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Article by: David Viney
Choosing your File Format
I would recommend you use just two different file formats –
one for mobile devices and one for PCs. Remember that most people
will only read really large eBooks (i.e. 80-100k words) on their
desktop PC. For PCs, I would chose the Adobe Portable Document
Format (PDF) as (a) Adobe reader is already installed on millions
of PCs worldwide, (b) all the major eBook distributors support
it and (c) Micosoft are planning to incorporate export-to-pdf
functionality in all their next generation MS-Office products.
For mobile, my personal recommendation is the Mobipocket .prc
format as (a) it supports more complex e-books that require oversized
images and horizontally scrolling tables, (b) the Mobipocket Reader
can be used on the widest range of PDAs & Smart Phones and
(c) Amazon have recently purchased Mobipocket and are sure to
give it greater prominence in the future.
Converting your master to PDF Format
To begin with, optimize the meta-data in your MS-Word document.
Access File – Properties from the menu and begin with the
“Summary” tab. Enter your title in the “Title”
box, exactly as it would appear on Nielsen BookData and Amazon.
Put your sub-title in the “Subject” field. Enter your
author name as second name, first name (e.g. Viney, David) in
the “Author” field. In the “Category” field,
I would use Amazon’s taxonomy, so for my eBook Guide, I would
enter: Books > E-Books & E-Docs > Non-fiction > General.
Use the “Keywords” field to add individual words which
summarise the content of your book. Separate them with a comma
and a single space. For my eBook I would enter: eBook, self, publishing,
Amazon, Mobipocket, PDF, Lightning, Source, eBooks.com, writing.
Once you have optimised the Word master, it is time to begin
conversion to the PDF format. With OEM or second-hand software
available so cheaply these days from eBay (see panel right) I
would recommend you purchase and use Adobe Professional software
to do the conversion. Once you have installed the software, you
will find that you can simply click on a “Convert to Adobe
PDF” icon, which should be the left-most one of the three
Adobe icons in your Word toolbar. The macro that follows will
first prompt you to chose a filename to save your PDF document
under. Use the ISBN (so for my ebook, I used 0955077427.pdf).
The macro will then scan for bookmarks, create pages and process
tags before firing up the pre-final PDF file. Check the Bookmarks
panel to make sure the macro has converted your Word table of
contents properly. Then tweak some of the PDF settings for best
results. Firstly, set the “Initial View” document options
to “Show Bookmark Panel and Pages”. Under “Page
Layout” select “Continuous Facing” and in the “Security”
tab decide whether you want to apply any DRM-style restrictions
(I leave at “No Security”). Secondly, check the metadata
has been translated properly from the Word master and add any
“Additional Metadata” (e.g. copyright status). Finally,
optimize the file size of your PDF file, using both the the Advanced
| PDF Optimizer menu option and the File | Reduce File Size option
(which limits the reverse-compatibility of the file).
Converting your master to PRC Format
I recommend you purchase Mobipocket Creator Professional to handle
the conversion. Whilst relatively expensive, it is by far the
better functioned of all options. Open the installed software,
select the import from MS Word document option and browse for
your Word master. From the “publication files” screen,
the first step is to add your cover art. Ensure your cover art
has a file width of less than 200 pixels, a file height of less
than 300 pixels and an overall file size of less than 50kb. This
should generally be the case when you have set a medium (6/10)
file quality to your .jpg file.
Whilst I would avoid the Mobipocket Table of Contents option
(too complex) you should certainly focus on the metadata section
(as the Mobipocket site has a Google Page Rank of 7/10 and your
finished page will rank high up on Google). I advise preparing
metadata entries first in a (backed-up) text file (using Notepad).
If you iterate the file conversion and build process a number
of times, you will find yourself re-entering data over and over
again; being able to copy-and-paste from a text file will save
you lots of time!
Once you have finished this section, it is time to build your
eBook file and test it on various readers / emulators. Select
the default build options, run the the build process, then “preview
results in Mobipocket reader” on your PC. After you are happy,
do a final test on the Mobipocket PDA Emulator. Having tested
what you file will look like on a sample of PDAs and Smartphones,
do one final iteration of the build process, this time with the
“content encryption with DRM” checkbox selected. Your
eBook is now ready to be uploaded.
Uploading your PDF to Lightning Source
To distribute your PDF via Amazon, I recommend signing up for
Lightning Source International (LSI) as a minimum. In my full
eBook (purchase from panel right) I also cover how to distribute
via other sites, including Lulu and Content Reserve). To sign
up with LSI, click on the “new customer?” link on their
homepage, then the “new account” link.
Choose a log-in name and password (both between 6 and 16 characters
in length), then enter your contact information. In the “form
of business” drop-down, select sole proprietor. Choose your
“primary book category” from the drop-down within the
“miscellaneous information” section (e.g. professional/technical).
Under “total number of titles in print” and “number
of new titles published annually” I would suggest entering
2-5 titles. For “number of years company in business”
put Uploading your PRC to Mobipocket
Firstly, visit http://www.ebookbase.com
to register with Mobipocket. Now review the eBookBase Agreement.
Either sign it and fax the form or (for speed) copy-and-paste
the content into a Word file, add your signature as a scanned
picture and email the signed electronic contract to nting@mobipocket.com
You will note from the contract that the wholesaler price is
50% of the suggested retail Price. As such, you may wish to set
the retail price of the .prc version of your eBook slightly higher
than you did for the .pdf version (so as to recoup a similar return).
Mobipocket will come back pretty quickly to confirm your application
and will point you to a URL from where you can logon to your account
online. You should find that you are given the same user-id and
password that you originally registered with on the main site.
First select the “Add an eBook” option from the eBook
catalogue. Browse to find your .prc file and click on the “upload
new eBook” link. Note the default directory for the Mobipocket
.prc file you created s is the “My Publications” folder
within “My Documents”. The file you are looking for
should have been saved there (using “build” within the
Mobipocket software) with a DRM security level of 4.
In the Meta-Data input screen, you should address (a) Affiliation
URL (leave alone), (b) Title (enter title, than a colon, then
a space, then the sub-title), (c) Activate for Retailers (leave
checked), (d) Author (put the LastName, then a comma, then FirstName),
(e) ISBN (leave pre-populated), (f) Print Book ISBN (put parent
ISBN), (g) Language (select English), (h) Main Subject (select
most appropriate from the drop-down), (i) Abstract (Max 4000 chars;
copy-and-paste from your Amazon “short description”
meta-data), (j) Review (Max 4000 chars; this will appear on the
site as if it is from Mobipocket themselves), (k) Keywords (Max
100 chars; enter same as you did for the MS-Word metadata, only
with each word separated by a semi-colon rather than a comma),
(l) Adult only (leave unchecked) and (m) Publishing Date (leave
autofilled)
In the file information section, click on browse to find your
cover art image in the “CoverPage” section. Note that
you are restricted to a maximum size of 50KB and dimensions of
200 pixels width x 300 pixels height. Ignore the “Demo PRC
File” dialogue and leave the “Force No Demo file”
checkbox unchecked. This will cause Mobipocket to default to an
automatically generated PRC demo file containing the first 5%
of the text of the ebook.
Conclusions
Choose only the PDF and PRC file formats for your eBook and distribute
them using LSI and Mobipocket respectively. Pay close attention
to the use of high quality metadata, as it will help with the
subsequent marketing of your book, which (together with taking
payment) if the theme of my final chapter: selling your eBook.
David Viney (david@viney.com)
is the author of the eBook Self-publishing Guide; Desktop to Amazon
in 10 easy steps. The book is a handy pocket guide on how to get
your eBook distributed via Amazon and other sites in the UK and
US and marketed for maximum sales.
Read further free extracts from the guide at http://viney.com/free-ebook-self-publishing-guide/
or download the full copy of the book from there.
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