For Those Considering Publishing eBooks...Some Information.

[MineralMan]

I've been thinking for some time about writing a non-fiction book for all those eReaders out there, especially the Kindle. I was unsure about the process of formatting such a book, so I did some research today. I discovered a piece of free software that claims to be able to convert Microsoft Word documents into the .prc format, which can be directly imported into the Kindle marketplace. I wondered how well it worked, though. So often, I'm disappointed in such things.

So, I downloaded the Mobipocket eBook Creator to run a test. As a test of the software, I imported a 100-page document I had done as the content for a website contract. The document included normal heading styles and default Normal style in Word, some bulleted lists and numbered lists, and tons and tons of links to bookmarks in the document. No tables or anything fancy at all, but italics, boldfacing, and all that sort of thing. The document isn't really formatted for printing, so there are no margin settings or anything of the sort.

At the beginning of the document is a list of individual web pages, which would correspond to the chapters in the book. These are linked to the page headings, using Word's bookmarking feature. Each new web page, which would correspond to chapters in a book is separated by a Word page break. Anyhow, I imported this into the Mobipocket software, then converted the resulting HTML file into .prc format. I loaded the .prc file onto my Kindle and opened it. Perfect!

Everything converted perfectly. The list of web pages appeared as a table of contents. All links worked. Bullet and number lists were properly formatted, and all the links in the document worked properly, letting me jump to the internal bookmarks as intended. Boldfacing and italics all converted properly. The document needed no additional work to make it suitable for publication as a Kindle eBook, or any other eBook that can use the .prc format. If that were my book, I'd have uploaded it as is to the Amazon store site. No worries.

If you're interested in creating eBooks, you might want to have a look at the Mobipocket eBook Creator if you use Microsoft Word. As long as you don't do anything really fancy in Word, it looks like it does a fine job with the .prc files. Kindle reads that format as a native format, too, so the finished conversion is ready to go.

That settles it. I'll begin working on the book I have in mind as soon as I leave this post. Easy peasey lemon squeezy!

You can download the free converter at: http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadsoft/productdetailscreator.asp

[harun]

1. Thanks for the info!

[MineralMan]

2. It's sure worth a try. I've always used Word, and

I'm glad to see that I can create my book without any difficulty. BTW, I'm using Word 2000. I just checked another long document from Word 2007 on another computer, and it converted perfectly as well.

[ZombieHorde]

3. What kind of non-fiction book do you want to write?

Bi/autobiography? Philosophical? Scientific? Political? Outdoors? Hobby?

[MineralMan]

5. Actually, I'm not going to say. When it's done and published,

I'll post about it here and make free copies available to DUers. It's a book I've been thinking about for years. I've had three other books published in the normal way, but quit writing books. It just never paid off. This one, though, I believe might just do well as an eBook. I'd just rather not reveal the subject until it's done. I'm weird that way.

It's pretty general interest, though, and not political or scientific, or any of the other things you mention at all.

[Liberalynn]

4. Thank you for the information. Keep us updated

on how your experience as a whole goes with e-publishing. I have been considering submitting a fiction piece I wrote for e-publishing. I have the Barnes and Noble's Nook, so it would probably be to them.

I haven't quite made up my mind yet as to whether I want to do it or not.

[MineralMan]

6. I will. It will take me three or four months to write, working between

web content contracts, but it's something I've been thinking about for several years.

[classof56]

7. Thank you, MM.

This is great information, and I just bookmarked the mobipocket site. Keep us updated on how it works for you. E-publishing seems to be the way to go lately, and I know an established author who says she's doing really well selling books on Kindle. I'm working on a novel, almost finished, but I've learned that compared to marketing, writing's the easy part. Anyway, good luck with your book and let us know how we can find it when it's ready.

[aquart]

8. Doesn't work well with other language characters.

Fine and dandy for straight English.

[MineralMan]

9. That's entirely possible. I don't use such characters, though.

The key to success seems to be to keep the source document simple, and stick to standard, basic Word formatting. Heading styles, standard Normal text, bullet and number lists, character formatting like boldfacing, italics, etc, and simple bookmark links. The simpler, the better, when it comes to such things, generally.

It was very interesting to see just how good this document looked on the Kindle. It was designed as the text content for a website, not a book, but when it was converted, it looked fine in the Kindle format. What was especially good was how well the converter handled bookmarks in the document and links to them. That will be important for what I'm planning. Now, I'm not sure about illustrations, but I don't really plan to include any of them, since I don't like how the Kindle handles them.

I'm sure this isn't a do-it-all tool, but I'm not planning to do it all. It's all words, in English. Now, I may use a little French in there, but I'll test all that to see how it works out before using much of it. Simple. If it doesn't handle French, I'll omit it.

I'm excited by the possibilities. What I have in mind would never get past the first reader at a traditional publisher, simply because it would be competing with other books with similar focus. However, the ease of publishing and the lack of any cost involved to get an eBook on Amazon and other eBook marketplaces means that none of that matters. I'm very good at guerrilla marketing, so I know how to present the thing. It's just a matter of having a product available that I don't have to ship or otherwise deal with beyond creating it. It will be an interesting experiment. Could pay off. Might not. Doesn't matter, anyhow. It will be a fun project. Instead of writing 300 pages on Twin Cities real estate, I'll be writing something I'm interested in. I'd like that.

[aquart]

11. Yes.

I have a bunch of free out-of-copyright books I downloaded. But they only work in pdf. The one on hieroglyphics simply omits them. The one called Chinese-Sumerian not only omits Chinese and Sumerian characters, it has some sort of literary nervous breakdown in mobipocket and scrambles the sentences as well.

But I've converted a ton of my favorite fan fiction into ebooks for subway and waiting room moments. As long as it's straight text, no trouble.

[MineralMan]

12. Ah, I see. Probably european languages will do OK.

At least the ones that use the latinate alphabet with diacritical marks. Those fit into the basic encoding system the Kindle uses.

I'm reading a lot of 19th-century stuff on my kindle from the Gutenberg Project. They vary in formatting quality. It appears that most were machine scanned, then run through OCR. Proofreading varies, so there are some funny typos in them.

Starting from scratch, though, and knowing the rules should eliminate almost all problems with that stuff. Since Microsoft Word is sort of the word-processing standard, it appears that all the tools are designed to work with Word docs. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the stuff converted.

[ejpoeta]

10. thanks. i never knew such a thing existed.

[pootbutta]

13. eBooks

i have been considering publishing a progressive Haggadah that I wrote (that's the book for Passover) ... but I think most people want hard copies for that. But I suppose they could print it out.
does it take graphics as well?

[Bluestar]

14. Great info thanks!! n/t