OTHER TYPES OF E-BOOKS

PDFs (interactive and static) and EPUBs
You don't have to use a digital bookstore. Theoretically a website will give you potentially far more international exposure than Kindle will; many more people do subject searches on the web than subject-search Kindle.

e-books don't have to be complex. The simplest form of ebook is a PDF, and PDFs can usually be fairly quickly and easily created. EPUBs are also becoming an increasingly popular downloadable format

  • PDFs and EPUBs are created from the book that has been prepared for print.

    • All this, of course, presupposes that you have the software and the skills to create the book on your computer. If you don't you will need to get it done professionally by a local agency like BriarsBooks. That person will create the book and PDF and EPUB for you.

    IF you have created your book in MSWord, Word will allow you to easily save your book file as a PDF. PDFs will exactly mirror your book layout but will be fixed, not reflowable. Creating an EPUB from your book is trickier. The Daisy Consortium provides a free Word to EPUB addin that will convert your word document to EPUB BUT your Word document MUST be correctly formatted using style sheets etc for this to work. There are also online conversion tools though the result may require formatting changes in an EPUB editor.

  • Once you have your PDF it can be emailed around or uploaded to a website for readers to download and view in the Acrobat PDF reader installed by default on most devices. The same with an EPUB except EPUB readers need to be installed, though they are often enabled in modern browsers.
  • You can also create - or ask for - an interactive PDF. This allows readers to use clickable links to get quickly to all chapters from the Table of Contents, and also internal links.
  • Your EPUB text and images will be reflowable to suit different size devices and will also have hyperlinks from Tables of Contents (TOCS) to beginnings of chapters, within the document and out to external websites. EPUBs have more features than Kindle e-books.

    • BUT if you're wanting people to BUY the PDF and/or EPUB book from your website then you're best to put the files behind a shopwall, ie., create a shop store on your website. Shopify is easily the most popular way of doing this. It can be integrated directly into an existing website regardless of the platform it is built on. You will need to set up a Shopify account. Processing is secure and hosting reliable. The starter plan will probably be all you need and it's not expensive. If you don't have a shop  you will just have to be philanthropic and let people download free of charge.

  • Of course, if you are putting your PDF or EPUB (or book) on a website you need to have a well-constructed website optimised for Google. Better to put it on an existing website with good traffic than set up a new one just for one book. In fact, you're best to build it around a number of books, not just one.

    • If playing around with Shopify, PDFs and EPUBs of your book is not something you want to do, then you're best to bite the bullet and create a ebook on Amazon KDP and let the digital bookstore promote and sell it for you. Or get someone else to create the book for you.

  • PDFs come into their own when you're wanting to email a document to someone for feedback or comment.
  • If you are wanting to submit your book to digital bookstores EPUBs are usually the standard format required - or at least one of them. Bookstores then convert the EPUB onsite into the format each bookstore uses.