The Joys of Coding My Own Ebooks

I am working on the html re-coding of HOW TO SUCCEED IN HIGH SCHOOL AND PREP FOR COLLEGE.

At the end of this post is the link to the blog series by Guido Henkel that enabled me — with my business partner Yael K. Miller’s ongoing help — to do the html coding myself.

Here is one example of how wonderful it is to be in charge of the destiny of my own ebooks:

Bonnie B. Latino is co-author of the new novel YOUR GIFT TO ME, which is now #1 in Top Rated War Fiction on Amazon. She asked me if, in my next book, I could include information on how to get a shortened Amazon URL.

I told her that, as I now do the html coding myself, I would find in TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET ON THE INTERNET WITH PICTURES a place for the requested information and add the information now (and then re-upload the ebook to Kindle Direct Publishing).

This is the requested information I added:

Extra tip: See in the above [Amazon review] example the URL http://amzn.to/MHDGHT? This is what is called a shortened URL.

Here is how this works:

For example, you get a very long URL for anything on Amazon. The actual URL for my review of Susan Chodakiewitz’s children’s book is http://www.amazon.com/review/R1NHABEIIXYPWJ/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1475170831&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=

This URL appears at the top of your computer screen. You copy this URL and go to a shortened URL service to reduce this long URL down to manageable size.

There are different URL shortening services, and I usually use bud.url for my blost posts because the analytics are not available for others to see.

But whenever I want to shorten a URL from Amazon, I go to bit.ly (sign up for this free service) because bit.ly automatically creates for an Amazon URL a shortened URL with an abbreviation of Amazon in it: http://amzn.to/…

The one downside of bit.ly is that others can see your analytics. But for purposes of encouraging people to feel confident clicking on a shortened URL, bit.ly is a good choice.

Advanced extra tip: If you live in a state in which you are allowed to have an Amazon associate (affiliate) account, you can get your affiliate URL for a specific product on Amazon and shorten that URL by doing this:

When you are signed into your Amazon account and are on the sales page of a specific product, click on “Link to this page” near the top left-hand side of your computer screen. Then click on “Text only.”

Next, look at only the very first part of that text. Copy everything in the URL starting with http:// except the quotation marks at the beginning and end of the long URL. Then you may copy that URL into bit.ly to get a shortened URL.

And having control of my own html coding gives me other options:

Instead of keeping a sample high school student’s resume in the actual HOW TO SUCCEED IN HIGH SCHOOL AND PREP FOR COLLEGE, I created a page featuring the resume on my author website. Then I am linking to that resume from the ebook.

In this way I can update the resume if needed, plus ensure that the resume’s formatting does not get bent out of shape because of people reading the resume on different electronic devices.

You can click here to see the high school student resume on my author website.

And click here now for the first post in Guido Henkel’s series if you want to consider learning html coding yourself.

Now back to more html coding for me …

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. A new nonfiction ebook of hers is TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and her newest fiction ebook is the thriller CIA FALL GUY.
Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com