ebook design and digital publishing

Do you have a story–or expert information–to share with the masses? Unless you are already a best­selling author, land­ing a pub­lish­ing deal is easier said than done. Thank­fully though, these days it is not dif­fi­cult to pub­lish your own eBook.

An eBook is an elec­tronic book, one you read digit­ally on your com­puter, laptop screen or on devices called ebook read­ers. The demand for eBooks is accel­er­at­ing rap­idly — as a per­cent­age of trade book sales.

Will ebooks replace prin­ted books? I sure hope not, at least not in my life­time. Being an avid reader, I am one who finds the feel and smell of a book part of the whole exper­i­ence of read­ing. Yet I also embrace pro­gress and anti­cip­ate the future with excitement.

For a small or medium-size busi­ness, self-publishing has a vari­ety of poten­tial bene­fits. Being published–even self-published–enhances your repu­ta­tion and cred­ib­il­ity. It estab­lishes your busi­ness as an author­ity, and can lead to new oppor­tun­it­ies, sales leads, or invit­a­tions for speak­ing engage­ments and other pro­spects for gain­ing exposure.

I offer a com­pre­hens­ive solu­tion for author­ing, dis­trib­ut­ing, and sup­ply­ing digital books for use on com­puters and a wide range of mobile read­ing devices. Although Kindle Dir­ect Pub­lish­ing, Barnes & Noble PubIt, and SelfPublishing.com provide the tools to do it your­self, I provide addi­tional pro­fes­sional ser­vices to ensure your book has a pol­ished, pro­fes­sional look:

copy­ed­it­ing and proofread­ing ~ con­tent format­ting ~ inser­tion of metadata ~ page setup and struc­ture ~ table of con­tents ~illus­tra­tion and cover art design

I test your eBook thor­oughly to ensure that the required attrib­utes and files are valid and cor­rect. Valid eBooks are much more likely to work con­sist­ently with new eread­ers that are developed in the future.

In addi­tion, as a qual­i­fied proofreader and copy editor, I can assure you that I will do the utmost to make sure that the spelling, punc­tu­ation and gram­mar through­out your pub­lic­a­tion is correct.

eBook formats

PDF is the most com­mon format used for eBooks that are down­load­able from per­sonal or busi­ness web sites. People trust PDFs and almost every­one will be able to read your book without hav­ing to install any­thing. PDF requires the Acrobat Reader but this soft­ware comes on many new com­puters and if not included, it’s a free down­loaded from Adobe http://www.adobe.com. There are still many who prefer print­ing out the pages of an ebook to read and PDF files have always been good for this purpose.

The Kindle format is pro­pri­et­ary to Amazon, but Amazon offers a free Kindle app for Win­dows and Mac com­puters, as well as for iPhone, iPad, Android, Black­Berry, and Win­dows Phone 7 devices.

If you want your book to be even more widely avail­able, the open ePub stand­ard is the way to go. ePub formats are read­able on a wide vari­ety of Win­dows and Mac applic­a­tions, and can expand the audi­ence for your book to include other e-reader plat­forms, such as the Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo e-readers, devices from Sony, and more.

Examples:

Click this link to view a PDF e-book by Smash­ing Magazine — or visit  Linde Waidhofer’s web­site Linde Waid­hofer Photo Books.

pri­cing

My prices vary and depend on the dead­line and com­plex­ity of the work and will nor­mally be offered either as an hourly rate or a set amount for the job. By see­ing your doc­u­ment before start­ing I can assess how much time the format­ting and proofread­ing will take, and the level of edit­ing that is required. If you have a large doc­u­ment (over 10MB) you do not need to send it all — a sample will be enough to provide a quote. Of course, you will need to tell me approx­im­ately how many words and images are con­tained in the whole document.

the pro­cess

When you have fin­ished writ­ing your book you email me the text in Word (or sim­ilar) format, as well as any illus­tra­tions or pho­to­graphs to be included in your book.

Proofread­ing and copy edit­ing can be provided, and will be com­pleted using Microsoft Word’s “Review” and “Track Changes” tools. If pre­ferred, the doc­u­ment is proofread with all cor­rec­tions and inser­tions being high­lighted in red. Your returned file may occa­sion­ally be accom­pan­ied by a doc­u­ment con­tain­ing sup­ple­ment­ary com­ments when this is con­sidered necessary.

When you open nearly any paper book, you see pages at the begin­ning before you get to the first page of real con­tent. This sec­tion con­tains ele­ments such as the title page, copy­right page, ded­ic­a­tion, pre­face, and pro­logue, and is referred to as the front mat­ter. The back mat­ter includes things such as an index or any appen­dices you wish to add at the end of the book.

You are not oblig­ated to include all or any of these things, but your book will have a more pro­fes­sional look if you at least include a title page. It can be as simple as pla­cing the title of the book in the cen­ter of the very first page with the author’s name beneath it.

Once the format­ting, copy edit­ing and proofread­ing has been com­pleted your doc­u­ment will be con­ver­ted to mul­tiple ebook formats, ready for imme­di­ate dis­tri­bu­tion online. In addi­tion, if required, I can develop a web­site for you to pro­mote your­self and your book.

I have a pas­sion for read­ing, writ­ing and the Eng­lish lan­guage, I am reli­able and take pride in per­form­ing a pro­fes­sional job for all my cli­ents. Whether your manu­script is fic­tion or non-fiction, my aim is to bring your work to the highest stand­ard pos­sible required for publication.

Print Page