How to Make Your Own eBook

ePMA can help you make your eBooks, or you can do-it-yourself:

There is some disagreement on just what an 'eBook' is. Some prefer to restrict the term to those publications that can be read using a special hand-held device called an 'eBook Reader.' Others have tried to limit it to a document of a minimum size (e.g. 50 or more pages) -- but the term 'pages' is nearly meaningless in some electronic formats. Thousands of expired copyright books have been transcribed and are freely available as plain text files from Project Gutenberg. Certainly, those texts are eBooks -- they were published as books, and have been converted into an electronic format, however there are no 'pages' in the traditional sense. One screen-full of text may resemble a 'page' -- but the amount of text that will fit on 'one screen' varies depending on the reading device or computer used to read the text.

Some people publish CDs with copies of old books on them, the original book having been scanned and each pages saved as a graphic image. There may be a program to display the images, or one can use HTML and display the pages as you would a web site, in a browser. These too are eBooks, in that they were once books and now have been converted into an electronic format. Some web sites have transcriptions of the text from a book displayed on one more web pages. That is an eBook too.

Of course, not all eBooks started out as printed books. Some are original creations that are formatted for display in an electronic format.

So how do you distinguish between a web site, say, and an eBook? There is no simple way. Books take information of some sort, be it fictional or factual, and convey that information in printed form. We intuitively distinguish between books and smaller printed documents like pamphlets or booklets, but there is no absolute threshold dividing them. If a book-length manuscript is not bound, we don't consider it a book, so form is as important as content. Remove the pages from a book and most people would not call the loose pages a book. Take those pages and tape them together into a convenient-to-read scroll, and still it would not be a 'book.' So some people argue that an eBook is content displayed by a device called an eBook Reader, but the same file displayed on a computer monitor is no longer an eBook. But to complicate matters, some eBook Reader devices can display any HTML file. So if they display this web page does that make it an eBook?

Rather than try to resolve this semantic nightmare with some strict definition, we are going to assume that YOUR eBook is whatever information you care to transmit individually to others in electronic format. This information is generally text and sometimes graphics, but may also include sound or moving images.

You may be interested in reproducing an old book whose copyright has expired, or for which the author has given (or sold) you electronic reprint rights; or the work may be of your own creation. Whatever the source, you will need to format the material in a form suitable for making an eBook. That formatting is dependant, to some extent, on the final form you intend to use for your eBook -- which is also generally referred to as format!

The first type of format I'm speaking of is the use of fonts and space, and sometimes other elements such as color, to make text easier to read and to clearly distinguish one part from another. You might use a large and bold font for a heading, or if your text is to be presented in plain text, you might convert headlines to all upper case letters, and set them off from the text with one or two blank line spaces. This type of formatting is generally done with a word processing program.

The second use of the term format refers to the type of electronic file the final eBook is presented as, which limits its use to particular reading devices or display programs. You will find many formats are used for eBooks, the most common being plain text, HTML, MS-Word, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe eBook, Microsoft eBook, Rocketbook, Mobipocket, PalmDoc, and various programs that create Windows executable files. For a discussion of the various formats and their pro's and con's, see eBook Formats Compared. Some formats may include security features that allow you to discourage copying, sharing or free distribution of the eBook. Other may be 'locked' so that the user can read part of it for free, but needs a 'key' to access the rest of the content.

You need to consider your target audience when choosing among the available formats, the pro's and con's of the format itself, and the cost of creating eBooks in a particular format. It is both possible and desirable to have your eBook available in more than one format.

Here at ePMA only certain eBooks are allowed, due to limitations of our marketing and delivery methods. Content is limited to non-Pornographic material, for example (see the Member Rules for details). Also, our eBooks must be under two megabytes in size (we strongly recommend keeping file sizes down to 1.4 megabyte or less so it will fit on a standard floppy disk). This precludes extensive use of graphics or large sound files.

If you make your own eBook, or pay to have it produced by someone else, we do not limit the type of file that can be uploaded for sale. We do not, however, have mechanisms in place to handle delivery of keys or other special treatment. Your eBooks will be delivered only to people who have paid for them, so the book should be complete and usable in the form it is uploaded to our site.

If you would like help creating an eBook, we currently offer the following services:

• Plain text converted to HTML ($20/hr, submit text for estimate)
• Plain text converted to MS-Word 7.0 ($20/hr, submit text for estimate)
• HTML or MS-Word converted to Adobe Acrobat PDF ($20 flat fee without editing, $20/hr if editing required)
• HTML or MS-Word converted to Microsoft eBook, basic ($20 flat fee without editing, $20/hr if editing required)

When converting from HTML to Adobe Acrobat PDF files the results can be unpredictable, because the PDF conversion does not exactly match any existing browser. MS-Word to PDF should work well, so long as standard fonts are used -- though minor text flow differences may occur. Additional editing is required to add links (either within the document or to the Web).

Ideally, you will put the eBook text into your word processor (MS-Word is the most widely supported) and add the formatting to make an attractive presentation. It is best to use the most basic and widely available font types: Arial, Courier and Times New Roman. If you use a font that is not on the computer used by the reader another font may be substituted, with unpredictable results. In formats like Adobe Acrobat, non-standard fonts may be embedded into the document itself, making it much larger than necessary.

From your word processor you will be able to export a plain text version of your eBook if you so desire. Even if you do not plan to sell the plain text version, it is a good idea to create and save the plain text for future use. If the word processor you use becomes obsolete, its files may not work, but plain text is likely to be supported for as far into the future as we can envision.

The conversion process to go from your word processor version to other eBook formats varies depending on the conversion software. You may need to convert the text to HTML, and use that version to create the eBook -- if so it is usually necessary to make changes to the HTML file generated by your word processor -- those files are rarely accurate in converting layout elements, and very often have excessive and unwanted HTML tags. The ability to edit HTML is a real benefit, if you can't do that you will probably need to learn (it isn't difficult) or hire somebody who can, if you find you need to make this conversion.