ePublish: Self-Publish Fast and Profitably for Kindle, iPhone, CreateSpace and Print on Demand Paperback – July 26, 2011

This book is just chock-full of great information for the budding self-publisher. Steve Weber is successful and knowledgeable. He writes in a down-to-earth, conversational manner. Plus he's witty.The small book makes for easy reading, with lots of headers and an easy-on-the-eyes font. On p.7, Weber writes:"This book isn't just about self-publishing. It's about a new way of writing and connecting with readers. ePublishing begins with digital composition, using the word processor and other tools you probably already use. Everything else you need will be explained here:* How to publish your work digitally for Internet and mobile readers.* Getting feedback to improve your writing.* Expanding into paper books, using no-inventory digital printing.Weber goes on to note that not everyone should publish, for not everyone can write. He uses this quote from Thomas Mann to illustrate his point."A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."Here are just some of the chapter titles:* Dive into Electronic Text.* Publish to the Kindle Store.* Target the Mobile Reader.* Give it Away and Prosper.* Rise Above the Noise* Graduate to Print.Weber gives information on formatting, protecting your content, selling on Google, selling on Amazon, exposing yourself on social networks, using Google Adwords, and much more.He also includes a lot of examples of successful self-publishers. His first year after writing and publishing eBay 101, he earned $34,734. He notes that Rick Evans self-published an 87-page story called The Christmas Box. Later, Simon and Schuster paid him $4.2 million for the book.Warner Books bought James Redfield's The Celestine Prophesy for $800,000 after Redfield sold 100,000 copies himself.ePublish also has pages of resources as well an excellent index. For anyone interested in writing and publishing, I most heartily recommend this book!

This book is useful- the information is good, but it's very THIN. I ordered it along with Micheal Marcus' book, "Become a Real Self-Publisher" which is over 400 pages. So when they came in the box together, this book looked like a little pamphlet compared to the other one.I read the book in a few hours. The information about podcasting was great. Weber doesn't actually tell you how to do these things-- he just gives you the ideas that they are out there for you to learn about on your own. I wish he would have elaborated more about things.That being said, I thought the book had a lot of useful information about e-publishing. There are a lot of promotional ideas that I never even considered. Like I said, the podcasting idea seems so good and I can't believe I never thought about it to promote my own books.

I had been hoping to get a book that would describe the technical side of formatting an e-book. This book did not turn out to have anything useful. It is very short, a bit old and focused mostly on the business side of publishing e-books. It has a lot of advice for an aspiring author that knows little or nothing about the business of publishing a work in electronic format, but all of the advice has to do with how to go about writing, submitting and marketing the work and next to nothing about how to actually format it. There is some reference to tools that can be used but nothing about the technical aspects of different e-book formats. This is probably a decent little reference book if you want to be a writer but don't know much about how to get started with the business of selling your work. In my case, I wanted to figure out how to best prepare some course material in e-reader format. This book didn't really turn out to have anything of use to me that I could not have found with a quick Google search.

Another terrific book by Steve Weber who is expert at cutting out unnecessary clutter and fluff.ePublish is a step-by-step instruction manual that shows authors how to publish their work on all forms of electronic devices. From Amazon's Kindle to iPhones and other platforms, ePublish discusses the "how to" and the "ins and outs" of each. It also suggests services which can help you publish your book electronically if you do not have the time, skill or patience to do it yourself. With this book as your guide almost anybody could publish a book electronically in a few hours.Why publish electronically? It's only a matter of time before it'll be the preferred choice among readers because it offers a multitude of advantages. Weber points out that ebook readers can click to a link on the pages to an Internet discussion group or multimedia files with audio and video, not to mention that authors can update their work online. Try doing that with a printed book!Weber also scopes out some new web sites offering services to authors. In an ever changing publishing world it helps to have someone like Weber find the best stuff, try it out and then write about it. It's worth the price for that info alone. It's like having a personal guru at your disposal.One such site he uncovered is called [...] which allows users to instantly retrieve historic and current Amazon rankings on competitors' book and create 7-90 day reports. More importantly you can use this tool to research your next book or create a marketing plan using the info gathered. You can compile a list of related books, comparing and contrasting sales figures and rankings, all for free while it's in beta testing. Weber has gems like these and hundreds of others inside the pages of ePublish.Weber also delves into book marketing strategies such as giving away the first chapters of the book online through Amazon, blogs or elsewhere to stimulate early e-sales.ePublish is only 109 pages but its chock full of good solid insight into the most exciting thing to hit book publishing since Guttenberg invented moveable type. I highly recommend this book.