Would you publish a Kindle ebook? It's easy
[February 2011] In the last three months of 2010 Apple sold 7.3 million iPads. Meanwhile Amazon claim the Kindle is now the best selling product in all of their history. Some books are selling more digital copies through Amazon Kindle than hard copies.
Devices to read ebooks are reasonably low cost, easy to obtain, and widespread.
You could load a Kindle with books, charge it up, go away on holiday for a month and never run out of something to read, or the ability to read it. All on a device that weighs only a couple of hundred grams.
If you already have an iPad, iPhone, Blackberry or Android phone then you can add ebooks to it with ease and in moments.
Publish to Kindle
There's no doubt that ebooks, especially Kindle books, are becoming very popular. But it's not just big powerful publishers who are making their books available in the Kindle format.
Amazon make it easy for anyone to publish material for the Kindle. Take a look at their publishers page.
If you already have documents available as HTML files, in Word format or as a PDF then you're well along the path to publishing them as Kindle books. See this information page.
There's help for publishing to Kindle
Amazon also provide plenty of help for the process. For example see the Help page.
Expand your potential audience
We all know that publishing hardcopies of material is time-consuming and and very expensive. Of course there are plenty of people who still prefer or need actual paper books.
But since it's easy to make a Kindle ebook why not add them into your repertoire too? It could make your resources available to a much wider audience, and maybe bring you some extra income.
You may choose to attach an ISBN number to your book. In New Zealand ISBN numbers are free and very easy to obtain. See this page at the National library website.
How about it? Do you think your organisation holds resources that could usefully be made available as Kindle books? Take a look through your files and have a think about it.
And if you do create any Kindle books please remember to tell us about it. We'd like to see what you do, and would like to tell others about it too.
It's 2011. Publishing means so much more than paper.
Website tips contributed by Miraz Jordan, http://knowit.co.nz . Need help or advice about the Internet? Contact Miraz.
Miraz also writes the Tech Universe column for the NZ Herald - it's published online every weekday at http://bit.ly/bGX7UY .