By Jessica McCurdy Crooks
Do you want to create an ebook, whether for sale or free distribution, but have no idea where to start? If you answered yes, after reading this article you should be able to make an ebook if you have the content (the material that goes inside the book).
Steps in making an ebook
The first step in creating an ebook is to have something to say, whether it is how to plan a wedding or about your trip to Vegas. I'll leave this up to you. Consider it a mere matter of writing.
Types of ebook formats
Next you will need to decide what format or formats you intend to make your ebook available in. There are many ways to make an ebook, and this article looks at three. However, there are many other ebook formats, including formats for display on your Palm or iPhone handheld and even the Amazon Kindle ebook reader.
The most popular ebook format is PDF (Portable Document File) because ebooks created in PDF format can be read on any type of computer as long as Acrobat Reader is installed. Best of all Adobe Acrobat Reader is available free for download from Adobe. Also worth considering when making a decision is the fact that PDF is a universal standard and can be downloaded from third party sites as well. ZATZ distributes its ebooks in PDF format, for example.
Unlike other ebook formats, PDF books can be read on both PCs and Macs, which is a big plus.
To be able to make an ebook in PDF format, you will need the professional version of the Acrobat software as the reader alone cannot do this. Although there are other PDF makers on the market, they are not always the best choice as people trying to read your ebook may encounter problems such as links not working properly or format irregularities. However, Acrobat Professional is a bit pricey, so you might need to go with a free or cheap alternative if you can't raise the cash.
Once you have completed writing and editing your ebook and have the finished product ready, you will need to convert it to PDF. If you have Adobe Acrobat Professional installed on your computer, converting a Word document to PDF is relatively easy. The process may be slightly different depending on the version of Acrobat you have:
- Locate the document (the soon-to-be ebook) you want to convert to PDF
- Right-click the name and in the drop down menu within Word select Convert to PDF
- Wait a little while while Acrobat churns
- Your ebook is now converted to PDF
When created with Acrobat Professional, you can include hyperlinks in your ebook, which can be useful when you include lots of URLS.
HTML
Ebooks can be created in HTML format by using a Web page editor or an HTML ebook generator. Once you have created the Web page, you will need an ebook compiler to get it into an acceptable format. Luckily most such compilers are free and can be found online. However, deciding which to use will depend on many factors such as:
