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January 16, 2011 -- Using PhoneGap Build to make mobile apps

MEAPs, MCAPs, cross platform mobile development, universal, ....and the list goes on.  If you have an Android smartphone then should you be able to download that great iPhone app?  If you have a BlackBerry then should you be able to play that fun new Windows OS game?

Why not? Mobile Application Development In The Cloud For Beginners will introduce you to the tools that will level the playing field for mobile development and enable developers to create mobile apps in the cloud.

 

 

Nov 26, 2011 -- Can I learn WT Paige's way to make money?

WT Paige has authored "The Cash Free Way to Increase Your Cash Flow" and will soon be available on mobile.miiduu.com for purchase.  WT's concept is to use free online services and bundle them together in order to create a revenue and distribution channel for a product that you create.  It's a fresh perspective and a welcome read during this hectic buying season!

 

Nov 3, 2011 -- Getting Started with a Children's eBook App

http://blackberryspecial.blogspot.com/2011/11/blackberry-childrens-book-as-app.html

Aside from having a good story and a good BlackBerry children's book app developer, you'll need some interactive elements in order to self publish and get your children's book approved as an app. If not, you'll be told to publish your book as an ebook. Besides, the BlackBerry can do so much more for your children's book than just plain text and pictures. With that in mind, there are some key elements that you'll need to work on in order to give your BlackBerry children's book developer a clearer idea of how you want your BlackBerry children's book app to appear and function.

The steps outlined below will provide a solid foundation for you to work with an BlackBerry children's book app developer to complete your app. You should be able to do quite a bit of the work on your own using a graphics program such as PhotoShop, PhotoPaint, etc., a text file editor such as Wordpad or MS Word, and a spreadsheet program such as MS Excel.

For each file you create for your BlackBerry children's book app, it's important to begin with, and stick with, a good file naming structure. For example, if your app is called "MyApp", and you have an image of a rabbit on page 3, then you'll want to name that file something like "MyApp_rabbit_1_page3_xxyyzz.png", where xxyyzz is month/day/year. This becomes even more important when you have many images, or many revisions of images to work with. Otherwise it's very difficult for everyone involved to be sure they're working with the correct image.

....read more

 

Nov 2, 2011 -- Press Release

http://www.free-press-release.com/news-how-to-make-money-selling-0-99-cent-blackberry-apps-1319161193.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) October 20, 2011 -- Another great e-book has been released at http://mobile.miiduu.com.

The dramatic increased growth of SmartPhones, such as iPhones and BlackBerrys, over the last three years has created numerous opportunities for independent developers to express their creativity and talents. Now, the growth trend is expected to continue with the the current success of BlackBerry’s App World storefront, and the anticipated release of RIM's new PlayBook mobile device. RIM has opened the doors for "weekend warrior" developers to develop mobile apps and best of all --- make money!

....read more

 

Oct 21, 2011 -- Writing a technical book.  Is it worth it?

Writing A Technical Book: Is It Worthwhile?

 

 

In this article Jack Shirazi, the author of the successful book "Java Performance Tuning", discusses some basic considerations for you to mull over if you are ever thinking about writing a technical book.

Published June 2007, Author Jack Shirazi

As a moderately successful technical author I've been asked a few times about whether it's worth writing a technical book, so I thought I'd stick my thoughts down here.

First off, I'll explain the way the way the publishers see it. The publisher is looking for an author that can demonstrate knowledge in the area they are writing about, and can put across their ideas on paper; and they are looking for an area to publish that is of interest at the moment. Beyond that, it's mostly a guess in the dark about how successful any particular book will be. A rule of thumb is that the publisher wants at least lifetime sales of about $100,000. That covers all costs and lets the company tick over so that they can carry on until a bestseller can give them the big rewards. A book retailing for $40 will probably get the publisher $20 gross, which means the $100,000 target is for 5,000 books sold (and another few hundred given away). The initial print run tends to be about 5,000 books which more or less covers this target.

The author will get their cut of that at whatever rate was negotiated - 10% would be sort of standard (if there is a standard). This is the royalty rate. If you are good, lucky, clever, or have a good agent you might get as much as 25% (unlikely). Books authored by multiple authors have the equivalent of the revenue from one author shared between them, roughly according to how much they contributed towards the book. If you have a 10% royalty rate, then that $40 book gives $20 to the publisher (the rest goes to the bookshop) and then the publisher pay you $2.00 per book from that - so, for example, if the book hits that initial 5,000 book sales target you would get $10,000. Remember that their $18 per book gross profit has to cover the costs of publishing, marketing, distribution, and the fixed overheads of the company (staff, buildings etc), so they aren't really making any money off the revenue if the book has low sales.

Publishers may advance a few thousand dollars to the author, and that gets paid off by the royalties, so for example an advance of $5,000 means you get that up front (typically in instalments as you hit milestones like half the book done, etc). That means that the publisher has already paid you the first $5,000 of income that you would get from book sales (and you get to keep that even if the book never makes that level of sales). The advances are an incentive to you to complete the book approximately on the publisher's timescale. They also mean that if you give up half way through, they could take your partial work and pass it on to another author to finish. Publishers will also happily give you a flat rate fee for a book, with no royalties coming to you if you want such a deal. That should get you a bit more than you would make from royalty advances from a book that flops, but if the book does well you don't get anything more - which rather suggests a definite lack of faith in your book on your part.

Don't underestimate that royalty rate. I recall one successful technical author telling me that they never made less than $100,000 from any book, including from books that apparently weren't so successful, primarily because he had an agent who negotiated great royalty rates. And since that author has written about a dozen books, its probably pretty good advice.

A succcessful technical book is one that sells over 20,000 copies. A best seller sells over 100,000 (remember these are technical books we are talking about, not other areas like fiction which is completely different). A best seller makes millions of dollars for the publisher, and hundreds of thousands for the author. That level of success is not that common, but there are a few each year. Typically the "hot" topic combined with a bit of good marketing, and a bit of luck results in one of these - but realistically if anyone had a real idea of how to accurately predict whether a book will be a best seller, they would be the most successful publisher in the history of the world and also be the richest person in the world, so you'd know about them. Suffice it to say that no one knows how to predict what will become a bestseller (an already successful author has a better chance of managing, but even so it's still a big guess). Publishers play the book market as a bit of a gamble, they try to keep enough goodish quality books (or at least "hot" subject books) out there that when luck hits one of their books, they make their better profits.

So all in all, you have a chance of getting a book published if you figure you have an edge, can fill a gap in the book market, or you can write about something better in some way. Maybe you figure your book will be more successful than the average one. Okay, then put it in perspective. Expect 20,000 books sold (a successful technical book). At $2.50/book you are going to make $50,000. That income will be spread over a number of years, with most in the first year (say over half the total) and the rest gradually diminishing over about 5 years. If you are successful enough to be asked for a 2nd edition (which you will be if the book sold 20,000 copies), then that gives the sales a big boost when it comes out, and so on for each edition. Subsequent editions can make as much or more than the original book. But bear in mind, that the average book is not successful. So you are more likely to make around $10,000 from your book than you are to make $50,000. Of course, every author hopes their book is going to be a huge bestseller, but the overwhelming likelihood is that it won't be, and most bestsellers come as a complete surprise to everyone involved.

Okay, that's some expectation setting for the income for the book, What about the time involved? Well, that depends on you, and the difficulty of writing about the subject. Try writing a sample chapter. See how long and how easy or difficult that was to write? Okay, well bear in mind that was the easiest chapter - you presumably chose the sample chapter subject because that's what you had quite a lot to say about or you found that particularly easy to write about. You need to write 10 more chapters, each one more difficult than the last. And they all need revisions, some will need several rounds of revisions. Then there's graphics, testing (it's a techincal book, the advice has to work and you need to test that or you are guaranteed to be wrong a lot of the time), indexing, layout, discussions with your editor. So take the time it took you to write that sample chapter and multiple by 100. Does that sound like a reasonable time to put into writing a book? For the expected return? It's up to you. Don't underestimate the agonies, most authors get to a stage where they just want shot of the book, where that last 10% or 20% seems like it will never get done.

Finally, the non-direct income from the book. Now this is where it gets interesting. People are impressed by authors. If you have had a book published in a certain area, even if that book did not do particularly well, people are impressed. Of course not everyone is impressed, but enough are to give you an edge. And that edge means you are more likely to be able to do whatever it is you want to do in that particular area of expertise. Charge more, or be more likely to get that job you are going for, or to speak at a conferences, or to publish other things, or whatever. Effectively, it's a great business card.

So do I think it's worth your while writing a book? How should I know? Each person is different. If you currently earn about the same as or less than the prospective book income and yet are very knowledgeable and good at communicating in writing, then probably it's worth your while because the direct income would be good for you. Otherwise, all I can say is that I definitely think it was worth my while writing my book, not for the direct income but as a "business card". But I probably wouldn't bother doing another unless I found myself with a lot of free time on my hands.

September 24, 2011  -- The art of book cover design

Wherever you stand on the future of the book – doomed to oblivion by the Kindle, or an indestructible part of our cultural life – there's no doubt that recent years have seen a golden age of book design. There are of course whole bookshop shelves full of cheap, dull, generic products, but for those who know where to look, books have rarely been more interesting to look at, hold and open.

Partly this is a case of big publishers relying on brilliant design to make their goods stand out in an increasingly difficult market; but partly, too, it's a case of small, independent publishers springing up to provide a certain kind of reader with what they want, more than ever: the book as beautiful, covetable, keep-able object.

You could argue that the current renaissance in book design came about thanks to Penguin, always the most design-savvy of publishers. In 2004 they produced their first series of Great Ideas – small paperback editions of classic, mostly philosophical texts. They had highly tactile covers and used bold period typography to give a sense of when and where each book was coming from. The following year we got Penguin by Design, an illustrated history of 70 years of Penguin covers, and then, in 2007, Seven Hundred Penguins, a two-inch-thick collection of the best covers, shown life-size, one to a page. For seasoned haunters of second-hand bookshops, this particular item was as thrilling as a similar-sized brick of Class A drugs.

Now that other venerable British publisher, Faber & Faber, has stepped up to the plate. Eighty Years of Book Cover Design seems very much a retort to Penguin, as if to say, 'Hey, we were putting out distinctive books six years before you ever came on the scene'. Looking through this beautifully presented book, however, it's clear that Faber's design only really came into its own in the 1940s, with the arrival of the German designer Berthold Wolpe. Wolpe designed the Albertus font, immediately evocative of Faber, and also supplied many of the bold, colourful designs that adorned books by writers like Lawrence Durrell, William Golding and Ted Hughes.

Also as part of their 80th birthday celebrations, Faber have reissued some classic first novels as Faber Firsts, with new covers harking back to their original era (check out particularly The Bell Jar and Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy), and a collection of poetry hardbacks, with wood- and lino-cut illustrations on their jacketless covers and endpapers.

It's no surprise that good book design often comes with reissues, not least of classics. After all, anything out of copyright leaves more money for the presentation. Persephone Books, Hesperus Press, Pushkin Press and Capuchin Classics are four British independent publishers that specialise in bringing back into print often long-neglected works, helped along by some beautiful design. Persephone are distinctive for their uniform grey jackets – it's only when you open them that you find the bright-coloured endpapers, sourced from fabrics dating from the time of the book's setting or writing.

Capuchin Classics, by contrast, hark back to the classic Penguin "grid format", with bands of signature mint-green and original illustrations by Angela Landels. For Capuchin's editor-in-chief, Emma Howard, this aspect of the cover design was crucial. "We thought that using line drawings would be a refreshing antidote to the ghastly photographic covers that you see everywhere," she says.

While these four publishers all work in paperback, White's Books is one that is taking on the hardback – at a time when these are fast disappearing from our shelves. They're not quite an endangered species yet: literary imprint Picador announced that they were doing away with hardbacks altogether last year, before quietly backing down. White's stick resolutely to the classics – their list runs to six titles so far, including Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Treasure Island – but go all out in design terms, from the thickness of the paper to the exquisite covers.

White's art director, David Pearson, has commissioned illustrations from such people as textile designer Celia Birtwell and Stanley Donwood, better known for his work with Radiohead. The results stand out a mile in your average bookshop, thanks to the books' use of what Pearson calls "non-repeating narrative pattern" – images that look like a simple pattern from a distance, but which open up when seen at close quarters.

It's not all classics and rediscoveries, though. Some of the most eye-catching design in recent years has been in paperback originals – the pricier paperbacks that have increasingly replaced hardbacks for first-run printings of literary fiction. These can be jacketed, with cut-outs or flaps, and appeal to a young, stylish readership that expects the same degree of sophistication from their books as they do from their music or clothing. "Books are like small posters for themselves," says Suzanne Dean, creative director at Random House. "We have roughly a two-minute window to seduce the reader and bookshop browser."

Yet it's still the familiar names that are most likely to have that extra care lavished upon them. Coming to bookshelves soon will be fine editions of books by Margaret Atwood, Donna Tartt, George Orwell and Michael Ondaatje. Covetable, certainly, and beautifully produced, but considering that most of the people who will buy the books will own them already, in a previous format, the terrible thought occurs: will they ever be read?

September 22, 2011 -- Utilizing more marketing options.

When it comes time to distribute your book then you will want to have either one strong disbribution channel that is already targeting your expected consumer or be in a position to promote your product across a wide breadth of distribution options. 

Once extra option that we can offer you is to provide your book as a BlackBerry Mobile Application. 

This will provide you with a presence in RIM's App World and offer you a new market share that may otherwise have been untapped.

Contact us today to learn how we can do this for you at an effective and low cost!

August 29, 2011 -- What Content?

You have probably heard the old saying that you should write about what you know or about your passions.  Trying to figure out your passion may be a challenge when you're forced to say it out loud.

Start off by keeping a small notepad and pen handy at all times or if you're into texting then trying sending texts to yourself everytime that you come across a topic or subject that you find interesting.  Pretty soon you'll have your content list.

Review your list and then find the top 3 items that let the creative juices flow.

Give it a try!

_{June 06, 2011 -- How to become an author}

So you want to become an author, great. What’s stopping you? Time, money, focus, motivation, no direction, no idea how to get started? I’m just mentioning these because they’re the most common reasons why people don’t attain their writing and publishing goals. Tired of waiting for your dreams to come true?

Here are three simple tips to become an author:

Become an author Tip # 1 Write

You’re probably slapping yourself on your head and saying ‘really?’ write, I wouldn’t have thought about that. So do it. Write something every day. Write an article. Write a short story. Write a sales letter. Write a poem. It may sound simple but the biggest hurdle to becoming an author is actually writing.

How many people do you know that have expressed an interest in becoming an author? The truth is that 80% of us believe that we have a book inside us. What is the difference between you and those other 80%? Nothing, until you write something. That’s absolutely the first step to becoming an author. You can’t do it until you write something.

What’s step number two? Well you have to get your written material published, right? That’s not too difficult either. You can self publish, you can post an article to a website. You can post your short story on forums or writing websites. As soon as your article, poem, book, or short story is published online or in print – you’re an author.

Become an author Tip # 2 Read

Read material that is similar to what you’re writing. If you’re writing romantic short stories, then read a lot of romantic short stories. This will help you know what is being published and read by the current market. It will also help you to develop creative ideas for your stories. If you’re writing a small business book, then read other small business books. Again, it will not only help you see what the market is currently demanding, it will give you organization and formatting ideas for your own book.

Become an author Tip # 3 Learn

Learn about your industry. If you’re self publishing a book then learn as much as you can about the self publishing industry. Trying to enter the field blindly will result in frustration and you’ll risk giving up on your dream to become an author before it happens. If you’re looking to publish traditionally then learn about submission information for relevant publications, publishers, and websites. Learn manuscript formatting for your desired medium; e-books are formatted differently than print books and fiction manuscripts are formatted differently than a book of poetry or a small business book.

Trying to write a book or article and then make it fit the publication and industry guidelines is like trying to get dressed before you take a shower. It just doesn’t work well.

The real key to becoming an author is to focus on your goal. Write every day, read as much as you can about your industry, your competition, your market, and learn the ins and outs and the craft of your chosen genre. Becoming an author is as simple as that.

June 3, 2011 -- eReader Buying Guide