Two expat writers will hold workshops on self-publishing through e-books in Seoul and Daejeon.

The presenters, Chris Backe and Jeffrey Miller, have both published e-books in Korea.

“It’s going to focus on the business the technical and the marketing aspects of self publishing your e-book,” said Backe, who is the author of travel blog Chris in South Korea and is also working on his third e-book on unusual Korean travel destinations.

Backe said he would cover the technical aspects, while Miller would go more into ways writers can promote their e-books and get them reviewed — “which is at least as important as creating the book, because if no one knows about it, it’s never going to sell,” said Backe.

“Some of the older devices, while being only a few years old, lack some of the technology to do what seems like some basic stuff,” he said. “The Kindle 1 and the Kindle 2 cannot support Korean characters. It means youhave to retool.”

This technical area is one Backe says has changed quickly, and he has had to work hard to keep up.

“Two years ago you had to have your Korean characters as a picture file. Today you can have your pictures, you can have embedded audio and video files as part of the e-book,” he said.

“The new platforms like Apple’s iBook store and the Amazon’s rich layouts for the Kindle Fire and such open up a whole new world that goes far beyond what e-books were a year ago.”

Although that might sound like a lot to do, Backe pointed out that self-publishing didn’t mean that writers had to do everything; they could partner up or hire someone to do certain things. He said he was hiring graphic designers and editors for his update of “Korean Made Easy.”

“Some people are obviously very good writers, some people are obviously very good at graphic design, but very few people are uniformly good at everything,” he said. “Self-publishing means that instead of giving everything to a publisher, you are taking control of the entire publishing process.”

The workshops cost 50,000 won, which Backe said was a reasonable price compared to what you would need to pay for individual help.

“If you spent a full-time job keeping up with the developments then you should be teaching the workshop with me,” he said.

“But obviously the average writer has other things to do with their lives and might not be aware of all the resources and technologies that were available to them.”

The workshops run from 2-5 p.m., taking place in Haebangchon in Seoul on Nov. 24 and at SolBridge University in Daejeon on Dec. 1.

For more information, visit the event’s Uniiverse site at bit. ly/ZisnZU or the Self-Publishers in Asia page on Facebook.

By Paul Kerry (paulkerry@heraldcorp.com)