Win An Ebook Cover At Covertopia.com

Panzer decided to visit Guido Henkel's blog today. It's been a while since our kitty boy has been there.

Guido Henkel is the author of the Jason Dark fantasy novels. But he also does HTML formatting for Kindle books. Recently, he became part of the Covertopia.com site, too. According to a post at his site, Covertopia.com is having a contest and the grand prize is a free book cover. Panzer checked it out and this is a standard Rafflecopter contest. You accumulate points by posting to Facrbook, Tumblr, Twitter ... all your social media sites, about the contest. You can enter every day to accumulate more points.

It's worth taking a look.

Panzer says, "Be aware, these are premade covers, not originals. That means your cover may be the same as someone else's on Amazon."

Note: Click the link at Guido's site to go to Covertopia.com, at Covertopia.com you can read all about the covers and/or at the top click on the contest announcement graphic, and that takes you to the contest site.

To read the post, tootle over to Covertopia

Pre-designed Or Custom Book Covers And More For Indie Authors

Pre-designed? Who else used it too?

Panzer, our big bad Catosphere explorer, decided to stop in at Guido Henkel's site today. It's been a long time since our kitty boy has been to visit Mr. Henkel and he's happy he chose today to do it.

According to Mr. Henkel's post, he's part of a new endeavor for indie author services. The new endeavor is called Covertopia. Indie authors can buy a pre-designed cover or order a custom cover at the site. Authors can also order layout services, formatting services, audio covers, postcards and more.

Panzer says, "The samples at Mr. Henkel's site make it look worth checking out."

NOTE: Panzer ignored the ad at the beginning asking for his name, clicked cancel and had no trouble reading the post.

To read the post, tootle over to pre-designed or custom covers

Amazon Doesn't Need Hachette, But Hachette Needs Amazon

Let's take a closer look.

It's been quite a long time since Panzer has stopped in at author and game developer Guido Henkel's blog. When he stopped in there today he found a post addressing the Amazon-Hachette dispute. You know, my bad boy has been following this Internet CATerwauling for a while now.

In his post Mr. Henkel explains why Hachette doesn't understand the changing publishing world. Hachette may be one of the biggest fish in the publishing pond, but it's turning into a very, very small pond. Publishers no longer have the clout to tell book retail outlets what they can and can not do. Amazon is arguably the world's largest book retail outlet and as such there's no incentive for Amazon to bow to Hachette's demands. On the other hand, there is a huge incentive for Hachette to agree to Amazon's and get their books back into the Amazon store.

To read Mr. Henkel's full post, tootle over to Amazon vs. Hachette

The Spirit of Poe a major bust

Panzer is not happy. 

He went to visit Jason Dark today and got some very disturbing news. Guido Henkel has a warning for all of us over at his blog.

Henkel and several other writers submitted stories to a proposed charity book to raise money for the Edgar Allan Poe house. The book publisher has turned out to be nothing but trouble for the writers involved.

Panzer says you need to read what happened to our fellow writers. Pass the word around about this situation with your tweets, on your Facebook page and your blog.

Tootle on over to Henkel's  The Spirit of Poe a major bust .

Remember: you never want to make this black cat mad!

Time to rethink Kindle content generation

We stopped in at Guido Henkel's blog to see what's happening in Jason Dark's World today.
 

Henkel is posting about the new Kindle Fire and what it means for ebook layout (yours and mine). And ... according to him, it isn't pretty.

He also addresses Amazon's shortsightedness, as well as their lack of preparedness, for multiple platforms: i.e. the Kindle (the old) and the Kindle Fire (the new).

There's some pretty interesting information here for those of us who do our own layouts for the Kindle(s).

Tootle on over to Time to rethink Kindle content generation, but Panzer says be prepared because this is a long post (rant).

The anatomy of writing

Today's trip around the catosphere took Panzer and I over to Guido Henkel's blog.

Guido, one of my favorite fantasy ebook authors, is blogging about how he writes. Panzer and I love to read about how other authors write.

Guido uses an excerpt from one of his ebooks, Fu Man Chu's Vampire, to demonstrate how he writes and rewrites (and rewrites and rewrites).

So, if you're interested in how Guido writes his ebooks, tootle on over to  The anatomy of writing and see the value of writing, editing and rewriting. Oh, yeah. Also, if you're interested, he has links to buy Fu Man Chu's Vampire at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Nook for only $2.99. Such a deal!

10 Things Amazon should correct in the Kindle

In addition to being an indie author, Guido Henkel does formatting for other authors. He has identified ten things he'd like to see Amazon fix on the Kindle. He believes these ten fixes would facilitate formatting and the Kindle reading experience. He's looking for our help to convince Amazon to make these corrections.

I have to admit, as a reader I haven't noticed the formatting errors he's referring to. Now, I'm going to have to start paying more attention to letter and line spacing!

Read Guido Henkel's 10 Things Amazon should correct in the Kindle . If you agree with him, follow the instructions at the end of his post.

Who knows, maybe Amazon will listen.

The Table of Contents in the digital age

As you probably already know, when Amazon gives the 20 percent free sample read of your ebook to potential buyers, that 20 percent comes from the beginning of your ebook.

And what's at the front of your ebook? Your cover, your title page, your legal statement about the copyright, and your table of contents (TOC). All that stuff eats up a lot of the free 20 percent reading experience.

What can you do to give your reader and potential buyer an opportunity to see your writing, instead of all that other stuff?

Guido Henkel has the answer to that question at The Table of Contents in the digital age. It's to  put the TOC at the back of the ebook.

It's an interesting idea.  Given the increased potential for engaging the reader's interest without the TOC's length interfering, it's worth trying out.

What do you think?

Meta-data… what are they good for?

Simply stated, meta-data are the information about your ebook. It tells your ebook's cover to appear as a thumbnail. It allows your ebook's buyer to sort by author, etc. on his/her ereader. It also tells the buyer your genre, ISBN, publication date, etc. Most important of all it must be inside your ebook.  

Author Guido Henkel blogged about his take on the purpose of the meta-data for your ebook at Meta-data… what are they good for?   

If you're interested in how to change meta-data using Calibre (You do know about Calibre, right?), watch the  video tutorial How to Edit Ebook Metadata in Calibre .