Ebooks for Writers - the Complete Course on Writing, Producing, Marketing and Distributing Digital Publications
with Colin Haynes
One of the leading pioneers in digital publishing - and a professional author for more than 40 years - guides you through the creative, technical and business aspects of creating and selling ebooks in all the main formats. Colin Haynes wrote the pioneering Paperless Publishing manual for McGraw-Hill in the US and the first Writer's Digest cover story on the new media. He has remained on the cutting edge of the technology ever since, produced over 20 ebooks himself, and has been keynote speaker at conferences and seminars on three continents. So he brings unrivalled expertise to this unique course to guide writers through the steps necessary to create their own ebooks and market them successfully.
In addition to creating new ebooks from scratch, you will learn also how to turn existing MSS and titles on which you hold electronic rights into professional, marketable digital publications. The course ranges from simple all-text books to full multimedia productions, and includes instructions on publishing in the new audio formats and for reading on PDAs (both Palm and Windows systems).
You can offer the end results to Amazon.com and other on-line bookstores, or through your own Web site. There is practical guidance also on packaging e-books for point-of-sale appeal on magnetic and optical disks (CDs) for sale through retail and other outlets, and for use as back-of-the-room products at seminars, conferences and workshops. There is a bonus module on e-Brochures, which you can produce for businesses as a profitable new source of income for writers, photographers and artists.
NO SPECIAL COMPUTING EXPERTISE IS REQUIRED TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS COURSE. IF YOU CAN USE A WORD PROCESSOR AND A GRAPHICS PROGRAM, THEN YOU ALREADY HAVE MOST OF THE TECHNICAL SKILLS REQUIRED. THE REST WILL BE TAUGHT DURING THE COURSE IN PLAIN, LAYPERSON'S LANGUAGE, AND YOU WILL HAVE ACCESS, WITHOUT FURTHER COST, TO APPROPRIATE SOFTWARE.
Current Openings: Yes
Course Type: Tutorial, with e-mailed lessons weekly (or more frequently if required) You may choose to listen to instructions in audio format as well. One-on-one instruction.
Objective: To empower any writer - fiction or non-fiction - in any genre to
create new works or turn existing titles into professional ebooks and other
digital formats. You will find wonderful new creative - as well as
income-generating - opportunities open up as you progress through this
course.
Duration: 10 modules plus bonus "How to Create and Market e-Brochures" module, delivered over a 10-week period as students require. You can, for example, accelerate the course to an intensive two-week schedule.
Start Date: on-going, open enrollment
Learner Prerequisites: Basic computing knowledge - if you can run a Windows computer with a word processor and a graphics program, you will be able to follow this course. You will need a computer running Windows 95 or later, or a Mac able to emulate Windows. Although the emphasis is on the Windows environment, Mac users will find this course helpful also. Writing and basic graphics editing abilities are assumed. No special software is required as you will be able to download evaluation or free software for all the course modules.
Limit:
Class Materials: The instructor will use e-mail to supply detailed notes for each module that can be printed and kept for future reference. You will be shown also how to convert these notes to audio files which can be played back to extend your learning time while commuting, exercising, in the car and other learning opportunities away from your desk.
All correspondence will be by email, and there will be a special Web site for downloading software, sample digital publications, and other materials.
Cost: $250.00
Tutorial Option: You may register for additional one-on-one instruction and for help creating special digital publications. This will involve extensive and more in-depth study, hand-holding and critique. Fee is $40 per hour. For more information contact education@absolutewrite.com
Curriculum:
Curriculum:
In this 10-module course, you will learn the best techniques to create all kinds of digital publications and the setting up of a basic Web site through which to market them. Marketing through established on-line services such as Amazon.com and other virtual and conventional channels is covered also. There are over 100,000 words of expert text to study, plus many practical examples. The tutor also calls in other experts in digital publishing to share their knowledge and tips with students.
You are encouraged right from the beginning to create an ebook of your own work so that, well before the end of the course, you actually have a marketable ebook of your own that you are able to sell or use for promotional purposes.
You can post your work on to a special Web site at different stages for expert feedback and comments by other students. You can also interact with the instructor and other students through an exclusive on-line discussion group.
A unique feature of this course is the ability to extend the time you are able to spend at your computer by extracting course materials into MP3 and other audio format files that you can listen to anywhere on portable players or in-car sound systems.
Lesson 1:
Introduction to e-books and other forms of digital publishing. Which one is right for you? How to define your digital publishing objectives - do you want to generate income, extend the readership of your works, advance a cause or career, promote a business, express yourself creatively, tell your life story for your family and future generations, or any combination of these objectives?
Lesson 2:
Explore the formats and types of digital publications available to you. Experiment with your two main options - e-books that can do virtually anything, or simple publications in text or Web formats. How to extend your writing creativity by exploiting new cultural horizons.
Lesson 3:
Create your first ebook in the universal formats of text documents, executable files, Adobe Portable Document Format, or Web (html) packages. Intellectual property rights, international copyright, and other related issues.
Lesson 4:
Focus on the one format that is most appropriate to your objectives, but first we go through in detail creating a title using powerful software that will enable you to do anything you wish - now or in the future. This includes all multimedia, interactive learning and other options, and the capability to explore in any direction that your creativity and marketing objectives may require.
Lesson 5:
Writing for the digital media. Review your MS and use of graphics to fine tune them for the particular - and different - requirements of the printed and digital media.
Lesson 6:
Make your e-books talk! Audio is becoming an increasingly important medium, particularly to extend access to ebooks away from the computer to ease eye strain and extend the time of busy people. There are particular benefits also for educational and training titles because audio is well-established to augment the learning process. Talking e-books also meet the needs of large numbers of visually impaired people and those with learning disabilities around the world.
Lesson 7:
Make your e-books portable. How to make your titles available to the rapidly expanding markets for them among the users of PDAs, with Palm, Personal PC and other leding proprietary formats covered. How to install and Microsoft Reader technology, with free downloads of the software required.
Lesson 8:
Introduction to marketing e-books, with particular attention to reaching global niche markets that can be very successful for works that are not viable in print form.
Lesson 9:
Marketing e-books Module 2, in which we go into more depth on packaging, distribution, promotion, multilingual editions, and fulfillment issues.
Lesson 10:
Marketing e-books Module 3, with comprehensive revision of previous lessons plus extensive lists of resources for further study and implementation of what has been learned.
Bonus lesson module:
How to Create and Market e-Brochures - the valuable new income opportunity for writers who have been empowered by the digital publishing knowledge learned on this course.
Instructor Bio:
Colin Haynes is an award-winning British business consultant, journalist, broadcaster, and author of computer and business books, as well as being a public relations consultant with extensive international experience. His latest digital and print books include How to Succeed in Cyberspace and Breaking the Language Barriers - The Business Guide to Machine Translation for Aslib (the Association for Information Management with some 2,000 corporate members) in London. He is currently updating his pioneering Paperless Publishing, one of the first and most comprehensive works on digital publishing technology, which was a book club selection in the United States, where it was published by McGraw-Hill and well reviewed in The New York Times and other leading media. Click here for more.
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