I know a few authors who i would like to get books of theirs in eBook format. I am going to try and get them 'onboard' with the idea but i want to know what I need to know before I approach them. This info is already captured (one sells his book directly) what is needed to move to the eBook format?

And any other 'bumps' you might recognize to this movement.

Hi,

Several of my traditionally published author friends are also reluctant to make the shift, there does seem to be a strain of technophobia among some authors.
But as a self-published author, who doesn't have a lot of technical experience, I found it pretty easy to do.

However, the first hurdle is whether or not they have the rights to their books. If they do, then I would suggest several approaches.

First of all, you might send them links to JA Konrath's blog A Newbie's Guide to Publishing A Newbie's Guide to Publishing (specially his posts on how much money he has made since starting to put out ebooks.) Then I would recommend they look into Smashwords, with their free downloadable guides, which make it easy to format your electronic files into a variety of eformats. If an author goes the Smashwords premium route, eventually their books can be available in the Ibooks store. Finally uploading files to Kindle (which will also get you into Ibooks through Kindle Apps) is also easy with several guides available on how to do it. April Hamilton' Indie Author Guide was very helpful and a paper edition is due out in November.

Perhaps one of the most effective arguments is royalty rates. With Kindle, if you sell within certain guidelines your royalty rate is 70%, With Smashwords, your rate is 85% if you sell directly, and 45-60% if you sell through an affiliate like Ibooks. And, you don't have to mess with worrying about sales taxes, garage's full of books, returns, etc.

I have just published one novel so far, an historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, which can be found in the ibooks store, but after 8 months I have sold over a thousand books, and at $2.99 price I am making nearly $600 a month.

I hope this helps.

M. Louisa Locke

There's an article on The Unofficial Apple Weblog today concerning publishing your book through iBooks.
How to publish an Apple iBook
You'll need to follow the links.

M. Louisa Locke basically said it. Many legacy authors, I'm sure, would like to have their books sold in eBook formats but they're tied up with the publishers owning the rights to their books, so they don't have any say. The publishers that are making books available as ebooks will price them very high, that it's not worth buying them, and consumers would rather stick with print books. Lately, I read that JK Rowling will make her Harry Potter series available as eBooks and she will self-publish them herself. All I can say is that she will easily quadruple her fortune if she does that.

Indie authors have less difficulty in that area.

I agree with M. Louisa Locke and RussellBrooks. Legacy authors will have to check their contract(s) for publishing rights, especially if they have a multi-year publishing agreement which hasn't expired. All of my picture ebooks for children and my puzzle ebooks retail for $0.99, so JK Rowling isn't losing any sleep over my self-publishing works.