e-books
An e-book is a digital form of your book that can be downloaded and read on electronic devices
Unless you're a highly-motivated Indie (independent) author determined to build a market, or become an overnight phenomenon for some reason, you're unlikely to get rich from sales of an e-book. You're more likely to get small or larger amounts now and then, but at least your book will be internationally available and downloadable.
Which e-book platform should I use?
Amazon/Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is the largest and most popular international e-bookstore for self-publishing authors and the place where most self-publishing authors want to put their e-book. It dominates the e-book market with a roughly 80% share [compared with Apple Books (10%), Kobo (1%)] Barnes and Noble and 6 other "most popular" online book services.
Things you should know
KDP e-books
Amazon KDP has online tools that will allow a self-publishing author to create their printed book online and then use KDP tools to convert the book to an e-book. But the process is not for the uninitiated.
Authors who want to use Amazon KDP's online tools will usually have first created a KDP print book, and will then adapt their print version to work as an a-book. The process is meant to be user-friendly but e-books are very differently created from printed books - something the user will find out on their way through the process. Print books are fixed layout and e-books need to be reflowable. e-book covers will need to be prepared differently. If you do negotiate the obstacle course, congratulations: you will have both a printed version of your book and a downloadable e-book.
Usually new authors who want to produce an e-book - whether they do it on KDP online, or whether they ask a designer to do it for them - usually end up asking for help anyway from an expert for internals and cover because they lack the tools to prepare their files to the specifications required by KDP's processes.
Your e-book will look very different from your printed edition
e-books are specially constructed to be "responsive" to the screens of the devices on which they are viewed. That means that layout has to comply with the webcode conventions used by digital bookstores and at the moment these do not allow elaborate layouts. If you want your e-book to have exactly the same layout and look as your printed version you are really asking for a fixed layout e-book. This will preserve your layout but it will not be readable on, eg., smartphones except by pinching and zooming. The reflowable e-book will still contain all your images and content but images will follow one another rather than displaying side-by-side as you may have had them in your printed book etc. and decorative fonts will largely be discarded. With e-books, simple and uncluttered is best.
It doesn't cost you anything ...
to place your book on the Kindle e-bookstore - except your own effort or the cost of a designer to help prepare the e-book for you. Your cost - if it could be called that - is the commission Kindle will deduct from your sales returns depending on the MB size of the book in download bandwidth and choices you make during the upload process. Typically, your returns will be somewhere between 30% and 70% of the retail price of the book - more than you will usually get from a traditional publisher. You can decide what price you put on your book. (Check and see what other e-books in your genre are typically priced at. )
Obviously you need to set up an account with Amazon and watch a few videos about how to do this effectively for your book. GO HERE!! Sales often need to get to a minimum threshold set by Kindle before money is transferred to your bank account, and returns can move a bit depending on the download size of your book in MBs.
People need to be able to find your book
If you have already set up an account with KDP for a printed book you will not have to do it again for your e-book. But e-book or printed book, you will need pithy descriptions, genre categories and keywords in place to help people find it. (For advice go here.) Numbers of reviews will help your book along. You can either wait till people find your book and place their reviews, or you can galvanise friends to download the e-book and place their own reviews. (Kindle identifies whether reviewers have read the Kindle version or not, and lets viewers know.) Don't forget you're in the public arena on Amazon and fair game. Reviewers can be scathing or very flattering.
E-book distribution services
E-book production and distribution services are springing up now which offer to format your e-book and put it onto many digital bookstores. But the services come at a price and these retailers may not be your money-earners. Experienced e-book writers tend to stick with four digital bookstores: Amazon/Kindle, Barnes and Noble, Apple Books and Kobo. However Draft2Digital, PublishDrive and Ingram Spark are 3 of these production and distribution services. PublishDrive allows one free e-book title and then requires continuing monthly payments graded according to number of titles. Experienced e-book writers also tend to do their own formatting and uploading to these stores because they believe their books look better that way.Some authors prefer to use local agencies like BriarsBooks to prepare ebooks for them because they can be much more part of the process that way. Kindle doesn't have a human interface.
e-books prepared for Kindle by BriarsBooks
Prepared in readiness for an announcement by the NZ Criminal Cases Review Commission on the life-sentence of Mark Lundy
Best Wellington Walks, by a seasoned tramper. Photo-rich. Author wanted an e-book aimed at the many travelling hikers who don't want to carry books with them but have do access to the internet, 150pp
The 2nd book in a trilogy by a Whanganui author. She has used traditional publishers until now but wanted to try the self-publishing experience. Historical fiction set in NSW, Australia in the 1860s following a family of immigrant Irish pioneers . 270pages
Challenging to do for Kindle because of its hundreds of footnotes, comprehensive index and numbers of pages. Reflowable. 340pp
First of a new trilogy by a NZ Author - Julianne Jones, set in Wellington and Australia in the 1860s. 280pp
An autobiographical account of a man facing death. A PDF prepared for a website and an EPUB prepared for submission to digital bookstores.
Historical fiction based in early NZ. 280 pages with some images, reflowable on Kindle. Also as a version for Google Books. 1st of a trilogy.
Reflowable Kindle e- book: a challenging academic book of 300 pages, with chapter bibliographies, index, footnotes and many diagrams. Also EPUB and PDF editions for a website
Prepared for Kindle as a reflowable book: 300 pages of text with a few images. This also went to EPUB and PDF for website distribution.
Gems from the life of a Pastor's wife. A 142-page book, 40 chapters, including images. Reflowable
Christian fantasy: a romantic adventure - 260 pages reflowablewith coloured illustrations. Kindle and Google Books
About 40 A5 pages, mostly text with one full page diagram. Reflowable.
A children's interactive PDF on an educational website - fixed width
BRIAR'S BOOKS IS BASED IN LOWER HUTT, WELLINGTON, AND HELPS SELF-PUBLISHING AUTHORS ROUND NEW ZEALAND AND OVERSEAS PUBLISH THEIR BOOKS FOR BOTH PRINT AND DIGITAL MARKETS