This website post by Bo Bennet, PhD, Founder of eBookit, is an excellent overview of the process I will go through creating and formatting your manuscript for ePublication when I work with you in building it for distribution.
How To Create an Ebook – A Step-by-Step Guide
First and foremost, it is very important to understand – from an editor’s perspective – that your manuscript has to be totally reformatted. It is also helpful to consider if you are planning on doing an eBook in the beginning in addition to your print version. The reason is that it is less time consuming to set up the eBook from the original manuscript, then to take a version created for print and remake for the eBook.
Here are some things to remember when we work on creating your eBook:
- If nothing else, follow the first step in his article in creating a clean, workable manuscript. I can help you with it, but it’s a more cost effective if you follow the suggestions he makes. And remember, Office Word® is very powerful and we can do a lot with it. Mac Pages and Google Docs are alternatives.
- Images in an eBook CANNOT be placed exactly in the same position as a print version. The reason is the actual number of pages in your book, and how the book flows, is dependent upon what the reader is using to access your book. (A cellphone page is a lot smaller than a tablet, for example).
- As of this date (Feb 2021), KDP (Amazon), for example, doesn’t even allow images.
- PAGES (on Mac OS) is excellent in creating an ePub version of your book (I use it almost exclusively). There are other conversion programs but they can get “in the weeds.” None is perfect.
- Usually there are glitches and tweaks required. It will probably take longer than you think.
- The eBook cover can be the same as the print version.
- The final is a pdf.