{"id":366,"date":"2008-12-30T21:02:08","date_gmt":"2008-12-31T02:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=366"},"modified":"2025-07-29T14:05:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T19:05:14","slug":"creating-ebooks-the-easy-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/creating-ebooks-the-easy-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating e-books: The easy way"},"content":{"rendered":"

I AM AGAINST DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (DRM). ANY VENDOR I RECOMMEND WILL SHARE THIS STANCE AND ANY INSTRUCTIONS I GIVE WILL IGNORE ANY POSSIBILITY FOR ENCRYPTION. IF YOU WANT TO LOCK UP YOUR WORK, FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In my last episode<\/a>, I instructed you to go learn (X)HTML\/CSS. I was gently taken to task for that with the point, \u201cwriters shouldn\u2019t have to learn code.\u201d While I am of the opinion that for some writers, this is not only true, but that they should be kept from any computer interaction whatsoever, I\u2019m afraid it\u2019s just not realistic in the long run. You will<\/em> learn something, even if it\u2019s only the paragraph tags and all of it will be useful to you at some point.<\/p>\n

Yes, you can use blogger.com or wordpress.com or any other sign-in platform for your blogging.<\/p>\n

Yes, you can use Word and PrimoPDF to set type and distribute your work as a free PDF.<\/p>\n

If you want to:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. offer more than one file format (PDF) and\/or<\/li>\n
  2. charge for your work<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    you\u2019re going to have to either pay someone to do it for you or learn how to do it yourself.<\/p>\n

    There are quite a few places that will help you with #A.<\/p>\n

    FEEDBOOKS<\/strong><\/a>. As far as I can tell, if you use this service, you must offer your work for free. If this is not acceptable to you, just don\u2019t use their service. (And if this isn\u2019t true, let me know because I scoured the site and couldn\u2019t find any \u201cpayment\u201d type information.) Also, you must manually build your book. Now, this has its pros and cons. The con is that it takes a while. The pro is that you can make it look purty with a little care and attention without having to learn much (if any) (X)HTML\/CSS.<\/p>\n

    BOOKWORM<\/strong><\/a>. This is a peculiar service in that you may upload your own book, but the only format you get is the EPUB format. It is also more for reading<\/em> than publishing (as far as I can tell; more information on this is welcome).<\/p>\n

    SMASHWORDS<\/strong><\/a>. This is the Q-DOS of e-book building\/formatting. It\u2019s very quick. And yeah, sometimes it\u2019s dirty, especially if you don\u2019t format your Word document correctly (as in, according to standard word processing practices and to Smashwords\u2019s style guide). That\u2019s the con. The pro is it\u2019s fast and you can charge for your work.<\/p>\n

    I\u2019m making several assumptions here. The FIRST<\/strong> assumption is that you want your book to be in as many electronic formats as possible. The SECOND<\/strong> assumption is that you want to have those formats available to you on your own hard drive for dissemination as you please. The THIRD<\/strong> assumption is that you want your work to have widespread visibility across the interwebz. The FOURTH<\/strong> assumption is that you might want to get paid for your work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    So let\u2019s talk about Smashwords.<\/p>\n

    I heard about Smashwords from Eugene Woodbury quite a while back, who used it for his novel Path of Dreams<\/em><\/a>, but I dismissed it because I thought the work had to be offered free. Then Zoe Winters used it for her free novella \u201cKept<\/a>.\u201d Okay. But then Aaron Ross Powell used it to offer his draft of The Hole<\/em><\/a> in more formats than Kindle right after I bitched about it<\/a>. Then RJ Keller used it to offer Waiting for Spring<\/em><\/a>, and that\u2019s when I had the V-8 moment.<\/p>\n

    I figured, well, what the hell, I\u2019ll try this thing. So I took a vignette from The Proviso<\/em>\u2019s world (not in the book) called \u201c25 to Life\u201d and decided to put it on Smashwords.<\/p>\n

    [07\/15\/2025: At the time of cleaning this post up, I can’t retrieve \u201c25 to Life\u201d from the archive where I put it, so instead, I made my story from Monsters & Mormons<\/em>, \u201cAllow Me to Introduce Myself\u201d available for free to demonstrate.]<\/p>\n

    CAVEAT: \u201c25 to Life\u201d did not call for fancy formatting like The Proviso<\/em> does. The Proviso<\/em> has blog posts, e-mails, news clippings, court transcripts, social services records, a wedding announcement, and other specialized formatting that required different fonts, spacing, and margins to make those items look good. If you have something like that, this will not work<\/em> for you.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    ASSUMPTION 1. That you want your book to be in as many electronic formats as possible.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    They have this nifty little API they call the \u201cMeatGrinder.\u201d It will turn a plain, properly formatted Word document into any one or more of the following digital formats:<\/div>\n
    \u201cAllow Me to Introduce Myself\u201d
    \nuploaded 07\/15\/2025 for demonstration purposes<\/strong>
     
    \nNow you can read \u201c25 to Life\u201d     here for free<\/a>.
     <\/div>\n

    [table id=100366 \/]<\/p>\n

    As you can see, that\u2019s a lot of variation. I got both The Hole<\/em> and Waiting for Spring<\/em> in the RTF format, as that was the easiest for me to convert to my eBookWise reader. Powell asked for $2.99 and Keller offered hers for \u201cyou set the price.\u201d<\/div>\n

    ASSUMPTION 2. That you want to have those formats available to you on your own hard drive for dissemination as you please.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    I don\u2019t even know if you have to buy it yourself (if you set a price) to download which formats you want to offer from your own site or elsewhere, but even if you do have to, you got off cheap in both time and money.<\/div>\n

    Don\u2019t be an ass. Be courteous and leave it up on Smashwords. They did the work for you.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    You will not<\/em> be able to get a straight HTML document to download and then tweak to other formats, which is good.<\/div>\n

    ASSUMPTION 3. That you want your work to have widespread visibility across the interwebz.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n

    The founder of Smashwords, Mark Coker, says: \u201cOur mission is to give every author a chance to find their audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Smashwords is gradually gaining in name recognition and usage. Augment your presence on Smashwords with placement of your work elsewhere on the \u2019net. It benefits you and Smashwords (you know, the people who did the work for you).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    ASSUMPTION 4. You might want to get paid for your work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n

    There are several payment options at Smashwords, which I\u2019ve addressed. In my first \u201ccreating ebooks<\/a>\u201d post, commenter and indie author champion Morris Rosenthal<\/a> told me about e-junkie.com<\/a>, which is a payment portal for downloads. He\u2019s had quite a bit of success with this method, though I can\u2019t vouch for it at this time (although I do intend to check it out).<\/p>\n

    However, as far as I know, Smashwords is the only independent e-publishing vendor that offers an API process AND a payment portal and quite frankly, there\u2019s just nothing else that beats that, even if you do have to sacrifice a little formatting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    So after having put \u201c25 to Life\u201d up on Smashwords, used their API, seen their output, what do I think?<\/p>\n

    The HTML<\/strong> and Java<\/span> versions (the ones that you read on your computer) are very pretty and you can adjust fonts, colors, and sizes as you like.<\/p>\n

    The plain TXT<\/strong> ones are, well, plain text. It says \u201cmay lack some formatting,\u201d but if you know anything about plain text, you know that means no<\/em> formatting.<\/p>\n

    The EPUB<\/strong> (use with Stanza for iPhone\/iTouch, Adobe Digital Editions) format doesn\u2019t seem to have centered anything, but I can live with that.<\/p>\n

    The LRF<\/strong> (Sony) and PDB<\/strong> (Palm) didn\u2019t pick up the italics, which is something I can\u2019t<\/em> live with, but it\u2019s being worked on right now (no promises!).<\/p>\n

    The PDF<\/strong> looked like a manuscript because, well, it comes from a plain Word document, so you know that going in.<\/p>\n

    The MOBI\/PRC<\/strong> (Kindle, MobiPocket) looked great.<\/p>\n

    The RTF<\/strong> is obviously going to look just like a Word document, and it\u2019s my go-to for conversion to IMP (eBookWise), so I don\u2019t care how it looks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    If you follow the Smashwords style guide<\/a> to the letter, you\u2019ll have a slew of decent-looking e-books (including EPUB!) as defined by my last post on \u201cthe page<\/a>\u201d and you\u2019ll get them in about 3 minutes, along with a payment portal.<\/p>\n

    Smashwords is an elegant little API, and it\u2019s still in beta testing. I can\u2019t wait to see what it\u2019ll be at full force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I AM AGAINST DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (DRM). ANY VENDOR I RECOMMEND WILL SHARE THIS STANCE AND ANY INSTRUCTIONS I GIVE WILL IGNORE ANY POSSIBILITY FOR ENCRYPTION. IF YOU WANT TO LOCK UP YOUR WORK, FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF. In my last episode, I instructed you to go learn (X)HTML\/CSS. I was gently taken to task […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[529,558],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-production","category-creating"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16508,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions\/16508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}