Ebook publishing

Ebook codes, trends, insights, and news

Digital and Social Book Discovery

by Sabrina EBooks
Jellybooks Widgets for Book Samples

Digital Book World hosted an interesting webcast today, called Finding Books Without Borders: Discoverability in a Digital and Social World. Two fairly new companies, Jellybooks and Readmill, talked about how they tackle the issue in their own ways. 

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Bundling E-Books

by Sabrina EBooks
Thumbnail image for Bundling E-Books

The concept of bundling books is not new. Many trilogies or series are bundled and sold as packages. But, bundling e-books is fairly new. Humble Bundle was the first one to do it, as far as I know, and they started with a package that offered books from Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, and more. The interesting [...]

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Building the Next Generation of YA Stars (Webinar)

by Sabrina EBooks

Last month I attended a webinar hosted by Publisher’s Weekly, called “Building the Next Generation of YA Stars.” The speakers included the editorial director of Disney-Hyperion and the executive editor of Harlequin Teen. Together they covered new marketing strategies for YA novels, trends, and what they look for when acquiring books.  Marketing According to them, YA books have more [...]

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E-Books in the Global Marketplace

by Sabrina EBooks
Thumbnail image for E-Books in the Global Marketplace

Last November, I attended an interesting webinar co-hosted by BISG and DBW, called E-Books in the Global Marketplace. Though this post is a little late, the information is still relevant, and I think it’s worth sharing some of the findings.

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What’s Going on With Readers Today?

by Sabrina EBooks

What’s Going On With Readers Today from Goodreads A while back, Goodreads asked publishers what questions they would like to ask readers. The results of the Goodreads survey from December 2012 are now up, and there are some interesting finds. I do wonder, however, how accurate these findings are. Yes, Goodreads has a huge base [...]

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WordPivot: Boosting Vocabulary One eBook at a Time

by Sabrina EBooks
Thumbnail image for WordPivot: Boosting Vocabulary One eBook at a Time

Digital publishing has leveled the playing field for startups. One new company, that I’m excited to blog about, is called WordPivot. Launched a few weeks ago, WordPivot is, according to the press release, “a research‐based reading app that creates personalized quizzes inside the pages of your favorite eBooks to help you turbocharge your vocabulary.”

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Thoughts on Tools of Change

by Sabrina EBooks

I had the pleasure of attending the first day of the O’Reilly Tools of Change (TOC) conference this year. It’s an annual conference that mainly covers digital publishing, and it’s nearly as good as Books in Browsers. There were a lot of great talks and some interesting startups and companies on exhibit, but I’m going to focus this [...]

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Trends and Startups in Book Publishing

by Sabrina EBooks

The last couple years have been a time of change for the publishing industry, and I expect this year to be the same. Every few weeks I’ve been hearing about new startups and ventures that expect to–and probably will–disrupt publishing. I think it’s worth sharing some of them here, and what their success could mean [...]

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The Coming of Age of E-Textbooks?

by Sabrina EBooks

I’m not as familiar with what’s going on with e-textbooks, but there seems to have been a lot of exciting developments recently. One thing I often hear about e-textbooks is that, despite the expectation that young people, particularly college students, would be the first to eagerly adopt all things digital, most students don’t like e-textbooks [...]

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Smashwords: An upgrade to help indie authors sell better ebooks

by Sabrina EBook Conversion

On the last day of 2012, Smashwords made an exciting announcement: authors can now directly upload epubs to the site. This might not sound like a big deal, but it kind of is. According to the Smashwords blog, as of December 31, 2012, Smashwords became “the world’s largest distributor of ebooks from self-published authors and [...]

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The 13th Cycle has been published!

by Sabrina EBooks
The 13th Cycle cover

My novella, The 13th Cycle is now available on my website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords. Thank you to everyone who helped me write this book! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Find out more below: “The 13th Cycle” by Sabrina Ricci on Ganxy

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E-Books v. P-Books

by Sabrina EBooks
ebooks infographic thumb

Wonderful infographic by http://www.teachingdegree.org/2012/11/26/ebooks-vs-print-books/ that shows how ebooks and print books can co-exist. The idea came from a study by the Pew Research Center about the rise of ebooks and people’s reading habits. According to the designers who created the infographic, a lot of the data showed how print books still dominate in a lot of [...]

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Random House’s New Digital Imprints

by Sabrina EBooks

I got a good laugh today when I read Publisher Weekly‘s “Random House Launches New Digital-Only Imprints.” Why, you might ask? Well, because a group of friends and I had the exact same idea in 2011. 

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The Evolution of eBooks

by Sabrina EBooks

What will ebooks look like in the future? Every new medium has growing pains. At first, the structure tends to mimic whatever is familiar, but over time it expands in to new territory.

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A Maya Thriller

by Sabrina EBooks

Some of you probably already know, but I’m working on my first novella! It’s a thriller about the Maya Calendar, and I’d appreciate anyone who can check it out (also, following my link will lead you to an AMAZING video with dinosaur puppets. Ok, maybe not amazing, but definitely entertaining!). Click here to see it. [...]

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Books in Browsers Recap Day 2

by Sabrina EBooks

Part 2 of my Books in Browsers post. Read part 1 here. The second day of BiB had a number of really exciting demos. Just as with the first post, I’ve broken down the highlights below. You can also watch most of the talks on video here. 

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Books in Browsers Day 1 Recap

by Sabrina EBooks

Books in Browsers is an annual conference at the Internet Archive, where for two days technologists and book publishers gather to discuss and share all the wonderful new ways to create digital content. It’s probably my favorite publishing related conference.

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New ebook: The Booby Trap

by Sabrina EBooks
Booby Trap cover

Got an exciting email last week, announcing a new, provocative book. I’m running behind on my reviews, so haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but here’s a synopsis for anyone who might be interested: Welcome to the Booby Trap, a seedy bar in Everett, Mass. where waitresses’ skirts are high, necklines are low, [...]

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Trends in Publishing (Part 3)

by Sabrina EBooks
Book publishing trends 3

Part 3 of 3 of my Trends in Publishing post, which covers trends in metadata and collecting  publishing data. From the original post: “While researching my thesis project for my M.S. in publishing at NYU, I came across several interesting trends that I think will affect publishing. In fact, I’ve already seen some of these [...]

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Trends in Publishing (Part 2)

by Sabrina EBooks
Book publishing trends 2

Part 2 of 3 of my Trends in Publishing post, which covers subscription websites and gamification trends. From the original post: “While researching my thesis project for my M.S. in publishing at NYU, I came across several interesting trends that I think will affect publishing. In fact, I’ve already seen some of these at work [...]

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Trends in Publishing

by Sabrina EBooks
Book publishing trends

While researching my thesis project for my M.S. in publishing at NYU, I came across several interesting trends that I think will affect publishing. In fact, I’ve already seen some of these at work in the three months since I wrote the report, and I plan on using this information for my own startup, Write [...]

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EPUB3 Read Aloud Code

by Sabrina EBooks
Thumbnail image for EPUB3 Read Aloud Code

Per request, I’m posting snippets of code to use to enable read aloud functionality on an iPad. You usually do this for children’s books in EPUB3. Above is a sample of the SMIL file you will need to include. Remember to make a SMIL file for each “page.” And don’t forget to add it to [...]

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