New eBook writers often make a mistake. They presume that being able to write an eBook means that they'll be able to publish an eBook.
But it's just not true.
Writing and publishing are different tasks with their own set of rules and knowledge and requirements. Usually the first place this becomes obvious is when our new eBook author tries to format their eBook for sale.
Publishing isn't difficult. But it does require you to have a certain expertise and skill. In this article I'm going to give you 3 tips to help you format your new eBook and prepare it for the rest of the publishing process.
1. Before formatting you absolutely must know how you are going to sell your eBook. Publishing and selling your eBook through your own website gives you the most flexibility in many ways. However publishing it through eBook retailers like Amazon's Kindlestore (eBooks for the Kindle) or Apple's iBookstore (eBooks for the Apple iPad) may increase your potential sales due to their wider reach and established market.
Formatting for your own website gives you the flexibility to modify and format your eBook in the way that is best for yourself. Typically, this implies using an industry standard size book with pretty layouts corresponding to that used in the printed book world. Typically it also allows you to use PDF format which is an industry standard format for reading print materials.
However, the eBook hardware companies all use some variant of MOBI or ePub for their publishing process. These formats allow the reader to control the experience. Size of the page, font size and ultimately the layout can be manipulated. Which highly limits your control of the layout.
2. There are standard sizes for books based on printing costs and paper availability. Those standard sizes have been carried across to eBooks largely because of the rise of on demand printers. For example most pocket books are 4.25 in x 6.87 inches, while US Trade books are 6 x 9 inches. U.S. Trade is the only size that is generally available regardless of the binding.
With a pure eBook this issue disappears. Most eBook retailers (e.g. Amazon Kindle store, and Apple's iBookstore) require a standard typewriter page size of 8.5 by 11 inches.
3. The complexity of formatting an eBook for sale by your own site, Amazon print-on-demand, Lulu print-on-demand, Amazon Kindlestore, Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble's Nook and so on can easily get out of hand. If you do it yourself be sure to create some way of formatting based on a single source and keeping track of what format you need to create. Better still consider using a reformatting company to create and submit to the various eBook retailers.
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