Confused About eBook Formatting?

Are you confused about ebook formatting?

Kindle, Nook, IPad, ebook reading devicesDon’t know the difference between a mobi or an ePub file?

Wish you could take your Word file and upload it for sale on Kindle, Nook and IPad without all the fuss and bother?

You’re not alone. Ebook formatting is confusing – it’s not your imagination!

Most authors enjoy the actual writing of their books more than the technicalities of formatting their manuscripts but, if you’re going to be in the game you’ve got to know the rules.

We found this very detailed description of each of the different formats on Writely Done. It’s a great resource on ebook formatting.

The major players in ebook formats

There are three types of files used in ebook formatting. One is Mobi, a software now owned by Amazon and needed to format your manuscript for uploading to Amazon’s Kindle.

The second is ePub. EPub is more widely accepted around the internet. An ePub file can be uploaded to Barnes & Noble for selling ebooks on the Nook. It is also acceptable for uploading to the IPad, Sony Reader and many other Internet based ebook reading software.

The third is the PDF. The PDF is great if you’re selling your book directly from your website as a digital download. It isn’t a good format if you plan to sell your book through any of the online stores. A PDF file uploaded to a Kindle or Nook will not convert well and pages will not lay out properly in the reading device.

Hire someone to format your ebook or do it yourself?

You can format your own Kindle ready ebook by going to directly to Mobi at: http://www.mobipocket.com

You can also create an ePub or Mobi file by establishing a free account at Pressbooks.com.  Pressbooks is a new platform that allows you to create books right from your WordPress blog.

Chris Brogan did an excellent interview with Hugh McGuire, the creator of Pressbooks. You can see the interview here on Chris’s site.

If you’re not a DIY type there are plenty of freelancers and sites who will do this for you. We can recommend some great people we’ve worked with so do feel free to email us.

Self-publishing is getting easier all the time

Don’t let confusion over ebook formatting hold you back from going forward with writing and publishing your book. Every day there are new innovations introduced into the self-publishing arena that make it easier for authors to bring their books to their readers.

Are you planning to sell you book on Kindle and Nook? Are you the DIY type or an author who prefers to delegate the formatting?

If you enjoyed this post please do share it on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Thank you.

Don’t forget to subscribe so we can keep you updated on our upcoming writing and publishing seminars.

Related articles

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

24,424 Spam Comments Blocked so far by Spam Free Wordpress

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

CommentLuv badge
http://writeabookandbookmorebusiness.com/2011/11/30/confused-about-ebook-formatting/
writeabookandbookmorebusiness.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2016-18
26240
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:NCHYSC24ZFUB5IWGLZLQSUV5SCGVSVI5
<urn:uuid:8202051b-8af8-4344-8d5b-222f433f965e>
2016-05-01T21:13:44Z
108.168.206.108
sha1:F7ZE2PSDX47EKB3V2FZB6UTXMPB7XTLK
<urn:uuid:7233cffa-701c-4873-979e-d5d7171793a5>
http://writeabookandbookmorebusiness.com/2011/11/30/confused-about-ebook-formatting/
length
response
<urn:uuid:0bb6afdd-abc1-426e-84a6-407ec68c02f2>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-239-7-51.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2016-18
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for April 2016
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf