Publishing a Book: Print and eBook

I have written several electrical engineering books (see electronic-measurement.com). These books were written in the dead-trees print model, focused on creating a book that you can hold in your hand. I recently published VHF, Summits and More in both print and ebook editions. This was a learning process for me and I’ve come to understand a bit more about the differences between these formats.

Print

I definitely have a soft spot in my heart for a good-quality printed book. It is just plain satisfying to hold a printed book in your hand and flip through the pages. Moving quickly between pages and chapters is easy; very tactile with immediate feedback. I often look at our bookshelf at home filled with various engineering, ham radio, hiking and travel books. It just feels good knowing I can reach out to any one of them and access useful information.

Monochrome Kindle

Last year, we went on a long cruise and I wanted to have plenty of reading material while still traveling light. I did not want to drag along a big pile of books, so I purchased a monochrome (“paperwhite”) Kindle with the promise of long battery life and the ability to read it in bright sunlight. It delivered on both items. And it holds a ton of books (most of them I didn’t have time to read).

It didn’t take long to realize that the monochrome e-readers are optimized for plain text. They do pretty well with text-heavy books such as novels but aren’t very good for technical books that have photos or graphics. I mean, the display is only monochrome (and many of the readers are small.)

While creating my new book, I wasn’t really happy with how my book looked on the monochrome Kindles. It seems that there are some legacy formatting behaviors that cause them to present the text in some interesting ways. Also, the photos and other graphics really didn’t look that great. I was not encouraged and almost tossed the idea of publishing an ebook version.

Kindle Fire

Then I decided to purchase a Kindle with a color display, the Kindle Fire HD 8 tablet. This device has an 8-inch display and 16 GB of storage, costing $79. I downloaded the mobi file of my book to the Kindle and was immediately impressed with the presentation of the material. The photos and graphics show up in color and look great. Another added feature compared to print, is that the embedded hyperlinks allow easy to access to web-based information.

One thing I had to adjust to was losing some control over how the Kindle displays the book. With a print book, you have absolute control…put each comma, period, character right where you want them and they stay there. On the Kindle, the reader gets to make a lot of decisions: font type, font size, color, line spacing. While the author gets to choose the words and graphics, the final presentation is in the hands of the reader.

Read Kindle on Non-Kindle Devices

Amazon has done a fantasic job of supporting Kindle books on a variety of hardware platforms. You can get a free Kindle reader for both Windows and Mac. Mobile devices are supported, too, with their own readers (iOS and Android). The mobi (Kindle) file format is dominating the ebook market so I don’t have any plans to add other ebook versions.

You can check out the Kindle version of VHF, Summits and More on Amazon.

4 Replies to “Publishing a Book: Print and eBook”

  1. Hello, Bob.

    I bought the hard copy and it’s a great little book -very handy information, now on my shelf. I’m sure I’ve read much of the material in your blog, but this format is nice to have at the ready, and it’s very well done!

    That said, I also bought the Kindle version to take on the move and read at my leisure, having the digital links available for further related information… the best of both worlds. The Kindle is great and I have ready access to other reference works -radio-related, history, non-fiction, internet access, etc.

    Good idea. Congrats on another volume!

  2. I have tried to merge Ham Radio with Motorcycling. I had joined the Motorcycling Amateur Radio Club which is based in southern California. Most of those ham riders have vhf/uhf on their Honda Goldwings.
    Sadly in the state of Minnesota 2 meter/440 is very quiet compared to California. I decided to install a screwdriver antenna and Icom 706 radio to a BMW motorcycle. The Icom 706 worked great on 3 BMWs… over 100,000 miles of rain/ snow and sunshine.
    I had purchased a BMW in 2007, a 12 year old K1100RS with 22,600 miles… and in 5 years I rode over 100,000 miles on that BMW… so there is an E book… 100,000 BMW Prayer Miles by Timothy Lindstrom… can be found at http://www.smashwords.com I published it in April of 2014… and now need to make a book . Thanks, now that I am officially retired maybe I can find a publisher.

    • Hi Tim,
      Thanks for the comment.
      Nice job on your book. Here’s the direct link for anyone interested:
      https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/416928

      You should be able to convert your ebook into a print version via Kindle Publishing on Amazon.com. I found that getting the details right on the print version is more work than the ebook formats, but it is satisfying to be able to hold it in your hand.

      Bob

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