Transparency Report of December 2021

Overview

Print🖨 PDF📄 eBook📱

This is the 33rd monthly report for Print My Blog (PMB) WordPress plugin.

What Happened This Month

Plugin Stats

Although I made a release, I didn’t publish it on WordPress.org (because the changes only affected the premium version) so no spikes this month.

Quite a rebound in active installs, although I’m unaware of anything I did this month to cause it.

Mailing List Stats

Stats from my MailChimp mailing list.

Email list growth is still dead without Freemius’ Opt-in screen.

Website Visits

Stats from my site’s Koko analytics (don’t need no Google Analytics, thank you!)

No posts this month (besides the previous transparency report) which translated into a fewer visitors.

Freemius Stats

Freemius gathers other stats about sales and sites using the plugin.

Finances and More Plugin Stats

The Details

Now Making eBooks!

PMB 3.9.0 can now make ePub eBooks, which is a pretty big deal. This means that you can now fully use it to make a printed and eBook to sell on Amazon or another marketplace.

Screenshot from Apple Books app on phone

ePub file format is now the preferred format for Amazon, Apple Books, and pretty well everywhere that sells eBooks.

Main features of PMB’s ePubs include:

unlimited eBook length (because the file is created in the browser instead of on the server, which is a distinguishing feature from Anthologize)
images are bundled into the eBook file so they appear without needing an active internet connection
a table of contents is anywhere inside the book, just like when making the PDF formats (not just at the start)
select the eBook’s cover photo and other metadata
and like on all eBooks, your eBook reader can control the font size, font style, and colours, add highligths and bookmarks, and some can even read the book out loud etc.
the first design, “Classic eBook”, supports many of the same features as the Digital and Print PDF formats, like choosing what content to include on the title page and in each post

Screenshot from Amazon’s Kindle Previewer (previewing as a kindle device)

Classic ePub design options (which are very similar to the Classic Print PDF and Classic Digital PDF options)

Project Metadata options when generating an ePub include setting the filename, the book’s description, and the cover image.

Thinking Out Loud

ePubs was really the only big thing this month, which was really nice to finally get released. There’s more work to be done (eg hyperlinks still all point to the websites instead of the pages inside the actual book) but this is most of the way there.

I’m hoping to get some feedback on this new feature as documentation and tutorials for it get published next. If you’re interested in trying it out (and haven’t already purchased a license) please get in touch.

What’s Next?

Documentation and tutorial updates for ePubs are my next top priority (not much point having a new feature if nobody knows about it.)