How to Create Your First Ebook

By Sabrina Ricci

"Formatting an ebook can be a daunting task, but How to Create Your First Ebook uses examples, screen shots and videos as learning tools and becomes your step-by-step guide."

—Kathy Lapeyre, author of Family Focus

Create Professional, High Quality Ebooks, For Free!

"The time for merely replicating print books has run its course. Ebooks are now ready to become their own unique medium and take advantage of all the possibilities digital technologies have to offer."

Authors work hard to write and polish their books, but no matter how great the content, if the ebook is poorly formatted then readers will be frustrated. Avoid disappointing your readers and make your ebook look professionally published. Using free tools, you can:

• Turn your work into a complete ebook
• Take full control of how your book looks
• Prevent unnecessary 1-star reviews
• Save money!

What is an ebook?

Learn the ins and outs of the files in an ebook as well how to add more advanced features. Inside this book, you'll find out how to code dynamic images that resize to perfectly fit any screen, create a table of contents, style text like a pro, and more! With this knowledge, you can self publish your own high quality books. 

Includes Bonus Content

Purchase How to Create Your First Ebook now and get access to additional videos that show you how to create an ebook and give an in-depth guide to using the free tools. You will also be able to download a free sample ebook, with code you can use to style and format your own books. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digital Pubbing
• Release date: Jul 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781622000074

Book preview

Introduction

In 2010, I knew almost nothing about ebooks and very little about building websites. But after a few years of reading and experimenting on my own, coupled with the help of some very knowledgeable and patient publishing professionals, I was able to build, distribute, and sell my own ebooks. For that I’m very grateful, and with this book I hope to pay it forward and help others.

Because there are many different ways to learn a new skill, I've included a number of videos explaining the steps and concepts of creating an ebook, as well as a sample ebook for anyone who wishes to use it as a template. Due to current self-publishing platform restrictions on uploading EPUB3 content—audio and video—I cannot directly include the videos or sample code. So for anyone who would like access to the enhanced content and the sample EPUB, please sign up here and I will send you the links.

Thank you so much for purchasing this ebook. I hope you find it worthwhile.

CHAPTER 1 – What Is An Ebook?

Welcome! This book is the first in a series meant to teach authors how to create ebooks. At first glance, creating an ebook may seem daunting, but this guide will take you step by step through the basics and show you that anyone can create an ebook. Some HTML—the code used to create websites—is involved, but I assure you it’s not as complicated as it looks.

I invite you to invest a little of your time to learn how to make an ebook. In the long run, this will save you money in your self-publishing ventures, and the best part is you will have full control over the design, formatting, and quality of your ebook. Readers may not necessarily know which features make an ebook great, but they do immediately notice when an ebook looks bad and gives them a poor reading experience.

Avoid those unnecessary one-star reviews and take control of your work. You can absolutely do this!

What is an Ebook?

The official definition of an ebook is a book composed in or converted to digital format for display on a computer screen or handheld device.

For our purposes, however, it’s best to break it down. An ebook is basically a bunch of files zipped together. There are three main types of ebook files: EPUB, MOBI/KF8, and iBooks. This book will be focusing on the EPUB2 format, which is the format required to sell books on Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Apple, and everywhere else except Amazon. EPUB comes in a couple flavors: EPUB2 and EPUB3. EPUB3 is more advanced, and allows ebooks to have additional features, such as video and audio. But although all retailers that support EPUB can handle EPUB2, they only support certain features of EPUB3. Details on EPUB3 will be featured in another book in this series.

Just so you know, Amazon uses the MOBI/KF8 version, and Apple allows you to also make ebooks in their iBooks format, which can give an ebook a more app-like experience. But the basic format, and the best format to learn first, is EPUB. Additionally, Amazon offers an easy tool that lets you convert EPUB to their MOBI format (more on that later).

A glossary with brief definitions is provided at the end of this book.

EPUB

EPUB is the name of the zip file format. So, if you were to download an ebook, the file on your desktop would look something like nameofbook.epub. To create an ebook, you will need to create separate files for the chapters, plus a few other files we’ll cover in Chapter 3.

The easiest way to think of an EPUB ebook is to compare it to a website. Both EPUBs and websites use HTML and CSS. HTML (HyperText Markup Language) lets both a website and an e-reader (or tablet) know what content to display. CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) tells the website, e-reader, or tablet how to style the content.