As we try to get our first half dozen titles out there it is increasingly apparent that the publishing business is a total mess. Apple, Amazon Kindle, B&N’s Nook and the many other readers out there all have differing requirements for formatting eBooks. Though many use the ePub ’standard’, it is an open standard so each has added their own little differences. Hence, nothing ’standard’ about it. For a small publisher this means figuring out all the various quirks then publishing a lot of different versions of our titles. Either that or choose one format and distributor. That’s a gamble. Kindle has readers for virtually all OS and mobile platforms (Android is in the works) but Kindle doesn’t support the high res color and features that iPad offers.

An entire service industry is sprouting up to do the formatting and distribution so you can publish to all the formats, however they want a piece of the pie, taking us back to the distribution middlemen issues that kept publishers in the red for years- too many hands taking little pieces until not much is left. Our business plan only works if we can keep a fairly big chunk of the revenues.

So we either have more labor associated with the publishing process at our end, pay a service bureau to do it for us or pick one distribution channel and get really good at it. With Apple supposedly selling 200,000 iPads per week and its far more sophisticated capabilities, there is a compelling choice. But Amazon/Kindle is also a huge source that everyone associates with book buying and they’re very cross-platform. B&N and Borders are less interesting.

So this is what we’re trying to think through as we get nearer to having 24PageBooks out there- and I can’t say I know what we’re going to do. The real glaring issue here is that the publishing industry needs a standard for formats and handling price competition (which would probably not be legal). I’m not waiting around for the big companies to figure that out. They can barely tie their own shoes.