Publishing to e-books (Kindle and other devices)

[Groffa]

[Onix]

I've thought about ePub books a number of times. I don't think they'd help you get noticed (I really could be wrong) but making one is essentially free so other than the time you spend re-formatting, you won't loose anything. I just haven't been able to get the time. I also don't think that ePub would handle a lot of pictures well, It doesn't seem designed for that. There are some kids books on ePub but they have a relatively low page count.

At this point though, what is the advantage of an ePub over a PDF? To my knowledge it has better DRM and is possibly more optimized for eReaders than a PDF is. I've tried to find an eReader that will do a good job of displaying PDFs and so far the answer I get over and over again is an iPad (which is more expensive and doesn't have an e-ink display).

Would publishing specifically for Kindle put you in a niche that is less crowded? Maybe but I think that DriveThru would be all over that if they thought it was a viable market. Still they may be looking at a market with a limited potential (say 4,000 downloads) and any of us would be ecstatic over that.

Apparently Lulu e-books have some kind of DRM associated with them as evidenced by There are also some mentions of calibre in the comments and that it inserts random strings of numbers (might be a special character not getting read properly in the conversion).

You could try but it has a file size limit of 30 megs.

[maledictus]

i think now is very important to make you game available in multiple formats. Thanks for the links, I had no idea of what software to use.

[Onix]

I've wanted to test out PDFs on an eReader for a while now and I just picked up a Kobo. I've come to a conclusion on how the current batch of eReaders fit in with RPGs.

eReaders like the Kobo are great for reading through a book. Starting from the beginning and reading sequentially works fine for ePub books (marginally for PDFs). Unfortunately they are not great for looking up information, which is what you mainly do with an RPG.

Specifically the Kobo is really bad at this. The Kindle is slightly better, I haven't tried the Nook. An iPad is really the better platform for looking up information because the screen refresh is fast and pages can be flipped through.

If you are intimately familiar with a book and know the page number of whatever you are looking for, then this isn't such a big deal. It is the readers ability to skim through pages that is the problem. Being ten pages off in your guess of where the information you're looking for is a big hassle. Even typing in a three digit page number is a hassle. If you include a full index that has hyperlinks to all the headings that might mean you only need to remember what page the index is on.

Including chapters in your eBook or even PDF makes things much better. The eReaders can jump to a chapter relatively easily. So if you're looking to make a ePub version of a game, include chapters in your book. I don't know how to do that yet. My 200 page PDF loads fine on the Kobo but the 400 page Eclipse Phase PDF locked up the eReader. Also the type on PDFs tends to be far too small to display a full page of a PDF. I've been displaying them in landscape and the text is just big enough to read. You have to scroll up and down the page, and it's slow and annoying but functional.

One more thought on art. Obviously eReaders with e-ink displays are only black and white. They can do grays but not a lot of shades. If you're going to make an ePub version of a book, i'd recommend simple line art for illustrations. With the color Nooks and iPads, displaying art is not an issue so I don't know how to balance that and make it work for all the readers out there.

Anyway, just a few considerations to keep in mind when looking at making a game available for eReaders.

[trodgers]

I've published short stories on Kindle. Without images and complex formatting, I have had almost no problems moving from a .doc file to a Kindle version. I have no experience with uploads involving tables and graphics. That does seem as if it would be a problem.