One of the joys and possibilities of the internet is to publish your own books online. Currently there are a multitude of sites where you can upload your masterpieces and either allow people to download them for free, or even earn money with them. Or you could start your own Blog and publish your books there.
But, first you need to write the book!
The simplest way to do this is to sit down and hammer away at the keys in a program such as Word and work on it until it is ready to be published.
In this post I shall simply give an oversight of the things you will need to consider if you wish to publish your own book on line, and not go into too much technical detail, that comes later.
Having said that, a certain amount of technical stuff has to be looked at, so now begins the technical fun.
Documents saved in programs such as Word can't be placed on the web, except as down-loadable files, and simply wont work on most eReaders, so you will have to convert your book to one or more file formats that are supported by eReaders.
Documents saved in programs such as Word can't be placed on the web, except as down-loadable files, and simply wont work on most eReaders, so you will have to convert your book to one or more file formats that are supported by eReaders.
You could simply convert your book to an HTML, XHTML or TXT format, and post them as ZIP files (see below for links to ways of doing this). These will be internet friendly, and potential readers can convert them (using programs such as Calibre) to whichever format their particular eReader uses. But a more reader friendly thing to do is to place your book online in a number of formats that are used by eReaders, thus saving your potential readers the hassle of converting your book themselves.
This is especially important if you are planning to place your book on your own site or if the file is enormous, with many illustrations for example.
Many of the sites that allow you to upload your book will convert your book to a suitable eReader format for you of course, but it is useful to know how to convert your book from a .DOC format to .ePUB, for example, if for no other reason than to be able to check how it looks on an eReader before launching it on the world.
For the more technical of you, a good place to find a step by step account of how to go about this is the site run by Jet Saber (Obviously a Star Wars fan!) in which he discusses various ways of going about this (click here to visit his site).
There are also sites out there who will convert your HTML files to ePUB and check them for you, see below for links to such places.
The world of online publishing is complex, as you need to consider all manner of things, such as protecting your copyright, locking your book so the text can't be altered, how to go about marketing your book, should you give it a pretty cover, place images in the body of the text and so on, all considerations that you will need to think about carefully.
I shall be writing posts about all these matters, one by one as I go along, since they are important things to know about and you will need to make the correct decisions on all of them in order to make your published book look and feel the way you want it to. So keep coming back, or use the Atom feed below to see these posts as they happen.
To start you off, here are a number of useful links I have found out there that will help, links to software, online publishers, tutorials and so on.
Obviously this list is only a fraction of the available online resources you can find, but it will give you a start, and I hope, save you wasting good writing time as well.
Have fun! Writing is a real pleasure.
SOFTWARE:
Calibre
Already reviewed here, click here.
Adobe InDesign
Very expensive, but it does it all.
Book Glutton
A company who can do the conversions for you and who provide the software needed to get it into a form they can use.
Stanza
A rather intriguing site who offer software that enables you to make your book readable on iPods among other things.
Editplus
Text editor, HTML editor, PHP editor and Java editor
Dream Weaver:
The Grand Daddy of them all, but not cheap!!!!
SITES THAT YOU CAN UPLOAD YOUR BOOKS TO:
Smashwords
To start you off, here are a number of useful links I have found out there that will help, links to software, online publishers, tutorials and so on.
Obviously this list is only a fraction of the available online resources you can find, but it will give you a start, and I hope, save you wasting good writing time as well.
Have fun! Writing is a real pleasure.
SOFTWARE:
Calibre
Already reviewed here, click here.
Adobe InDesign
Very expensive, but it does it all.
Book Glutton
A company who can do the conversions for you and who provide the software needed to get it into a form they can use.
Stanza
A rather intriguing site who offer software that enables you to make your book readable on iPods among other things.
Editplus
Text editor, HTML editor, PHP editor and Java editor
Dream Weaver:
The Grand Daddy of them all, but not cheap!!!!
SITES THAT YOU CAN UPLOAD YOUR BOOKS TO:
Smashwords
See review of this site here (link)
Directory of eBook publishers
SHARE WITH US:
The above stuff is obviously only the tip of a very big iceberg, so I shall be adding to it as I find new and interesting things, but, you can also help out here, if you have a favourite piece of software you use in preparing your books for ePublication, or know of an amazing site that helps, or provides tools for writers, please do let me know, and I shall add what you tell us to this blog, and of course, credit you with the information too.
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