There are many people who desire to become authors and have their own books but getting approval from a publishing house is not an easy task. A practical solution to this is self-publishing via e-book conversion. There are many eBook conversion companies that help new authors make their dream come true. Here are some tips to remember when self publishing eBooks.
- Most ebooks are reflowable, which means that readers can choose the size of the fonts, line spacing, margins etc. Keep the formatting simple to reduce the risk of introducing anything that will be too distracting to the reader. If you have converted your printed books into word format then click on “show non printing characters” option. This displays formatting marks like space, line breaks, paragraphs, tabs, page breaks etc. This makes it easier to see what you have done and correct all the errors you have made.
- Do not use double space after full stops. This is because using double space after a full stop would show evidently on the screen. Turn off the hyphenation and don’t force line breaks. This is because if the reader changes the font size, the line breaks will shift anyway. Also, mentioning page numbers is not necessary because e-books do not have universal page numbers. E reader device usually let the readers know how far along they are in the book.
- Insert a page break if you want to start a new chapter and don’t just click on enter button. Also use Word’s palette to organize your chapter headings, subheadings, body text etc.
- Decide whether you are going for block or run on paragraphs and choose that format throughout. Block paragraphs have line space between them and run on paragraphs don’t have lines.
- If you choose fancy formatting like headers, footers and borders, then fixed layout is ideal.
- In case you are submitting the document to a site that follows a style guide, make sure to follow their guidelines. Otherwise your eBook may get rejected.
The ordeals of publishing are much less rigorous when you choose ebook publishing rather than paperback. Moreover, you can save considerably on costs as well. It is best to partner with eBook conversion companies, and choose to publish an electronic copy of your book because it is much cheaper than publishing printed books. Moreover, a large number of people now prefer eBooks to printed books which is another point in their favor.
