The XML files are all the other stuff in the ePub book that tells where yourcontent is, and what to do with it.Before we start preparing our own eBook, lets look inside a sample file. Download the sample file to your hard drive
Rename the .epub extension to .zip
Open the Zip file
Great. Now what is all this stuff?
A .epub file contains, at a bare minimum, the following files/folders: mimetype - tells a reader/operating system what's in here
META-INF folder - This folder contains, at minimum, the container.xml file, which tells the reader software where in the zip file to find the book.
OEBPS folder - Recommended location for the books content. It contains:
images folder - images go here
Content.opf - XML file that lists what's in the zip file
toc.ncx - This is the table of Contents
xhtml files - The book's contents are in these
page-template.xpgt - This file isn't really needed, but it makes it look pretty in Adobe Digital Editions
Lets look at each of these in more detail.(Feel free to extract these files from the sample.epub and use them as a template)
all star wars books epub
Two other short observations. One is that the October sales were partially propped up in the UK store because I was giving The Hunchback Assignments away for free for two weeks of that month. The second is that I'm starting to have more sales through the UK store because I have 10 books available there and only 7 in the US (I'm publishing my three Hunchback Assignments books in the UK Store but they are published through Random House in the US).
Well a few posts ago I told you how I miraculously sold more books than Stephen King (in a 48 hour period)!Well, now I can report to you the amazingly stupendous results. Yes, this is breaking news folks! Last month DUST sold a whopping 1355 copies. Since the highest monthly total before that was 360 copies, I was bountifully pleased by this result. Now Dust was selling for $1.49 (that's .52 cents per book for me) for the majority of those sales and then I bumped it up to 1.99. (or .70 cents a book). The book has slowly dropped down the sales charts (from a high in the 600's) and seems to be levelling out at about 10000 on the sales charts in the US (and 4000 on the UK charts). That equals about 10 sales a day (but since I've bumped the price up to 2.99 I am making 2.05 per sale). I don't know how long it will hold at this level. What, you want to see an amazing chart? Here it is:That chart shows dust jumping up from abut 160,000th place to 600th. Then slowly falling back down. Apparently what goes up must come down. Thanks a lot for the gravitational laws Newton!At one point I had told myself I'd be happy if I made about $1000.00 in the space of a year. Since that goal was surpassed in the space of a month...well, I'm green with happiness. I don't expect next month's sales to be anywhere near the same amount as September. But if they continue at the level they're at today (about 10,000 on the charts) I'll actually make as much money through fewer sales (because at 2.99 I make a 70% royalty, at .99-2.98 it's a 35% royalty).Here's the overall sales chart:Isn't that pretty? And it has different colours, too. The blue colour represents the sales of DUST. But you can see that a few of my other books are starting to pick up a bit (in fact every book had increased sales over last month). The total for all books was 1467 copies sold.So last month was a good one. And this month I now have all three of The Hunchback Assignments books available on kindle UK (in fact I'm giving away the first one to get my British cousins to try the series). We'll see if that strategy works.Over and out,Art October 3, 2011 Arthur Slade arthur slade, book sales, epub, horror, ibooks Tagged: arthur slade, bestselling, ebooks, kindle, writing 2ff7e9595c
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