Tablespoon: ebooks by Malaysian authors

One thing we’re passionate about at Teaspoon Publishing is giving works written by Malaysian authors a boost. Under our publishing hub, we’ve given advice to many authors on how to publish their ebooks online. We’ve also provided both editorial, formatting, and setup services to help them do just that.

Yet, the biggest problem Malaysian authors face is the fact that almost all these publishing platforms are based overseas, usually in the USA. Which gives us (and them) a lot of headaches in the form of tax forms and overseas bank accounts. Plus, that pesky 30% withholding tax. There is one ebook distributor that’s based locally: e-sentral. But it’s also full of books from overseas, plus textbooks, so it feels like everything is all over the place. (Or maybe that’s just us.)

And then there’s also the problem where local readers cannot buy ebooks from Amazon because of regional restrictions. So what’s an author to do? Create a website and sell online? Sure—but not everyone has the tech know-how or the time and funds to set up an e-commerce store. How la, like that?

We’ve thought about this for a long time and come up with a solution: Tablespoon.

Tablespoon is a specially-curated selection of ebooks published by people other than us. Curated, meaning that these ebooks have been vetted by our team for quality and content. Selection, meaning that they are of all genres. And people other than us*, meaning independent Malaysian authors who have an ebook they’re really excited to share with readers.

Overall, what this means is that the Tablespoon category in our store will now be carrying ebooks that fit into Teaspoon Publishing’s bigger overall vision to promote Malaysian authors and to give them a platform to sell their books—even if they’re not fantasy works.

*If you’re one of these people other than us who’d like us to consider carrying your ebook, drop us an email at ebooks@tablespoon.teaspoonpublishing.com.my and let us know all about you and your work!

Ooo so what you got?

Check out our first batch of offerings!

Fibro Takes Flight by Angelina Bong

Angelina Bong was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2012. Fibro Takes Flight is her first solo collection of poems. A vivid account of living with fibromyalgia, these poems are honest expressions of her intimate struggles, her raw emotions, her challenges as an artist and a writer and her views of life through myriad perspectives. They also explore how art and poetry help her cope with her invisible illness and how she finds treasures through these periods, finding peace and acceptance in overcoming the darkness in her life.

Her contemplations celebrate life in all its colours, including grief, identity crisis and the simple pleasures of daily living.

This is a book where chronic pain in mind, body, heart and soul meets meaning, purpose and hope.

Christians and Nation-Building in a Pluralistic Society by Hwa Yung and Helen Ting (eds.)

Christians are called to live as the “salt of the earth” and “light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-14). How does this translate into practical daily living and working for the welfare of our nation and fellow citizens? The essays in this book discuss what living as “salt” and “light” means and how Malaysian Christians can contribute to nation-building in a multiethnic and multireligious society. The subjects include biblical, Catholic and Protestant teachings on our socio-political responsibility, issues like building a compassionate society, corruption, religious liberty and political engagement, as well as distinctive Sabah and Sarawak concerns. This book challenges Christians to take seriously the teachings of the Bible and our faith, and to work with all of integrity and goodwill to build our nation firmly on the foundations of compassion, equality and justice. Effective nation-building requires participation by all.

Step In: True Stories of Women Blasting Barriers, Prepping Pampers, and Slaying Stereotypes by PWDC

“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” asks Sheryl Sandberg, author of the book “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will To Lead”.

Sandberg was the catalyst for this book that chronicles two dozen women in Penang who questioned themselves at some point in their lives.

Through their deeply personal stories and experiences, you’ll discover how to:

navigate family, career and life with candid advice and strategies
temporarily step out of the workplace and still make a career comeback seamlessly
become the person you want to be without losing your way
make it in a man’s world and still retain your femininity and authenticity
integrate your values and principles into the home, career, business and life

It doesn’t matter if you’ve just entered college or if you’ve been a homemaker for ages or you’ve been in business or career for a while now, these stories can help you define yourself and show you how to ‘Step In’ to your work, family and leadership roles as a 21st Century Asian woman.

Sampaguita by Wilson Khor W. H.

Sampaguita: A Condensed Poetry-Travelogue Chapbook of Manila and Baguio is the condensed version of Wilson’s travelogue on his travels in the Philippines back in pre-pandemic 2020—a culmination of his promise made to a friend, as well as his dream to set foot in and write about her country.

In addition to a summarized documentation of his travels and over 100 photographs, Sampaguita features a collection of poetry written during and after the trip—most of them inspired by the haiku in Basho’s famed Oku no Hosomichi travelogue.

Teaspoon, tablespoon, what’s with all the spoons?

At Teaspoon Publishing, we believe that there is room for your work, room for your voice, room for your passions. And we believe that by adding this special sales category to our website, we’re inviting more people to the table.

Also, it’s just a bigger spoon.

August 20, 2022

Publishing on Draft2Digital: A Step-by-Step Guide

What is Draft2Digital, or D2D?

As we mentioned in this post, D2D is an aggregator—or what you might call an e-book distributor. It serves as a central hub where you upload your ebook and then that ebook gets sent out to a bunch of e-book retailers. In this case, D2D can help you get your books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple, plus library and subscription services such as OverDrive and Scribd.

Draft2Digital acquired Smashwords recently so everything is going to be streamlined in the near future. We don’t know all the details of how the accounts (if you have accounts on both) are going to merge, but it’s something we’re keeping an eye on for new developments.

While we’re waiting for that, here’s a quick step-by-step guide on how to publish your lovely new ebook on D2D and have it EVERYWHERE ONLINE!

But first…

Draft2Digital Formatting tips

One of the reasons we’ve prefered D2D over Smashwords is because formatting your ebook is so much easier (and prettier) using their inbuilt templates and automation. It’s almost 90% less work than formatting for meatgrinder on Smashwords. But as usual, you still need to keep some minor formatting rules in place to get it to do what you want. Here are the basics.

Make sure all your chapter titles are formatted the same way. As long as it’s consistent (for example, all titles are in bold & capslock or something like that or using Header styles), Draft2Digital will assume that’s the chapter title. You don’t have to manually insert a Contents page.
If you use scene breaks, you’ll want to leave 3 blank lines, something like this:
Draft2Digital will convert this into a scene break. Depending on the template, it’ll have a pretty little icon there (which changes based on the theme you select), something like this:
Insert a page break at the end of your chapter; though this usually isn’t very important. If you leave a bunch of empty lines (i.e. more than three lines) followed by a chapter title, Draft2Digital will convert that into a page break anyway.
Copyright page: Draft2Digital has a standard copyright page which is really barebones, so you can leave that off your document and let D2D do its thing. However, if you want to control what the copyright page says, add one at the beginning of your manuscript.
End matter: These can be auto-added by Draft2Digital once you fill up your profile. However, if you have other books that are not published via Draft2Digital, you’ll need to manually add book pages to the end of your manuscript.

But okay, enough about formatting.

Here’s how you upload your manuscript to Draft2Digital

Right on your dashboard, click the big red button that says:

Ebook setup: cover & metadata

Pretty self-explanatory. If you have your ebook cover ready, put it here. If you don’t yet, leave it blank. You can upload it later. But if you’re planning to publish like now, now, then you NEED to have this ready.

Then you have to fill in a bunch of basic info. If you’ve uploaded books on Amazon, Smashwords, e-Sentral or Google Play before, this is basically all the same info.

If you’re at this stage of publishing, you should already know your book title and what language you’re writing in. Though, titles are tricky.

For this one, it’s part of the Absolution Series, so we’ve put that under “Series” and we have Volume Number 1.5.

Okay, 1.5 is a weird number, but this book kind of sits in a timeline between the main two books of the series, but isn’t actually part of the overarching plot of the duology. Hence, 1.5 because it’s a sidetrack.

If your book is a stand-alone, you can leave both of these fields blank.

“Prioritized search terms” is how you want people to find your book. So since Hostage Prince is a fantasy story set in Southeast Asia, we’ve put that in for now, while we figure out what else works. Put your most important search terms at the top because if the vendor/retailer has a limited amount of search terms, they’ll only take the top few.

ETA: Don’t forget to press enter after keying in your search terms in the box! You can do that after each individual term, or you can do that after you key in a bunch of terms separated by either a comma or a semi-colon. This sends what you’ve entered into the Prioritized Search Terms box and then you can drag and drop them in the sequence you prefer.

“BISACS” (Book Industry Standards and Communications) is where they are going to try to categorise your books, something like deciding which specific niche genre it’s in. Amok was placed under Young Adult/Fantasy and Absolution will definitely fall under that too, but Hostage Prince is slightly above YA because Yosua is 20 at the start of this book, and it’s not quite coming-of-age. It’s more Yosua’s pining, faith story with lots of murder and blood, so we’re going to try sticking this in Fiction/Fantasy/Action & Adventure (you can’t have Fiction & YA Fiction at the same time) and maybe see if it’ll cross over into the Christian/Fantasy lists.

You can choose up to 5 but the top two are the most important.

Then you click

Ebook Details

This is where you upload your manuscript in doc, docx, rtf, or epub format to Draft2Digital.

If you already have a nice epub you really want to use, and you don’t want to utilise Draft2Digital’s autogenerated front and back matter, then just upload the epub.

If you intend to use their autogenerated stuff, stick with the Word document.

The page is currently reminding us that we have not yet uploaded a cover. Clicking on the “Edit shared metadata and cover” link is where you can go back and make changes to everything that appeared on the ebook setup page. If you’re setting up a pre-order, enter your targetted pre-order date. If you’re publishing now, well, just choose today.

“Ebook Description” is basically your back cover copy of the print book (if you have one), or what appears on the sales page on, say Amazon. It tells people what your book is about.

The next two sections are optional but are great if your book is a collaboration, or you want to credit a lot of different people who have worked on your book.

If, for example, you are co-authoring a book with someone else, Draft2Digital lets you split your royalties.

You can also credit other people on the book, like your cover designer!

E-ISBN

Draft2Digital requires an e-ISBN, but since we uploaded this while on preorder and had not yet applied for an ISBN, we just added a placeholder number first.

WARNING!!!! If you do this, make sure you remember to update this to your ACTUAL e-ISBN BEFORE you authorise your ebook for publication! Once it’s published, you can’t change this anymore. Then if errors appear, you’re going to have to unpublish and delete the whole ebook and start the publishing process again.

There’s an option to use free Draft2Digital-provided e-ISBNs (so you don’t have to apply for your own), but we disabled this on our account since we apply for all our e-ISBNS anyway. (Yay free e-ISBN from PNM!)

Okay, so done?

Ebook Layout

Here’s where we get to the fancy stuff!

Remember we said you don’t need to insert a manual Table of Contents?

Yup, Draft2Digital generates one for you based on your document headers. If something doesn’t look right, click on

This will take you to an “Improper Chapter Detection” page, where you can select which formatting in your manuscript denotes a chapter title.

If that’s too much trouble—or you realised that you never really set any headers for your chapter titles, just go back and make all your chapter titles consistent then reupload the manuscript. Just using Word’s generic header styles will work fine.

Once your chapter titles have been fixed, you can add start adding all the extra front and back matter.

Front Matter

We’re adding a title page because we didn’t include one in the manuscript. We already have copyright & dedication pages included in the manuscript, so we don’t need to select those.

Back Matter

If you’ve already published other ebooks through Draft2Digital, you can add them to your book (options are beginning/end/both) so that readers can see what else you’ve written and click on the links to buy them.

There’s also a new release signup, kind of like a “follow author” option, so that the next time you release a book in Draft2Digital, they’ll get an email about it.

The Teaser option will put a brief blurb about your other books at the end of your ebook. We’re guessing that people who read Hostage Prince would probably have read Amok, but you never know! Sometimes people read out of order, since this isn’t a strict sequel anyways, so this includes a short preview of Amok.

Biographical Pages is where you add your profile and your company’s profile (if you have one). This info is set up when you create your account (under Account Settings) so we’ll probably stick that bit in another post.

Now,

Preview time!

Draft2Digital lets you preview the converted ebook directly on the web, but the viewer can sometimes be a little wonky. We usually like to download the mobi & epub copies to have a closer look.

But before you do that, choose your template style!

We previously used Science Fiction & Fantasy > Regal for Amok, but we’re going with All Purpose > Maraschino for this one.

You can also set if you want to start your chapters and scenes (after a scene break) with Drop Cap (the first letter is really huge), Phrase Cap (the first line is in capitals), or None (no fancy stuff needed).

Okay, so now you can download the stuff and go review your ebook!

Basically, at this point, you can keep revising stuff until you’re happy with how the book looks. Reviewing and revising might take a while, but don’t worry. It’s all saved in the system and you can always come back to look for your draft on your dashboard:

Release the Kraken!

Right, you’ve reviewed it a million times, updated for typos, found the best theme/style, updated your cover, screamed at your cover, changed the theme again, updated your metadata, updated your eISBN…and now you’re ready to publish!

Remember that this is your last chance to put in the right eISBN (if you’re stupid enough to use a placeholder like us). Because if it’s wrong, you have to delete this whole thing and start again.

Alright!

So once you’ve approved your book for release, you get to the publishing page where you get to pick your price and where you want to sell your ebooks.

Ebook Publish

Here’s where you put in your retail price and select where you want your book to be sold. You’ll want to put the full price here because sales or promotional prices can be set on another page.

We don’t select Amazon distribution via Draft2Digital because we DO have a KDP account where we upload our ebooks directly. Selecting it here plus uploading there would create a conflict and might get not just the ebooks pulled from Amazon but the account closed/banned as well. If you don’t have a KDP account and have no intention of opening a new one, select this so that your ebook is distributed to Amazon. There will be a bunch of things to confirm before they actually distribute to Amazon, though.

Library pricing

The pricing for this is a little confusing, so we usually just use the “auto” price so that Draft2Digital selects the best price based on our selling price.

Then you get to click publish!

Phew! (Break time)

Your book page

This book page is where you’ll be able to update or edit things later on. It’s also where you can add a print book (we’re currently using IngramSpark and Amazon KDP’s POD) or an audiobook.

The Draft2Digital Print Beta runs on a waiting list so you may not be able to use it right away.

What if I wanna run a sale?

Well, that’s where the handy “promotion” button comes in! We used this to set up our pre-order price.

This page tells you your current price and the expected royalties you’ll get at that price. You can set a promotional/sales price to run on certain dates and they’ll tell you how much royalties you’ll get from sales at that promo price. You can also set promotions to run only in specific territories if you’re targeting some kind of country-specific celebration.

Aaaaanddd that’s pretty much everything you need to know about uploading a book on Draft2Digital for now.

April 2, 2022

ARCs Available: The Tale of the Hostage Prince

Are you a book reviewer? Wanna get your hands on an advanced reader copy (ARC) of The Tale of the Hostage Prince?

The Tale of the Hostage Prince (Absolution #1.5)

Yosua wears an uneasy crown. Although he is now Raja of Bayangan, he still longs for the land of his birth where everything was much simpler…and less deadly.

But peace doesn’t come easily, not for a twenty-year-old servant playacting at being king.

With his parents brutally murdered and his uncle bent on revenge, Yosua must decide where his loyalties truly lie. With his only remaining relative and the kingdom he has claimed? Or with his best friend Mikal and the sultanate that raised him as a hostage?

ARCs are available for request on NetGalley now until 1 May 2022!

If you’re not on NetGalley, but you review books on Amazon, Goodreads, or your own blog & social media, you can also fill up the form below.

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P/s Want a physical copy? Pre-order a paperback at 22% off until 13 April 2022!

February 15, 2022

Why Every Malaysian Writer Needs Their Own Website – Stuart Danker

If you’re a writer or author in Malaysia, you need a website. That’s it. Post over. You can leave now.

Oh, you’re still here? Why? Because you want me to explain why? Well then, *gets on high horse* don’t mind if I do.

Look, this post wouldn’t have existed had my Malaysian-writer-friends owned their own websites. In fact, based on my totally credible anecdotal data, only two out of 10 Malaysian writers actually maintain a digital presence of some sort.

These people include copywriters all the way to award-winning journalists. And that’s why this post was born. How are we going to sapot lokal if there’s no Like button to click, am I right?

So without further ado, let’s jump right into this topic.

Why do writers need their own website?

Picture this: a potential employer—or even better, a fan—wants to know more about you. They google your name. Maybe they come across your LinkedIn profile, or the rogue article you wrote for a magazine once. But they don’t get a central source of information about you. Now all your potential stalkers get are the grainy photos you took when Friendster was still around.

Compare that to them seeing your personal website as the first search result, replete with your bio, portfolio, and the occasional blog post.

Which do you think feels more welcoming?

I get it. To some of you, it really doesn’t matter as long as you get to write. I hate to burst your bubble but like Kopi Soh mentioned in her post, writing isn’t the only thing involved in the writer’s journey. Who would’ve thought?

Tell you what. I’ll even make it easy for you. Here’s the CliffsNotes version on why you should own a personal website as a writer (especially in this day and age):

You get to look professional online
Your fans will have something to follow, share, and like
Your potential employers and publishers will be able to see that you’ve taken some initiative in the craft
You’ll be able to announce your future books or seminars
You can further build an audience by putting out quality work
You’ll get to collect your audience’s email addresses
You’ll be able to build SEO (which can’t be done without a website)

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Okay, so where do I host my site?

There are tons of platforms for you to choose from. If you’re new to web admin, then I suggest heading over to the likes of Wix or Weebly, where everything’s just drag and drop, but for the purpose of this post, I’m going to highlight my favourite brand, which is WordPress.

Now, if you don’t already own a website and I’ve managed to sell you into starting one, then I highly suggest that you try WordPress, specifically WordPress.com. Do note that there are minor—but very important—distinctions between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

I don’t want to get all technical and put you off, so here’s the CliffsNotes again:

WordPress.org
- Customise however you want
- More digital-marketing friendly out of the box
- Your website is independent, and you won’t need to adhere to any T&Cs
WordPress.com
- Easier to get started (free accounts available)
- Limited control unless you pay for Business account
- You are bound by the platform, so they get to dictate what you can or can’t do
- But you get the WordPress Reader (main benefit of .com)

At first glance, the terms may not seem all that important, especially if you’re new to web building, but you’ll quickly learn that both platforms have very distinct pros and cons that may make or break your online presence.

So what are the differences?

If you want the TL;DR, then just remember this: WordPress.org allows for more independence, while WordPress.com is more restrictive but fuss-free.

One of the benefits of having your independence is that you’ll be able to insert any plug-ins you want on your website. So if you want to accept donations, or set up Facebook Pixel, or sell your books, all you’ll need to do is install the appropriate plug-ins or code. You can’t do that on WordPress.com (unless again, you pay for the Business account).

But that doesn’t mean WordPress.com doesn’t have its benefits. By losing a bit of your autonomy, you get access to the WordPress Reader, which is like the Instagram feed of blogging. And with over 409 million people on that platform, imagine the potential traffic you’ll get for each blog post, for free!

So you see, it’s not a cut-and-dried choice between the two. You just need to know your own style of building your internet presence. Do you enjoy advertising on social media and want to keep track of your traffic using Google Analytics? Then WordPress.org is for you.

On the other hand, if you’d like a ready community that would see your posts on their feed, then the .com variant would fit you well. Also, you get to try the platform for free before committing too.

There’s no good or bad here. They’re both different.

And if you’d like a more concrete comparison, Teaspoon Publishing uses WordPress.org, while my website uses WordPress.com.

Also, as a quick aside, WordPress.org costs slightly more on average (MYR16 per month for first billing, MYR60 per month after), while WordPress.com is cheaper initially (MYR16 per month forever, or MYR0 with the Free account). However, WordPress.com’s full functionality is only accessible through the Business Account (MYR100 per month).

And owning your own domain name (like www.yourname.com) will set you back around MYR80 per year.

What do I do after owning a website?

Okay, you now have a website to your name. People googling you will have an official page to land on. What’s next?

I’ll tell you. We’ll page Mister Cliff so we can look at his notes:

List your details
This is the bare minimum. You’ll need to list email addresses, social media accounts, your experience, and portfolio. Basically, make it easy for people to learn about you and contact you.
Run the blog
You’ll also need to create content, not just to look good in Google’s eyes (SEO), but also to show your audience that you’re an active personality online. The ghost house syndrome is real. Don’t let your site look like a ghost house.
Learn about lead magnets
Okay, so you have a bare-bones site with your details and content. Now you should start thinking of something you can offer in exchange for emails. Is it a discount on your books? A PDF guide? A free consultation? Believe it or not, newsletters are still totally relevant in 2022.
While you’re at it, learn SEO too
You won’t be able to run SEO efforts without a website. It won’t work if all you have is a Facebook page or an Instagram profile. What SEO is, is the ability to appear on Google when someone searches a relevant term. You want an example? Try searching the terms ‘isbn malaysia’ or ‘smashwords’. You should see Teaspoon Publishing on the first page of Google.
Network!
Just because you build it doesn’t mean people will come. If you’ve opted for WordPress.com, hop onto the Reader and start commenting on others’ blogs. If you’re on WordPress.org, network with the friendly bunch of people in the Malaysian Writers Community group on Facebook. Networking alone (advertising not included) can actually grow your digital presence pretty tremendously. I personally grew my audience on my website purely by networking.

Ripe time for Malaysian writers

At the end of the day, what we want is to be discoverable, especially in the Malaysian market. I’m telling you, even famous Malaysian authors haven’t started building their web presence yet, so it’s as good a time as any to start.

And that’s it. The end of the post. For real this time. You can leave now. Seriously. Bye.

Stuart Danker has bumbled along in the writing industry for almost a decade now. His debut novel Tinhead City, KL was released in 2021, and he’s currently pursuing his passion in fiction (and he’s using the term ‘pursue’ loosely).

January 15, 2022

How to Publish, Promote, and Remain Sane – A guest post from Kopi Soh

Most people, especially first-time authors, have the misconception that “being published” is the end of the road in an author’s journey—You’ve made it. You have arrived at your destination. Errr.. actually no, you have not arrived. In fact, being published is just one milestone. There are a lot more hurdles that you need to jump over. I have been a self-published author of two self-help books (Oh I thought I was the Only One and Oh I thought I was the Only One 2) and recently, my semi-biographical fiction, Looking After The Ashes, was published by Penguin SEA.

Each road has its own challenges. After publishing, I went through a period of almost going insane. Endless googling to find out where (other than Amazon, Book Depository, Shopee, MPH, Kinokuniya, Times) my books were “Available for purchase” and if they had ready stock. The publisher or distributor may provide you with a list of where they intend to send the books to but as the author you need to check if those books are actually available on those sites. If you don’t do this step and you send your readers to a site or bookstore that does not carry ready stock for your books, your readers may end up being extremely frustrated.

Then comes the media and social media part: if you don’t promote your own book it may not get the publicity it needs and it may eventually just die out. If you are someone who is not very tech-savvy and not active on social media, it’s time you buck up and learn. Yes, learn Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Goodreads as fast as you can because that’s where books get promoted a lot. Do your research, know who are the bookstagrammers/booktokkers/bloggers in your genre. Reach out to them via email asking if they would do a review for you in exchange for a free copy of the book.

Grow thicker skin and approach podcasters, bloggers, reporters, or journalists and ask if they would like to interview you and cover your book. Connect with other authors and be generous in your promotion of their books too. Your reach will be far greater if you work together and inter-promote. Do Giveaways if you can in return for Reviews. Approach libraries, universities, and schools offer to do book signings and talks.

Next comes the more insane part that you’ll find yourself doing (well maybe not you but certainly me). I find myself googling daily to see if there’s any media coverage, clicking on Goodreads and Amazon a dozen times a day to see if there are any new reviews, entering random bookstores and pretending to be a customer searching for my own book so that their system will detect that someone is looking for the book and hopefully the bookstores will put in an order, even re-shelving my books (a few copies) to a more prominent place in bookstores. Some authors even go as far as going into bookstores and start signing their own books. Please DO NOT do that—if you truly want to, at least ask permission from the Managers of the bookstores first. Yes, there is that temporary moment of insanity where just like a first-time parent, you wonder if you are doing everything you can to help your newborn thrive.

So what’s the solution? How did I stay sane? Well basically, I don’t think there is a solution; many of the things we need to do are necessary evils. I stay sane by pacing myself and taking short breaks from social media. One can easily get obsessive with commenting, posting, and replying to comments. What’s the point of this article? I am writing this to give you a heads up that this may happen to you, to let you know you are not alone, and you are not mad for doing some or perhaps all of the above.

Just remember to BREATHE and PACE yourself. Take a break if you need it.

Wishing you all the best in your publishing journey and always feel free to contact me (FB/Instagram) should you have any questions.

Kopi Soh is the pseudonym of a Malaysian author and illustrator best known for her book Oh, I Thought I Was The Only One. She founded the Facebook community “Stick It To Me“, a page centred around producing healing art for the sick and needy, and organises a group of volunteers to produce art for hospitals and charities. Her work with “Stick It To Me” was recognized in the Digi WWWOW Awards 2015, winning an award in the Social Gathering category. She also served as the official illustrator for TEDxWeldQuay 2013 and has worked with various nonprofit organizations such as AsPaCC Community Hospice, Pusat Perubatan Universiti Malaya (PPUM), Pusat Perubatan Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (PPUKM), Bukit Harapan Orphanage, and Cambodia Water Project.

Find out more about her latest release, Looking After the Ashes, on The Star, Free Malaysia Today, and The Sun Daily.

October 12, 2021

Our new Shopee store – and Malaysian Writers Fest 2021!

We’ve been sitting on getting a Shopee store for a while now, but as of today, 12 October 2021, we have finally gotten our ducks in a row and put our books up on Shopee!

We’d love if you could go give us a follow!

The main impetus for this is actually… the Malaysian Writers Fest 2021. Our mission here at Teaspoon Publishing is to help you get your words out – and how can you do that if you don’t know the first thing about how publishing works?

So we’ve decided to support the Publishing 101 talk that’s happening at the Fest at 10 am – 11 am, 23 October (Saturday).

What are the common terms in the publishing industry? What is traditional vs. indie vs. self-publishing? What’s the difference between developmental edits, line edits, and copyedits? What is involved in publishing a book beyond printing it? Learn about the ecosystem of publishing and how it’s a group effort by people of many skillsets!

You can register for the whole fest – or just the talk – on the Malaysian Writers Society’s website.

And since all of this is happening at once, we’re offering a special 10% discount voucher on all purchases through our Shopee store with the code TEASMWF21 from 13 to 25 October. So if you’ve been putting off getting any of our books in the last few months just because it feels expensive, now’s a good time to go grab them!

Remember that code okay: TEASMWF21

See you at the Fest!

June 17, 2021

Publishing on Amazon: Formatting your ebook

If you’re wondering, we’ve decided to pull out the section about formatting your ebook from the Publishing on Amazon: A Step-by-Step Guide post and put it into its own post! This is mainly because it really is a post on its own, due to the length of it, and it was making the uploading steps a little too confusing.

Also, new update! As of recently (well, we don’t remember when, but at least end of last year), you can now upload a pre-formatted e-pub if you have one. So, if you’re already getting someone to create an e-pub file for you to use on Google Play or E-Sentral, now you can just use that same file here too!

Here’s also how you can create your own e-pub file via Scrivener.

Formatting your ebook via Microsoft Word

Got your manuscript ready? Great!

We’re using Microsoft Word in this sample because it’s the most common software. You can use any other text processors, of course, but you’ll need to save it in a .docx file for uploading.

A) Add in your front matter

This is all the stuff you usually find in the front of a book: title page, publisher, year published, license notes, etc.

You can create something fancy and elaborate like the stuff in a paperback. The simplified version shown here was adapted from the Smashwords guide and has worked for the past few years, so it’s an easy option.

B) Format your body/text: use a standard setting

Remember that you’re formatting for ebook, so whatever fancy stuff you do, it’s 90% going to be overridden by the reader’s Kindle settings. I use a standard 12 point Times New Roman with a 0.3” first-line indent with 0 line spacing and no spaces before/after paragraphs. This gives you a nice tight look.

C) Format your chapter headings: use headers

Format your chapter headings using a “headings” style as this simplifies the process of getting your Table of Contents up. I assure you this is 100% easier than Smashwords, so be grateful! Just set your chapter title (in this series, we use roman numerals, but your chapter headings could be anything you want) to the Heading 1 style and make any stylistic adjustments you wish (we centre & bold the text and change the font to Times New Roman) then copy the format to all your chapter headings.

D) Formatting chapter breaks: use page breaks

Use the page break function to separate your chapters (shortcut: ctrl+Enter). DON’T use multiple paragraph breaks! Multiple paragraphs will probably not be read/recognised by Kindle so all your chapters will appear mushed up into one super long chapter instead of starting on a new page/section each time.

E) Add in your back matter

Your back matter will likely expand over time as you publish more books. You’re publishing more books, right?

We like to leave a little reminder for the reader to leave a review, but this isn’t necessary.

As a first-time author, the very basic you need is an “About the Author” section where you can link your webpage or other social media that you want to direct readers to.

Once you’ve built a backlist, you can add them into your back matter so that if readers like your book, they can go and look for other stuff you’ve written.

Don’t forget to format the headings of your front and back matter as “Heading 1” too!

F) Create a Table of Contents (TOC)

Now that you have everything in place, it’s time to set up your Table of Contents. Go to Reference>>Table of Contents>>Custom Table of Contents.

Untick “show page numbers” because page numbers are irrelevant to ebooks. Once it’s in the Kindle, the page numbers will change according to the reader’s settings. What you DO want is for the TOC to be clickable (hyperlinked) so that they can jump ahead to chapters if they wish.

Make sure that everything you want to appear on the TOC appears—if they don’t, you’ll have to check that you’ve formatted all the chapter titles/headings as “Heading 1”.

Additional reading: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200645680

Formatting ebooks on Kindle Create

Okay, so Kindle has this snazzy new Kindle Create (KC) program, so we tested it out for this demo.

Note: We deleted the TOC for this demo as it seems that this is where the formatting steps diverge.

Right. You’ve got your manuscript ready and you’ve done all the steps from A to E above. Now you open Kindle Create, select Novels, Essays, Poetry, Narrative Non-fiction. (Unless, of course, your book is one of the others, in which case this guide isn’t for you).

Choose the file. Upload the manuscript. It asked if we wanted to do a bunch of stuff, which was obviously yes.

Awesome. KC found all our headings and created a TOC! It doesn’t appear to be inserted in the text though, unlike the Word document.

Hmmm with these clickable format buttons, we’re able to define a copyright page, splitting it off from the Title Page. Looks alright…

We didn’t format mid-chapter separators in the Word file but Kindle Create has a standard separator format. If you missed any chapter titles or quotes in your Word Document, you can use this to define them too. Nice.

Ooh, Drop Caps. It looks like A Still, Small Voice might feature drop caps just because of this function. Ha. We didn’t test the “poetry” function because this ebook doesn’t have any.

Autosave reminders. Good job.

This pic was already in the word format and this is how it appears when converted over.

We tried reuploaded this picture to see how it works. KC only accepts pics in jpg.

KC has a handy previewer, so you can see what it actually looks like on a (mock) Kindle.

Oooooo themes! Not really necessary, but fun. Also, this is where you get a prettier ebook than just formatting in Word, I guess.

When you click publish, Kindle Create saves a separate file (.kpf) to upload on the site, same as if you upload the Word doc.

Verdict: Not really necessary, but it’s easy enough to use. And kinda pretty.

So does that mean I have a formatted ebook for Amazon now?

If you followed the Microsoft Word steps, you’ll have a formatted Word Document (.docx) that you can upload to Amazon.

If you used Kindle Create, you’ll have a KC file (.kpf) that you can upload to Amazon.

Head back to Step 10 of the Publishing on Amazon: Step-by-Step Guide to see how to upload it.

One thing to note: if you create your ebook via Kindle Create, you will not be able to download a preview file that you can send to reviewers. All you’ll have is the .kpf file that can only be read on Kindle Previewer. However, if you use a Word Doc or an epub to upload to Amazon, you’ll be able to get a .mobi file to review that you can send to reviewers.

June 1, 2021

Amok: Surprise lockdown launch!

In light of our not-so-surprising Total Lockdown, we’ve decided to push up the release date of Amok for a surprise lockdown launch!

Yes, Amok ebooks drop today, 1 June*, so that you can hunker down in your house and entertain yourself with a great read. We’ll still honour our launch prices, so our ebook preorder prices of RM12 (USD2.99) will remain until the 23rd of June and will rise to RM20 (USD4.99) on 24 June.

You can grab your copy right here on this site, or at your favourite ebook retailer!

But what if I want a paperback? It’s pretttyyyyyyy

If you’ve preordered a paperback and/or still want to order one, we’re also maintaining the preorder price of RM35 until we actually have the printed books in hand. We’ll also sweeten the deal by sending you an ebook copy to keep you occupied until the paperback finally gets printed.

More Bonus Content!

And while we’re at it, send a screenshot of your Amok purchase receipt (wherever you purchased it) to admin@teaspoonpublishing.com.my by 24 June to claim a free copy of The Painted Hall Collection! Also tell us if you’d like it in ebook (e-pub or mobi) or if you’d like a paperback—we’ll ship** this to you for free.

Happy reading!

Stay safe, stay home, and get vaccinated.

#LindungiDiriLindungiSemua

* Some other retailers might release it on 2 June.

** Malaysia-only. Those overseas will have to settle for the ebook, sorry!

May 12, 2021

Join our launch team for Amok (Absolution #1)

We’re getting ready to launch Anna’s new book, Amok, this June!

Amok is a coming-of-age fantasy set in a lush, magical nusantara world and is the first book in the Absolution series!

Sign up here (or fill in the embedded form below) to be a part of our cover reveal and online launch team! You’ll get a sneak peek at the cover PLUS review copies!

Amok

What is faith, except hope in desperation?

All Putera Mikal wants is to gain the Amok Strength, the supernatural power granted by Kudus to the Mahan royal family. No matter how religiously Mikal keeps his vows, Kudus still denies him the Strength—whilst his father, Sultan Simson, flaunts the Strength despite his blatant defiance of the Temple and the priests’ visions of coming doom.

Then the prophecies come true.

Taken captive, Mikal must find a way to liberate his people and restore his throne in Maha—and the key to this is the Amok Strength. But what does it take to gain Kudus’ favour?

Cover reveal: 24 May 2021

Expected release date: 24 June 2021

Published by: Teaspoon Publishing

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Amok-Absolution-Book-Anna-Tan-ebook/dp/B08YXQKPN7/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57760576-amok

No. of pages: 345

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anna Tan grew up in Malaysia, the country that is not Singapore. She is interested in Malay/Nusantara and Chinese legends and folklore in exploring the intersection of language, culture, and faith.

Anna has an MA in Creative Writing: The Novel under a Chevening scholarship and is the President of the Malaysian Writers Society. She can be found tweeting as @natzers and forgetting to update annatsp.com.

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December 21, 2020

Ring in the New Year(s) with Free Shipping!

Need a new read for the new year?

If you haven’t picked up Coexist, Dongeng, or The Painted Hall Collection yet, now’s a good time.

Valid until 12 February 21.