This blog post has now been updated and moved to my new eBook formatting website blog, you can see it here: Do’s & Don’ts of eBook Formatting
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G’day Jo
What are you using to produce your e-books? Are you using HTML compilers that create an EXE file, a program to produce Adobe PDF files or some type of Flash generator?
I’m interested to hear because I’ve had no conversion challenges producing e-books in PDF from Word DOC files.
Robin
Hi Robin, I don’t create eBooks in html while many people do. I format the documents in Word and then upload them to Amazon or Smashwords who do the conversion. I have not had any issues whatsoever. I think those people who upload eBooks to individual retailers such as Barnes & Noble etc… have issues doing it this way. Creating PDF documents from Word is very easy as you say, but you really have to take out a lot of rubbish when formatting for the likes of Amazon and Smashwords.
This is a timely post with good tips, thank you for posting it. I’m getting my ebook ready for release and the process is still a mystery to me.
Funny how your guide almost mirrors mine in terms of what I [don’t / do] need in a manuscript from a client As a graphic designer of mostly printed literature, such as research reports, I really appreciate a cleaned-up file! And as you suggested early on, manuscript providers can be trained in these good habita; most welcome the chance to help, to streamline the whole process, or to at least have a clear conscience about how tidy or messy their submission was.
Thanks for your comments Bruce. It’s always nice to receive a clean file, but then if everyone sent clean files I wouldn’t have a job! 🙂