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Folks,

I am thinking of publishing some original composition (sheet music) as e-Book that can be commercially sold (e.g., via Amazon.com or any other third-party commercial retailers/websites that sell e-Books).

I don't really know where to start, and would appreciate any advise from composers who have looked into this matter before. Thanks in advance!

Hi Ax,

Where've you been? I don't believe I can help you as my self publishing has been limited to have scores spiral bound at a local print shop. My concern with regular binding is the difficulty in making the music easily readable, i.e. having the score book stay open to the page selected. This is quite easy with spiral bound books, comb binding works okay but the pages can be a pain in the butt to turn and regular book binding needs time to break in. Just thought I'd voice a few concerns. Good luck! Is there anything you'd like to post here so we can see what you've done?

Thanks, Steve.

Indeed, I agree with your spiral binding vs. other binding comment, and I was already intending on including a "how to use this eBook" section advising those who would rather print it out to go with spiral binding.

Considering that this is for a four-hand piece, choice of binding is critical. And I will also include instructions on "how to use this e-Book with TWO e-readers simultaneously" if the pianists want to forge ahead using e-readers.

(I hope to post samples of some sort after I get closer to compiling the finished product and have a better view on when this thing will be published.)

The e-book idea (kindle perhaps) is REALLY difficult at the moment... Problem is that the formats available for e-books deal with normal text fonts and NOT music ones, which means that you have to make the score into images and that would make the file huge for kindle and other e-readers.

Making them into PDF files makes things suspiciously easy to pirate unfortunately, so it's not an option either...

The spiral binding is an option, but in any case I'm not too fond, for the reasons Steve mentioned.

BTW, if you'd like I'm the owner of Editions Musica Ferrum and a work for 4 hands (piano) has just been released, so it might be interesting to you, to check out the format, etc...

If you need any other help, let me know (if I can help at all, that is)...

Thank you, Nikolas.
Despite the difficulties, does Musica Ferrum publish any sheet music e-book?

At the moment no, but we have our eye in a website (that we're actually awaiting a reply), and we will give it a try...

I still think that since a music score (especially a piano score) is connected with such a practical activity, such as playing the piano, that it's difficult take out the physical object and replace it with an ipad.

At least for now...

UPDATE:

My first sheet music e-book experiment with Kindle is now "published."
It is currently being promoted as a free book:

http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Vox-Blues-Little-ebook/dp/B00DTXELXC/

Please check it out and let me know how well it works (or not work) on your Kindle devices (or in your Kindle app running on other devices).

To hear what the music would sound like, go here: http://www.PianoRecital.org/Jazz-Vox-Blues/

Thanks for all your feedback so far!