One of these days I’ll publish a Kindle book (or some sort of e-book). For now, I’ve got a column with tips on how to do this. It’s not all that hard, really. A lot of the challenge, it turns out, is in formatting the book properly for the Kindle (or for any other e-book format). There are tools available to do this now, but they’re still evolving, and not quite as easy to use as I’d like. One of the best, though, is the template available from Apple for publishing at the iBookstore (for viewing the iPhone and iPad). You will need Apple’s Pages program to use that template. In any case, I’m hoping the tools will just keep getting better to make it easier to publish e-books.
Here’s a helpful video about publishing Kindle books:
I was wondering about the copyright issues involved with publishing the books. How would one go about copywriting an e-book?
Also is original material published in a blog copyrighted?
I’m not a lawyer or expert on copyright law, but my understanding is that you’re protected by virtue of being the writer and including a copyright mark. But the issue is what does “protected” really mean in the age of digital texts, when it’s very, very easy for someone else (in the case of a blog, in particular) to grab your words and republish them, possibly without proper attribution. In any case, here are some relevant links and resources:
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/what_copyright_wording_should_i_use_on_my_ebook.html
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/02/08/how-to-defend-your-blogs-copyright/