Notjohn's Guide to E-book Formatting: Ten Steps to Getting Your Book Ready to Sell Online($10.95Value)

Description

The self-publisher's bible! In this clear and entertaining ten-step guide, a prolific American author reveals how he formats his books for sale throughout the world. The secret is to use the universal "epub" format to create a single e-book file that will be accepted by every digital retailer, from Amazon.com through Barnes & Noble, the Apple iBookstore, and smaller booksellers like the Canada-based Kobo. "Most beginners write their books in Word or Open Office," he explains, "and they expect the same document to convert easily to an e-book and a paperback. Sometimes that happens, but more often it doesn't, because word processors litter the book file with hidden formatting. The result can be a disaster." Instead, the book should be converted to clean HTML, the markup language used to create a web page. (All e-books are web pages at heart, and the Kindle and other e-book readers are just special-purpose web browsers.) The conversion takes seconds and costs nothing. It can then be plugged into a simple template that "Notjohn" includes in this Guide and makes available on his blog for anyone to use. If all else fails, there's Plan B : a stripped-down template for books that consists mostly of text. He concludes with a chapter on how best to present your e-book on the Kindle platform, with hints on encrypting the book, copyrighting it, and pricing it for the greatest return. Revised and updated July 2020 edition, with a new chapter on adapting the e-book to a paperback . "I am so glad I took a chance on this book! It has saved me countless hours of frustration and wasted efforts. This book is eloquent, concise, time-saving and waaaaaaaaay under priced for the practical value you get from it . And the highly experienced author is always available to help through the KDP forums and his blog." -- John Hope on Amazon.com "For the first time, I am beginning to understand HTML and I am taking baby steps to implement it. Well done! Thank you, Notjohn." -- David Walter Aguado on Amazon.com " Brilliant stuff . I'm learning lots." -- Portia Da Costa on Blogger. " This guide will allow you to take your books from the level of rank amateur to semi-pro very quickly .... I highly recommend it." -- Charles Seper of Ebook Pioneers on Amazon.com For years, e-books were the answer to a question nobody was asking . Then Amazon launched the first Kindle in the fall of 2007, and I uploaded my first book to what was then called the Digital Text Platform; I actually sold a few copies the following month, and I got my first electronic payment in March 2008. Brilliant! What in the traditional publishing world took several years, on Amazon could be done in as many months. I now have twenty-six books selling on the Kindle platform under my own name and two pen-names. At first, like most authors, I uploaded Word documents, but I soon found that I would have more control over how the book looked if I worked instead in Html, the markup language used in creating web pages. (All e-books are Html at heart, and all e-readers are just special-purpose web browsers.) More recently I discovered Sigil software and the "epub" format used by other retailers like Barnes & Noble and the Apple iBookstore. This is, by every measure, the ideal way to build an e-book that can be sold anywhere. This book--now in its eighth edition--condenses all I have learned over the past eight years in creating e-books for Amazon and other retailers. It's a ten-step process, to each of which I devote a chapter, some very brief. I conclude with Plan B, a simple template which you might want to use for your first foray into e-publishing, a chapter of tips and shortcuts you might find useful, and--new for 2017--how to adapt the e-book for a print edition. I hope you enjoy the ride! -- NJ                                     The self-publisher's bible -- how to build an e-book in ten steps (plus the Ultimate Basic Template for first-timers) -- and how to adapt that e-book to a print edition. "Brilliant stuff," wrote one romance writer. "I'm learning lots." Said a professional formatter: "This guide will allow you to take your books from the level of rank amateur to semi-pro very quickly. I highly recommend it." And finally: "Notjohn's book is one of the best purchases I've made in a long time. Thanks, NJ!"