Ebook Creation
The Wikipedia entry for "ebook" says...
An electronic book (also e-book, ebook, digital book) is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines the e-book as "an electronic version of a printed book," but e-books can and do exist without any printed equivalent. E-books are usually read on dedicated hardware devices known as e-Readers or e-book devices. Personal computers and some cell phones can also be used to read e-books.
An "ebook conversion" means taking a digital text file such as a Word document and formatting it into a file for output on an e-reader device such as an Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Sony eReader, etc. Using the controls on the e-reader device, the user can change font size (and depending on the device, margins and line spacing) and the text reflows to fill the available screen. This is different from simply zooming into the text, as with a PDF file.
The most common ebook file formats are ePub and .mobi. Epub is an open source format which is used by by most ebook reading devices, and by Adobe Digital Editions for reading ebooks on a computer. The Amazon Kindle uses the Mobipocket format (.mobi) which is converted at Amazon to a encrypted .azw format. You can read more about ebook formats on the Wikipedia page here.
Calibre is a freeware ebook management and conversion tool which will convert one ebook format to another, as well as convert PDF and HTML files to ebook formats. Calibre is very fast and convenient, but it is not adequate for a professional result. We have come to expect print books to be perfect: a typo in a print book really stands out. We want your ebook to look as good.
Our conversions are done by hand. Although we don't actually proofread your source file, the formatting is done one paragraph at a time. We make custom Title and Table of Contents pages, and enter the metadata which is so important for ebooks. We provide an online form to make metadata entry simple. The result is a valid .epub file, which is then converted to a .mobi file using Amazon's own tool. These two files will work for 98% of the e-reader devices available. We can email the files to you, or store them online in a private folder so you can download them any time.
Pricing is by the job, but starts at $120, with an additional charge for more than 25 chapters, pictures, tables, and/or special formatting. Base price is based on a carefully proofread Word document with minimal formatting: headers, paragraph breaks, bold and italic font styling only. It's especially important for you to remove any extra hard line breaks (carriage returns) and trailing spaces. Open your Word document in "outline" view so you can see the actual carriage returns. Fixing your Word file will add to the cost of conversion. Originals in other formats such as InDesign or PDF will cost more to convert.
Most novels will not incur an additional charge. Delivery is under a week.
