Another service provider has entered the e-book market: Red Staple, who until now focused on services for music and film, has launched a beta of their automated service for creating distribution-ready e-books. Red Staple promises that:
“You upload your .doc file, insert images and links where you want them and export. We validate the file and provide a download link so you have your file to distribute as you like.”
Red Staple’s website is sparse, however, so it’s unclear if the author uses a web-based tool, or simply uploads a file.
The tool is free to use, but you pay to download the finished product (two edits allowed). Beta pricing is $29 (< 100 pages) or $59 (> 100 pages) for simple (text and image only) e-books, and $129/$159 for Enhanced iBooks (video, audio, etc.). I expect the final price to be higher after the beta period.
I think we’ll see a lot more of these services in the next few years, because authors are hungry for affordable services and tools that simplify the publishing process.
Here’s Red Staple’s official press release on the upcoming service.
***
Have you used any service providers like this? Planning to? I’d like to hear about your experiences.
While I understand where the demand for these services comes from, I’ve always been skeptical of their reliability. Dealing with electronic documents is a pain in the ass. I have yet to see a Word file that didn’t have some formatting issue, whether unintentionally introduced by the user or by “an expert.” These problems are bound to translate into a problem in the e-book. So I ask the Techsavvywriter: how does an automated service overcome the glitches? Or does it not overcome them?
W. (can I call you an initial?),
You’ve asked the key question. The short answer, I think, is a service provider (a) acknowledges you’ll need a revision or two to correct errors, and (b) tries to set requirements for submission as clear as possible. Nobody’s created a push-button solution yet. But I’m certain that somebody (or somebodies) are working on it, especially for novels and similar works. If self-publishing really takes off, money-wise, service providers will make better tools and simplify the process. I think touted tools like Calibre are actually pretty lousy. Calibre looks like software did in 1995, so the bar is low. I’ve considered making some myself.
The other thing that affects the process is standards. Amazon holds out against the industry-standard EPUB format, for example–not for quality reasons, but for profit and control reasons. As standards mature and make their way into writing tools, “push button” publishing can become more real. I think it’ll happen.
-James
Thanks James. That’s about what I thought. I actually corresponded with Guido Henkel over formatting. I haven’t sent anything to him, but he does have a fairly informative site about the process.