel to send to the publisher, and editing another that’s due to come out soon. But she’s excited about doing this.

My first question, of course, was “why”?” I mean, I’m a big techie (of course) and I’ve written quite a bit on similar devices like my trusty old Palm IIIe, but the thought of tapping out 80,000 words or so on the iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard fills me with dread!

Tardif gives several reasons for undertaking such a big project on such a small device. First, there’s the convenience. “This is huge for me,” she says, “since I am struck with ideas virtually anywhere, any time.”

Second, she finds the immediacy of the iPhone fits the topic of the novel quite well. “Finding Bliss is told in first person, from the perspective of Bliss Morgan, a damaged teenage girl who must fight to survive in a world of abuse, lies and loss. It will read almost as a diary, and writing my thoughts down when I get them is key.”

But most importantly, she says, writing a novel on an iPhone is great publicity. “To be honest, writing Finding Bliss in this way makes this novel unique, intriguing, and very pitchable to a publisher and sponsors.” Before you dismiss that as shallow, opportunistic, or overly commercial, remember that we live in an attention economy, and writers are not just expected but required to bring with their manuscripts a willingness to market their work and the savvy-ness to do it well. There is a special term for authors who aren’t willing to go the extra mile to capture the public’s attention: “unpublished”.

Tardif has found a great way to distinguish herself from the pack, and the public (and publishers) are paying attention. She’s been featured in several newspapers, and been contacted by retailers and websites looking to arrange exclusive releases of her finished book – and she’s only two chapters in!

Tardif offers this advice for authors looking to use their iPhones to write on:

Writing a novel on a small device like the iPhone 3G requires a fair amount of patience. There’s also a learning curve with the phone, so writers attempting this have to be willing to take their time. This probably won’t be a novel that’s written in 4 months.

I think that anyone attempting this should understand why they want to write this way. Are there advantages? Do the advantages outweigh the restrictions? Keep in mind, there is little room to edit, and certainly major editing would be done once converted into the Word doc.

More importantly, she sets a great example for writers looking for creative ways to promote themselves and their work. It hasn’t all been done before, but you’ve got to be willing to do whatever it takes to get yourself noticed. “Let’s face it,” she told me, “every author needs to get noticed if they want to succeed, especially fiction authors. And I plan to succeed! ”

Good advice!

Enter e-Junkie. For $5 US a month, e-Junkie provides you with an online shopping cart, storage for digital downloads, order processing, inventory management, email autoresponders, and a lot more.

Let’s say you’ve written an e-book. You upload the file to e-Junkie, write a sales page on your own site, and insert e-Junkie’s code to place a “Buy it now” button on your page. When visitors click through to buy your e-book, they’re directed to your e-Junkie shopping cart, where they can pay via PayPal or Google Checkout (or a couple of other services) and instantly get a download link.

e-Junkie will also handle physical products — it works the same way, except that when an order is placed, you get an email with the details so you can fulfill the order yourself. You can offer several variants — say, a paperback and hardcover of the same book. e-Junkie will even calculate the shipping costs and sales tax (where applicable).

What makes e-Junkie especially compelling is the ability to set up affiliate programs so that other people can promote and sell your product. You choose how much you’d like to pay per sale — say, 20% of the sale price — and e-Junkie will provide your affiliates with a tracking code they can use to send sales your way. e-Junkie doesn’t administer the affiliate program; at the end of the month, you’ll get a tally of affiliate sales and you have to pay off your affiliates (via PayPal, usually).

Of course, you can always join the affiliate program of any of your fellow e-Junkie sellers. Signing up is easy — find a product you like in their affiliates directory (under the “Affiliates” tab), and click the link at the bottom to join their affiliate program. You’ll get a choice of either a text link to customize or a “Buy Now” button you can put on your site — the idea is, you write your review, sales page, blog post, or other copy, and the author pays you for your help.

Although e-Junkie allows sellers to market a wide range of products, it seems designed with e-books and software — downloadable products — in mind. Tough luck for everyone else, but good news for writers!

Go check out e-Junkie. As far as I’ve seen, they’re the only ones offering this kind of service, and they do it very well.

And here’s the kicker — your commission ranges from 4% to 8.5%, which means that, depending on how many sales you achieve and what your agreement with your publisher is, you may end up making more from Amazon sales than you do from your royalties! Look:

Royalties: If you sell a book at $19.99, and get 5% of the wholesale price (usually 60% of the cover price), you’ll make .05 x .60 x $19.99 = $0.60. If you sell 100 copies, you’ll make $60 in royalties.
Amazon Associates: The same book might be marked down at Amazon to $15.99. If you sell one copy, you get 4% of 15.99, which is $0.64. If you sell 100 books, your commission is 6.5%, which nets you $1.04 per copy, or $104 for 100 books. Of course, you still get royalties on those books, too.

To create a link, you can log into your Amazon Associates account and select from dozens of “Widgets”, including ones that will scan your page and automatically create banners targeted towards the keywords on your page (it’s called Omakase). I don’t generally like their widgets, though they’re ok as ads to run in your site’s sidebar. Usually, I create links manually, by adding my associate ID to the end of the URL for a product page. Here’s how:

1. Search for a product. For illustration, we’ll use my book Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War.
2. Go to the product’s main page and copy it’s URL. For my book, it’s: http://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-at-Dawn-Cold-War/dp/0745325866/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203705368&sr=8–1
3. See that string of numbers after the title and before where it says “ref=pd_bbs_sr_1…”? We only need the link up to there, so cut everything after the slash.
4. The new URL looks like this: http://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-at-Dawn-Cold-War/dp/0745325866/
5. That’s enough to find the book with, but it doesn’t have my associate ID attached yet. My associate ID code is “dwax-20″, and I’ll just add it to the end — Amazon is really good at picking out your associates ID.
6. The new URL looks like this: http://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-at-Dawn-Cold-War/dp/0745325866/dwax-20. Clicking that link will take you to the exact same page, but I’ll get credit if you buy the book. In fact, I’ll get credit if you decide not to buy it and buy something else, instead, as long as you entered the site using my link.

Barnes and Noble also has an affiliate program, if you prefer working with them for whatever reason. I find Amazon’s to be far more useful (in terms of providing value to website visitors) but in the end, it’s links to books — and whichever company you feel offers the best combination of value and compensation should get your traffic. Borders recently “divorced” Amazon, launching it’s own online bookstore after several years of fulfilling orders through Amazon. Their affiliate program, then, is only just getting off the ground, but if you prefer Borders, that’s the way to go.

Use your affiliate link wherever you promote your book — on your website, in your email signature, on forums, anywhere you can paste a link. Obviously the vast majority of your sales will not come from you telling people where to find your book, but if you’re an active promoter, a significant number of sales will come from your link, which will be a nice bonus above your regular royalties — and you won’t have to wait a year to collect, either.

1. Hone your craft.: The best way to improve your writing is to write, right? A blog gives you an outlet for writing regularly.
2. Instant feedback: One thing blog readers are not is timid; if you mess up, they’ll let you know! They’ll also let you know when you’re doing a good job. It might be years before you get any feedback on the novel you just finished; a blog post can start getting commented on within minutes.
3. Develop relationships with readers: A blog lets you reach out to your readers and build enduring relationships. The people who read your blog every day are going to be people you can count on to buy your books, spread word of mouth about your work, even review works-in-progress.
4. Give your most loyal readers a “free prize”: Blogging gives you a chance to offer your biggest fans a little something extra.
5. Build awareness of your work: Blogs have a potentially unlimited audience — more than one person has discovered their new favorite writer by doing a search on Google.
6. Show your ability to write often and consistently: If you do work for clients, blogging shows that you’re able to write regularly and to a schedule — which is good news for potential clients!
7. Network with other writers: Your blog offers a platform for connecting with other writers, by linking back and forth to each other, providing a place to comment on each other’s work, and giving each other positive word-of-mouth.
8. Sell copies of your books: If you have book out, by all means plug it on your blog. A lot. Join the Amazon Associates program so you get a referral fee every time someone buys your book by clicking the link on your site. The referral fees are often as much as or even more than your royalties!
9. Attract clients: New readers can find out about you when your site turns up on Google — so can new clients! Plus, you can sell them on your work before they ever even contact you.

Of course, there’s another reason writers should blog — it’s fun! And there’s nothing wrong with that!

The Writer’s Technology Companion Desk-Side Guide To… Writing Ebooks Covers the technical ins-and-outs of writing, formatting, distributing, and promoting ebooks. (12pp plus front matter)

Download [PDF: 312Kb]

I’ve also added an “Ebooks” page to the site. I have several 5-part series in the works, and aim to release at least one a month. I’ve decided that I am going to try to release each of these series as a free ebook after the posts run on the site, and the whole collection will be available from the “Ebooks” page.

I have been thinking about making these ebooks available as physical books through a print-on-demand service like CafePress. However, in order to cover the publishers’ base price, I’d have to price what are going to be really slim volumes at $5 or $6 US — way too much, especially when you add shipping, for such little books. But if I can work out a way to do that — maybe by putting together a “Writer’s Technology Companion Omnibus Edition”, I’ll add that option to the “Ebooks” page.

A note: Despite my best efforts, I managed to munge the base file for the ebook up pretty bad, so there’s a few typos I couldn’t fix (three, that I know of). Considering my own advice to proofread thoroughly, that’s pretty embarrassing — I hope you’ll forgive me my transgressions!

First of all, make sure it’s featured prominently on your site. Write a post about it, making sure to use all the important keywords you think people doing a Google search might use to find information like yours. For a while, at least, it’s a good idea to put a blurb about your e-book at the bottom of every post you write, too — make sure our existing readers know about, and keep telling them about it!

Contact anyone you have any connection with on the web and ask them to link to your e-book, too. Send them a copy and ask them to review it. If it’s for sale, offer free copies for a giveaway on somebody else’s site. If you’re using e-Junkie, set up an affiliate program and give people a piece of the action in exchange for their promotional efforts.

Insert a link to your e-book into your signature block on your email and in any forums you frequent. Add a link to your profile on any social networking sites you belong to. If you’re giving it away, add it to directories of free e-books (Google “Free e-book directory” for some ideas).

If you’re selling your e-book, make sure you add it to Amazon’s Kindle store through their Digital Text Platform. You’ll have to reformat it for the Kindle’s screen (which is black-and-white and about the size of a pocketbook page), but you’ll get your title in front of thousands of Kindle users — a number that’s hopefully going to grow a lot. You can charge whatever you want for it — the average price at the moment seems to be $9.99 US — and you get 35% of the sales revenue.

Be creative with your promotions. Make up business cards or bookmarks with the URL of your e-book’s page prominently featured, and hand them out wherever you can. Put up flyers on bookstore bulletin boards. Buy Google Adwords or advertise in literary magazines. Obviously, don’t spend a fortune — and if you’re giving it away, it’s probably a good idea not to spend anything at all — but if you think you can make it back, putting a little money into promotions isn’t a bad idea.

Well, that depends on your ultimate goal. Are you planning to give your e-book away, or do you want to sell it? Let’s look at both options separately.

Giving it away

If you’re going to give your e-book away, you could just upload it to your site, add a link to the sidebar, and be done with it. We’ll talk about promoting it in the next post, but for now, make sure it’s clearly marked (the word “FREE” in all caps, bold-faced, in giant red letters never fails to attract attention!) and why people should want to read it.

A better bet might be to give it its own page. Write up a short description, add some testimonials if you have them (and update the page if you get any), and add the page to your site’s main menu.

Or maybe you want to give it away but still get something in return. You could offer the e-book as an incentive to sign up for your newsletter, if you have one — attach the file to the automatic reply they get when they sign up. Or you could use it to drive subscriptions to your RSS feed — Remarkablogger shows you how to add a link to your e-book that only shows up in your RSS feed. Tell them they’ll get the link once they’ve subscribed.

Selling your e-book

Selling an e-book takes a little more work — it is, after all, a business endeavor — but, of course, you get paid for it. If you already have a shopping cart on your site (we’ll talk about that in a future post), you could sell it directly. That’s probably more than most writers are willing to deal with, though, so here are a couple of third-party services that can handle some or all of the details of the sale for you.

• PayPal: If you don’t mind doing the order fulfillment yourself, you could add a Paypal “Buy Now” button to your site. Every day, log in, see what new orders have been placed, and email them a copy of your e-book.
• Lulu: If you expect to sell more than a few copies a day, you’ll want order fulfillment along with payment processing. Lulu is a print-on-demand service that also offers e-books; you’ll need to create an account, upload your e-book, and charge enough to cover Lulu’s per-book fee and commission. Your buyers will receive their e-book directly from Lulu. Lulu does paper copies, too, so you can offer your work in both formats if you like.
• e-Junkie: It’s not free, but for $5 US a month, e-Junkie will host a shopping cart for you and handle the order fulfillment, providing your buyers with a download link to get the e-book from after they’ve paid. E-Junkie offers other useful services for that $5/month, including the ability to create affiliate links so other sites can sell your e-book — for a cut, of course.

I’m sure there are other services I don’t know about, but beware, too — for some reason writers have always been seen as likely targets for scams. Make sure that a) you don’t have to pay for services you don’t need (like editing or layout), b) you aren’t turning over any copyrights and you retain full ownership of your e-book, and c) you aren’t required to pay for a certain number of sales until they’re actually made. Thoroughly research any e-book publisher or distributor; Googling their name plus “scam”, “fraud”, and similar words will likely turn up what you need to know about any shady dealers.

Instead, I suggest saving your file as a plain-jane pdf file. While you could use professional layout software like Adobe’s InDesign and Acrobat to produce your final text, these programs cost hundreds of dollars and are difficult to learn. Instead, I recommend using your word processor of choice and a free pdf creator(I recommend PDF Forge’s PDF Creator; some word processors, like Word 2007 (using the “Save as pdf” addon) and OpenOffice.org can save pdfs themselves.

You’ll need to set up your pages with the end result in mind. Wide text columns can be harder to read, especially on screen, so set your page sizes to something more book-like. I set my pages at 6″ wide by 9″ tall, with a 1-inch margin all around. This allows me to easily use the files with print-on-demand publishers like Lulu, and allows my readers who’d like to print the e-book to print 2 pages per side in landscape mode without hurting the layout — saving paper and retaining readability.

You’ll probably also want to put page numbers, chapter headings, the title, and your name into the headers and footers. Since this is a full book and not just a manuscript, you’ll need a title page, copyright announcement, and table of contents at the front. If you have any graphic design skills, you could also add a nice cover, though that’s not essential — your e-book will never be sitting on anyone’s shelf in need of a cover to attract attention. You can also sprinkle graphic elements throughout your text to give it a professional look and make it nicer to read.

When your text looks the way you want it, do yourself, me, and the world a favor and proofread it. Remember, you don’t have an editor — this is a one-person show you’re putting on. It’s a good idea to have a few people read it and give you their opinion, and take their feedback seriously.

Finally, save the file as a PDF. If you have the option, add thumbnails so your reader can easily select specific pages. Make sure you say “yes” if you’re asked to embed fonts, to be certain your e-book looks the same way on your reader’s screen as it does on yours. You can choose to password-protect your file, but I think that only adds complexity for the reader without adding any real security to protect your content. Accept that some copies will get copied and sent to people who didn’t pay you; learn to find satisfaction in the fact that people are reading your stuff.

One thing to pay attention to is structure. Readers won’t be able to easily flip to the table of contents to see what’s coming up or where they’re at in the grand scheme of things, so it pays to reiterate the table of contents periodically, for instance by outlining each chapter on the first page of the chapter. Use clear subheads throughout your work, too.

Although this won’t apply as much to literary works, in non-fiction you’ll want to use shorter paragraphs that can be scanned easily. Use boldfaced text for key points. Organize multiple points into bulleted lists. Generally keep in mind what the experience of reading on-screen is and cater to it as much as possible.

One thing you can do in an e-book that you can’t do well in a paper book is to add interactive elements. Use links to web content to extend your document — you can link to definitions and encyclopedia articles, other books, and of course your own website. You can also embed short videos, sound files, and other interactive elements, but make sure they add to the value of the e-book — don’t do it just because you can!

As with any other writing, make sure you plan your work, outline, do your research, and so on. Even if you intend to give your e-book away for free, make sure you hold to the same high standards you expect of all your work.

Lots of writers have written and distributed e-books, for various reasons:

• To make money: Since an e-book (unlike a website) is a discrete unit, it can be sold.
• To offer samples: Many writers give away a few chapters of their work to get people “hooked” and convince them to buy their book.
• To build awareness: Authors have given away e-books to win fans — hopefully they’ll buy your next book.
• To spread information: Sometimes you have a topic that you want to write about that isn’t worthwhile to publish — it’s either too short to make a full book worthwhile or the audience is too small. E-book costs are lower (often zero) so publishing via e-book often makes better sense.
• To show reader appreciation: Some writers publish e-books as freebies to thank their readers for their patronage.
• To promote other products: E-books can be filled with links to your website, to your other books on Amazon, or anywhere else on the Web.
• To get numbers: An unestablished writer looks good if s/he can go to a publisher showing that they’ve sold 10,000 copies of their e-book.
• To have control: An e-book allows a writer to control the presentation of their work in a way that posting it on the web doesn’t.
• To self-publish cheaply: With their low investment, e-books are an attractive alternative to traditional self-publishing.
• To supplement paper publication: Many authors offer the choice f an e-book alongside their traditional paper copies, for readers who use e-book devices, prefer to read on their computer, or just want the instant gratification of downloading a book instead of waiting for it to be mailed.

I’m sure there are other reasons I haven’t even thought of, too. The main point is that producing and distributing e-books is fairly cheap, and can make you some money either directly (through sales) or indirectly (through promoting your “brand”).

Just as there are a lot of reasons to write e-books, there are a lot of things to write e-books about. Of course, you could just transform any unsold book-length manuscript into an e-book (I say “unsold” because you probably don’t want to compete with the publisher of your paper books — and may no have the legal right to according to your publishing contract). But the e-book format is ideal for shorter works, too — a 30-page “how to” book, a sampler of short stories, a short personal narrative, or a collection of travel photos.

An e-book is an opportunity for you to establish your expertise in your field or niche without replacing your “bread and butter” writing. Think about the things that you do well and offer up a representative sample. Just like writing a traditional book, the choice of topics is limited only by your knowledge and taste and the demand you are trying to fill. If there’s a topic you’ve always thought about writing on but couldn’t imagine filling 250 pages with it, consider writing an e-book instead.