Notjohn's Guide to E-Book Formatting E-Book

N.J. Notjohn

• Herausgeber: Enjay Press
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

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, he explains, 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 2018 edition, with a new chapter on adapting the e-book to a paperback.

Leseprobe

Notjohn’s Guide to E-Book Formatting

Ten Steps To Getting Your Book Ready To Sell Online, Digital and Paperback

N.J. Notjohn

Enjay Press

Revised and Updated 2018

Contents

Illustration: Sony Data Discman

Ten Steps to Digital Publishing

Step 1 - Your Html Template

Step 2 - Your Style Sheet

Step 3 - Your Title Page

Illustration: A Table of Contents

Step 4 - Your Table of Contents

Illustration: Clean Html File

Step 5 - From Document to Html

Illustration: As Seen in a Web Browser

Step 6 - Adding Heads and Sub-Heads

Step 7 - The Copyright and Author Pages

Step 8 - Adding Illustrations

Illustration: As Seen in Sigil

Step 9 - Sigil Works Its Magic

Step 10 - Getting Your E-Book to Market

Illustration: Yes, Plan B Works!

Plan B: The Ultimate Basic Template

Purpose-built Software

How To Kindle a Fire

And By All Means, a Paperback!

Copyright - Was This Book Helpful?

Ten Steps to Digital Publishing

E-BOOKS HAVE BEEN around for a quarter of a century, but for most of that time they were the answer to a question nobody was asking. Get a load of the Sony Data Discman on the frontispiece! Introduced in 1992, this “electronic book player” displayed encyclopedia essays, foreign language dictionaries, and novels from prerecorded discs. Not surprisingly, it didn’t catch on outside Japan, nor did most of its successors.

Then, in 1999, came Fatbrain. The company actually had a reasonable business model, selling digital editions (including several of mine) that could be read on a Windows or Mac computer. Alas, it was bought out by Barnes & Noble, which didn’t know what to do with it. Fatbrain withered on the vine, while B&N waited for someone else to lead the way.

More promising was Mobipocket, a French company that developed the “mobi” format that enabled us to read e-books on a portable devices like a smartphone, though it would be a while before Apple put an iPhone in the world’s pocket. (Even better, Mobipocket also supplied “Creator” software for people like me who wanted to build e-books.) Few people noticed the company before it was acquired by Amazon in 2005.