Understanding Different Ebook Formats

 Publishing your book as an ebook is a great idea, but first you have to understand the ever evolving nature of ebooks. There are many ways to publish your ebook and just as many formats, but the four most important formats are pdf, epub, mobi and txt.

Whatever format your ebook ends up in, it is important to remember to keep your manuscript as simple as possible.  Jason Mathews, author of “How to Make, Market and Sell E-Books-All For Free,” suggests these things to keep in mind:

• Eliminate page numbers, page brea ks, and page references.
• Don’t have large font sizes, nothing over 12 points or 14 points at most for the title.
• Don’t use fancy fonts.  Stick to Times New Roman, Garamond, Arial, or Courier.
• Don’t use tabs or spaces for indents. Just use the basic settings on the rule bar, left and right indents for margins, and first line indent for new paragraphs.
• Don’t include images larger than 4 inches in height or width.  

Every ebook retailer has instructions on how to upload your book on its website, but if you don’t want to bother with submitting your book to multiple sites in different formats, you should consider using Smashwords.

Smashwords (https://www.smashwords.com) is an ebook retailer that converts your MSWord document into multiple formats and is a good place to direct people who want to buy your books. While they don’t have the same market size as Amazon, they convert documents into every format you need. Whatever type of reading device your potential customers may have, Smashwords can create a version of your book for that device. And when people download your book from Smashwords, you get an 85% royalty. Smashing! There are no setup fees, no packages to buy, and no cost to update or revise your book. Smashwords also provides free ISBN’s if you don’t already have one for your book.

Smashwords is also an authorized ebook distributor for most major online ebook  retailers, including Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, and many others. Their books are also distributed via ScrollMotion to the largest app marketplaces (Apple, Android, Windows Phone 7, WebOS) as singlebook apps. As an author, you get a 60% royalty on the books that Smashwords distributors sell.

Since Smashwords is obviously taking a cut for reformatting and distributing your book to other retailers, you would naturally make more if you dealt with these retailers yourself, so you must make the decision if submitting your book to multiple sites is worth your time and trouble.

Before making your decision as to whether to sell on Smashwords, you should read their terms and conditions carefully.  Go to:  https://www.smashwords.com/about/.