You may have seen it pop up on e-commerce sites: the Woxter Scriba 195 S is a tiny e-reader with a 4.7″ screen that fits in the palm of your hand. Easy to carry and inexpensive, it seems perfectly suited to the nomadic reader in search of a reading device that’s easy to take anywhere.
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Here's an investigation that led me to scour the depths of Internet forums to determine whether or not it's possible to make a lot of money being a self-published author. But, above all, you're about to discover a veritable hellish world where anything goes to sell books.
Following a discussion with a friend who has started publishing fiction on Amazon, I decided to see what the indie author community is like.
So I read thousands of posts on forums and entire blogs dedicated to the art of selling ebooks on Amazon and other digital book self-publishing services (Kobo for example).
And I've discovered some amazing things…
Let's face it, the real revolution Amazon has brought to the world of reading isn't really the Kindle.
Introduced 10 years ago with a flurry of press releases and marketing efforts, Amazon's first e-reader was a passable reading device at best.
But the arrival at the same time (November 2007) of the KDP – Kindle Direct Publishing – system really changed the world of publishing, reading and authors.
The idea behind this service is to allow anyone to offer their text for sale in digital format on the Amazon website. In less than 48 hours, your novel, short story or essay is available worldwide.
Anyone with access to Amazon can buy, download and start reading.
And, as a thank you, Amazon pays the author 70% of the money raised by the sale of the ebook.
What Amazon perhaps hadn't anticipated, however, was the exploitation and even abuse of this system by a whole horde of specialized authors with strong marketing skills.
These authors then used KDP to generate millions of dollars by selling texts of sometimes dubious quality – like the famous "Dinosaur Erotica" genre (yes, it exists!) which earned Christie Sims tens of thousands of dollars…
What really surprised me was that, yes, authors have become millionaires by publishing their books, without a publisher, on Amazon.
This is the case, for example, of Amanda Hocking, who decided in 2010 to place her first novel on the Amazon platform.
In just 18 months, she has sold over a million copies of her books, making her the first self-published millionaire on the Internet. Yet most people don't even know her name.
An article in The Guardian newspaper tells this incredible story in 2012 (read here).
In the end, she earned around 2 million euros in just 20 months. An income that would make any professional author dream, so for an amateur it's even more extraordinary.
Since then, Amanda Hocking has been translated all over the world, including into French by a major publisher, and her books are still on Amazon.
A few days ago, the BBC website ran an article announcing that independent authors working in the romance genre have seen their incomes rise. Many of them now earn more than $100,000 a year…
My investigation could have ended there. But there's been a lot of water under the bridge since 2012, and I wanted to find out more…
My research quickly led me to a forum of English-speaking authors under the domain name kboards.com.
Originally, it was a forum for users of Kindle e-readers, apps and Fire tablets.
But it's also home to many freelance writers who seek and share advice, tips and sometimes even complete and elaborate strategies on how to make a fortune with Kindle ebooks.
For, on Kboards forums, participants are rarely looking for advice on how to write a masterpiece capable of changing the world or making female readers cry. What they're really looking for is a miracle recipe for making money.
Let's take a classic forum example. A user boasts that he has published two books and, in just three months, has enough money to quit his job and live off the money earned from sales.
Of course, he writes a trendy genre "NA Romance" which is "New Adult Romance". I'll come back to this later…
There's also the example of the man who earns around 300,000 dollars a year selling his ebooks:
Or the author who explains that his book sales exploded in just a few months:
So it's not always clear whether all this is bogus or not…
But examples like these are plentiful, and the forum is full of topics on how to sell your books.
To sell more and make a lot of money, some people directly suggest using Facebook advertising to promote books.
Complex strategies are then implemented. For example, if you have a series of 3 books, you make the first one free for a while, then create a "bundle" (i.e. a single ebook grouping together the three volumes) which will be sold at a friendly price. Fingers crossed, of course.
Next, we promote the discount – or the free book – on blogs, newsletters and so on.
You can also advertise directly on Amazon to promote your books.
By investing a little money, you can even get downloads that will propel your ebooks into the bestseller category for a while.
But above all, you ask your friends and family, and your "fans", to write a review on the book's Amazon page.
After all, ratings, comments and reviews are a major concern for independent authors who publish on Amazon.
As soon as the system was set up in 2007, two things were discovered:
All these recipes and tips have been passed on from post to post, topic to topic and user to user for years.
So it's impossible to escape these tips if you spend some time reading and participating on the forum.
This is where a second category of users comes into play: those who sell shovels.
Clearly, publishing ebooks on Kindle is like a gold rush.
Topics on the Kboards forum don't always have much to do with writing.
If there are whispers that a particular genre is selling a lot, we immediately start writing a short story to "test the market" (30 pages is usually enough).
If it catches on, we'll launch the writing of a saga in 3 to 12 volumes of novellas (60 to 100 pages) or novels (150 pages or more) on the theme to take advantage of the windfall. Because, yes, you read that right, the recipe for success is to write large series or, more often, trilogies.
The independent author must therefore quickly become an analyst and editor capable of unearthing the latest trends to ride the wave before it's too late…
But, as with every gold rush, there are also those who sell the shovels. And there are plenty of them in the world of self-publishing.
First and foremost, there are the graphic designers, who regularly remind us via incessant promotions on Kboards that this really is the right time to buy their illustrations at knock-down prices.
These visuals will work wonders to sell your books in various categories:
And then there's the site that makes indie authors dream: BookBubs.
This site, which may not mean anything to you, allows you to distribute promotional offers to readers/buyers. Provided the site accepts your ebooks, of course. And for that, nothing beats a nice cover…
I've also found softwares that allows authors to carry out comprehensive marketing studies on ebooks.
If an author wants to write a romance book about pandas (why not, after all), then he or she can use a software to get information on which categories sell best, get an estimate of sales figures and even an overview of how difficult it is to sell a book in this market.
So, by using this software, you may realize that vampires are out of fashion, but zombies still sell (and therefore make money).
And why not turn your futuristic action thriller (because you're a Crichton fan) into a romance if that sells more? Don't laugh: on KBoards, some people really do ask themselves this question.
Finally, there are the inevitable proofreaders.
And, let's face it, this is often a necessary service for indie authors used to releasing several books a year in different genres.
Many of these proofreaders haunt the KBoards forums to offer their services – always with a 20% discount because it's winter, or the new year, or spring, or the summer vacations!
But the must in the career of a millionaire amateur writer is to become a coach to explain to other authors that yes, it's possible, you can do it too. And thus earn even more money.
I've found this to be a fairly regular occurrence, but I'd like to focus on the case of JF Penn. This lady is a best-selling author of supernatural thrillers on Amazon who has suddenly decided to dispense her good advice.
But she uses another name, Joanna Penn, to sell books that explain how to make lots of money by selling lots of books.
Why does a successful fiction writer embark on a career as a coach to explain to others how to be successful too? Is being a writer not enough anymore?
To be honest, I don't have a ready-made answer to this question. But I do have a few hypotheses.
Studying the well-oiled marketing of the JF/Joanna Penn books (you can download some of them for free on Amazon), I've noticed that every free book supposedly explaining how to write better is a foretaste of a paying book.
The pattern seen on KBoards forums (and you can check Reddit too for marketing) remains the same: a good proportion of authors are trying to identify which literary "niche" will enable them to make a fortune.
If a few decide that "advice for authors" is the right niche, we're going to see a lot of books on the subject.
That's probably why there are so many ebooks on how to write a good book, how to manage a detective story or, more crudely, how to write a book to make it a bestseller.
After many hours of me, too, haunting the discussion forums on the subject, I think there are many authors who make a good living from indie ebook publishing.
There are even a few millionaires, that's for sure. We've seen some of them in the press, and others have been spotted and published by mainstream publishers.
But there are also some who are too busy writing and who rarely, if ever, visit online forums.
Somehow, I have the amusing impression of witnessing, first-hand, the lives of pulp writers and other pulp fiction writers of yesteryear.
With the Kindle generation, authors publish their manuscripts directly on the Internet and sell them (or not) without anyone's help.
The fastest, smartest and most assiduous even manage to publish a novel a quarter to support themselves and their families.
But let's make no mistake: for every millionaire, how many authors won't earn more than $100 a year?
If you are looking for the best ereader, you can read this article.
Today’s ebook reader is a real alternative to the good old paper book. But how does an e-reader work?
If you don’t really know what an e-reader is, you should know that it’s an electronic device that lets you read digital books – also known as "ebooks".
Its operation can be compared to that of a smartphone or tablet, but with a few peculiarities that we’ll look at together.
An e-reader is essentially made up of 3 components:
This is a rather crude simplification, but it will help you understand how a reading device works.
Its main advantage over any other device that displays an electronic book (ebook) is its e-ink screen.
The way e-ink works makes reading far more comfortable than reading on a computer, smartphone or tablet.
This is because, unlike a conventional touch screen, the e-ink screen has no powerful light underneath. What’s more, when the screen is switched off, it continues to display text, which also consumes less energy.
Here’s a diagram showing this style of screen:
On the e-reader screen, light is reflected before reaching the eye, which is not the case with the tablet and its "backlit" screen.
Now, here’s what happens on a e-reader when you open an ebook:
E-readers have a very limited number of buttons, so they’re very easy to use.
The device contains a battery and must be charged regularly (every 3 to 4 weeks if you read an average of 1h30 a day).
To use your e-reader, simply switch it on. Then you have access to a home screen that lets you do a number of things: open a book, buy a book, access your book library and manage your e-reader’s settings.
Each e-reader brand offers different software, but 90% of features are common to the Kindle, Kobo and Pocketbook brands.
You can take a look at our e-reader reviews to get an idea of the differences between the brands.
To buy books for an e-reader, you need to access the bookshop.
The good news is that all e-readers have a digital bookshop that can be accessed directly from the device’s home screen, provided the device is connected to the Internet.
You can connect your e-reader to your WiFi network.
So you can buy a book directly from the e-reader, then download it (in under 2 minutes!) and start reading from the comfort of your living room!
More good news: not all books have to be paid for, and you can download free books onto your e-reader.
You have two options:
For some years now, Kindle, Kobo and Pocketbook have all been offering good e-readers.
The best e-reader is the one that best suits your needs:
You can read all our e-readers reviews on this page.
The Digital Comic Museum features thousands of free downloadable American comics from the early days of the medium through to the 1950s.
On this website, you’ll find many copies of the popular comics of the time.
These comics cover a wide range of themes. There’s a bit of everything, from westerns and horror to fantasy and – of course – superheroes, some of them very famous.
This selection is made up of titles from what is considered "the golden age of American comics".
It was in 1933 that Max Gaines brought out the first comic book in the format we now call "Comics". Success came quickly, and what is considered the Golden Age lasted from 1938 (appearance of Superman) to 1955.
Sales soared with publications centered around super-powered heroes like Superman.
Success was also amplified by the Second World War, which created anxiety and a need for exemplary patriotic figures. For example, in the first issue of Daredevil, the superhero thwarts Hitler’s plans (no less!).
But in the early ’50s, a campaign of criticism against the violence of the publications and a sharp drop in sales meant that many publishers went out of business in 1955.
On this site, you can read a large number of English-language comics from this period, free of charge. You’ll only find works that are now in the public domain in the U.S. (for France, I don’t know).
The archives are stored in the form of "scans" of the original comics. They are therefore in English and free of charge. They can be read online or downloaded. (You’ll need to register to access them, though, as registration is free).
It’s an excellent initiative for those wishing to familiarize themselves with the history of American comics.
You can visit the site here: Digital Comic Museum.
Comics can be downloaded in CBR, CBZ and PDF formats, depending on the title.
If you want to read CRB or CBZ files on your Kindle e-reader you can read this article : how to read CBR and CBZ on Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite.
Kobo e-readers are widely distributed in American stores and on the Internet. For many people, using a e-reader is easy, but for the rest of us, this tutorial will help you transfer your ebooks in EPUB format onto your Kobo e-reader.
It works for non-protected epub files and non-protected PDF files.
This article was written using the Kobo Nia e-reader. It works in the same way for all Kobo e-readers, from the newest to the oldest, (Kobo Clara 2E, Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Sage, Kobo Elipsa 2E).
The first thing to do is download a book.
The easiest way to do this is to create a Kobo account to access the bookshop on your e-reader.
To do this, you need to connect your e-reader to your WiFi network (this procedure is simple and can be carried out from the e-reader's settings).
But you can also download digital books (ebooks) in EPUB format from a number of sites. This article will help you find free EPUB to download.
I often go to Gutenberg.org to download books. For this example, I'm going to download a book by Herman Melville (in EPUB format):
The file is then saved in a folder on my computer, in the Downloads folder (this may be different for you).
Now it's time to transfer the ePub to your Kobo e-reader.
The first step is to connect your Kobo e-reader to your computer. To do this, use a micro-USB cable (if possible, the one supplied with the e-reader and which you use to recharge the machine).
Plug in the e-reader on one end and connect it to a free USB port on your Windows, Mac or Linux computer.
If all goes well, a message will appear on the e-reader asking you if you want to connect the e-reader to your computer:
Click on the "Connect" button
You must validate this message and the player will confirm that it has understood.
This message appears if the e-reader is properly connected to your computer.
You can then check that it's working properly on your computer by opening the file explorer and accessing the contents of your kobo e-reader.
The easiest way to transfer an EPUB to your Kobo e-reader is to simply copy and paste the EPUB file into your e-reader's folder.
You can simply copy an ".epub" file to your Kobo e-reader.
After disconnecting properly (first in Windows and then by removing the cable), you'll see your book appear in the library.
The book is on your Kobo e-reader.
If this doesn't work, there's probably a problem with your ebook format. But don't panic. Just keep reading: a second solution is provided, and it works almost 100% of the time.
If you're starting to have a few dozen books, it makes sense to use software to organize your ebook (EPUB and other, like PDF) library on your computer.
The most comprehensive software is called Calibre, and it has the advantage of being free. You can download it here: https://calibre-ebook.com/fr/download.
You can read the full introduction to Calibre software here.
To add an ebook to Calibre, simply drag and drop the file into the software window, and the ebook will be saved in your digital library.
You can see the file just added to Calibre.
Next, of course, you need to connect your Kobo e-reader to your computer. I'll refer you a little further up the article to find out how to do this.
To finally transfer the ePub to your e-reader, all you have to do is click on the "send to device" button in the Calibre software and wait a minute.
The button to use to send a digital book to your Kobo e-reader.
After disconnecting properly (first in Windows and then by removing the cable), you'll see your book appear in the library.
There's a special and more complex case to mention here: how do you transfer a Kindle ebook to a Kobo e-reader?
This point is complicated by the fact that both Kindle and Kobo readers use different systems with different files (Epub for Kobo and MOBI/AZW for Kindle).
It will therefore be necessary to go through a conversion stage and you can also do it with Calibre software.
You will also need to remove DRM from the ebook.
Yes, all Kobo e-readers are compatible with the EPUB ebook file format.
If you are looking for a good e-reader you can read this guide.
You can follow the sames steps to transfert a PDF file onto your Kobo device.
I recently dove into the world of managing my eBook library and discovered a fantastic open-source software called Calibre.
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Kindle e-readers are not compatible by default with CBR and CBZ files, but there are solutions that allow these files to be read on the Kindle.
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We sometimes come across files with extensions ending in ".cbr" or ".cbz" . But what are these files, sometimes used to store comics and mangas?
The CBR (Comic Book RAR) file is a format often used to store and read digital comics and manga.
It’s an archive format that contains all the pages of a book in a single file.
To facilitate its exchange on the Internet, pages and images are compressed using the RAR) file format to reduce their size in MB (also known as the "weight" of a file).
The CBZ (Comic Book Zip) file is also a digital exchange format for comics and mangas.
As with CBR, all the pages and information in the document are grouped together in a single file.
Pages and images are compressed using the Zip) system to reduce their size in MB (also known as the "weight" of a file).
These formats offer a number of advantages over PDF or Epub files:
This file type also has its drawbacks, which are worth noting:
CBR and CBZ files are therefore useful for exchanging and reading digital comics.
**They enable comics fans to store and easily access a wide range of comics, graphic novels and mangas.
Today, it’s mainly an exchange format, since book publishers prefer to use EPUB or PDF files, which are easier to protect from copying.**
E-readers are electronic devices like any other. Occasionally, problems arise and you need to do a few things before you can use your e-reader again. Such is the case with the discharged battery problem on a Kindle.
The problem may manifest itself in different ways:
There could be several reasons why your Kindle battery is draining quickly even when you don't use it (in sleep mode).
> TLDR: By following these steps, you can help maximize the battery life of your Kindle e-reader: > > Adjust the display brightness to a lower level. > Disable Wi-Fi and mobile data when not needed. > Choose a longer interval for page refreshes. > Keep your Kindle's software up to date. > * Restart your Kindle.
Here are some possible causes and steps you can make your Kindle battery life last longer:
By implementing these tips, you should be able to extend the battery life of your Kindle. I did only with the Wifi trick!
This apply to all Kindle e-readers.
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Note : If you're still experiencing excessive battery drain, it's advisable to contact Kindle customer support for further help: kindle official help center
E-ink supplies electronic ink screens to all e-reader manufacturers (including Kobo, Kindle, and Pocketbook). For several years, they've been showcasing a brand new type of color screen: the Spectra 6. Unfortunately, despite being announced years ago, this technology is still not available!
This new "color electronic paper" technology is based on the use of 6 colors which are then combined to produce the correct shades of color needed.
The screens presented at various trade shows have a diagonal of 25.3 inches with a resolution of 3200 x 1800 pixels for 145 PPI. However, these screens can reach a definition of up to 200 PPI.
According to the photographs and videos that can be seen on the web, Spectra 6 screens are impressive! They are clearly the most advanced when it comes to displaying vibrant colors with a contrast that allows them to be easily mistaken for a paper print.
It's truly a revolution that nevertheless has a major flaw: it currently takes 12 seconds to completely refresh the screen and display a different photograph!
This is completely unacceptable for an e-reader, which needs to refresh the screen much faster for a good reading experience.
These E-ink Spectra 6 color electronic ink screens are therefore currently reserved for display and signage. They can be used as signage in shopping malls or for displaying promotional offers in stores – for example.
Despite this significant limitation, the images we can see are truly fascinating and provide a good overview of what e-readers could become in the coming years.
With a refresh rate that drops to less than 2 seconds, I think many of us would adopt an e-reader with a Spectra screen as a reading device for novels and comics.
The previous generation of Spectra color signage screens from E Ink required about 30 seconds to refresh. Unfortunately, it took the company and its engineers years to successfully halve that time!
Spectra 6 screens were scheduled to be delivered as early as 2024. But, in mid-2025, these screens are still only seen very rarely and are far from being available in large quantities. They may not even be truly available for electronic device manufacturers…
Furthermore, the official E Ink website has not even been updated this year regarding the availability of these screens:
See the E-ink website: https://www.eink.com/brand/detail/Spectra6
For people who want to see what it could look like, here's an interesting video that gives a better idea of the quality of the color display:
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With a beautiful display close to a print, this technology seems far more convincing than the Kaleido 3 screens found in current color e-readers.
But, t seems that Spectra 6 technology is struggling to develop. Is it due to the manufacturing cost or because the technology is not yet ready?