First Impressions Count
Whether it’s lipstick on your teeth, a stain on your shirt, or your fly undone, little mistakes get noticed.
Showing up a bit ragged to a friend’s house is a little embarrassing, but it’s no big deal. Sure, you’ll be the butt of a quick joke, or the target of a snide comment or two, but everyone moves on after that. What about when it’s a more formal venue? Like a job interview? That’s not really the time for glaring visual errors.
When you’re an author, your book is your job interview with the world. Better look sharp.
What Real Formatting Does
Converting is not formatting. A conversion is simply transforming one file into another type of file, like shifting a Word file into an ePub. The result will load on your eReader, but it won’t perform that great. When a book is properly formatted, it is broken down into raw HTML text and rebuilt, ensuring that all residual errors and artifacts from your word processor are removed. Pictures and graphics are optimized for each individual reading device. Fonts stay stable, paragraphs remain separate, and each element is distinct. A professional format gives you:
Readability. Good formatting means the physical readability is enhanced and optimized.
Stronger Brand. Proper formatting shows you respect your work and your reader, building your brand AND increasing referrals.
Less Effort. As it can take days for the unfamiliar to format a book, having an experienced party do it for you will save you untold stress and agony.
Can’t I Do It Myself?
It took one prominent author four days to format her book — and it wasn’t her first. That’s somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000 words that went unwritten during that time, and who knows how many tweets, emails, and blog posts weren’t created or answered.
So, sure, you can format your own books, and you’ll probably save a few bucks doing it, but what are you not doing while you’re attending to the mechanics of eBook production?
A writer’s job is to write. If you’re not writing, you should be marketing and selling what you’ve already written. Creating your work, interacting with fans, selling your books, and actively building your brand are things that only YOU can do. The small stuff is best left to those who specialize in them. When a pro does your formatting, you get to keep writing and you get a perfectly formatted book. Hassle free.
An Unexpected Power
Increased sales. Higher Royalties. More Twitter followers. Can book formatting really do these things?
It can when UWS does it.
You see, eBooks are not paper books, and we don’t treat them that way. The simple addition of hyperlinks makes an eBook a piece of interactive media, as opposed to the passivity of paper. This shift in paradigm is not wasted at UWS.
Think about the added boost to your social networking if your book has an interactive Bio page with links to your website, Twitter, Goodreads, and Facebook pages? How about a page that has links to buy all of your other books? What if those links were affiliate links, giving you an extra 7% of every sale? Suddenly, those statements above don’t sound like empty marketing. Imagine what can be done once the ePUB3 standards go live? Video Trailers, RSS feeds and more will be on the table — the possibilities are endless!
When done right, formatting is more than aligning text and arranging pictures. It’s more money in the bank.
In Your Corner
UWS is constantly researching and innovating new ways to make digital book technology work for authors. Our formatting offers include:
Basic Formatting
Interactive Author Bio Page
Interactive Book Listings
Multimedia Placement
and
Special Formatting.
Contact us now about formatting your next book.