ecommerce

How To Write An Ebook - Tools And Techniques For Creating A PDF05 April 2010

These days, anyone can publish and sell ebooks online quite simply so long as they have a great concept that they can effectively convey to the reader. This article clears away an mystery that may exist about how to get from the germ of an idea to a PDF ebook.

As with any good product, a good ebook should start with a core objective. If the book is putting across a theory or methodology, then focus in on exactly what you wish to say to readers. Brainstorm the concepts that you wish to introduce in the ebook and the relationship these concepts have with the core objective. You can use a computer document (any format) for this or plain old pen and paper also works fine.

Break down the overall work for the book into sections, sub-sections and/or chapters. For technical/non-fiction books then it can be worthwhile revisiting some of your favorite books for inspiration on the form that chapters should take. This is not plagiarism. Rather, this is merely taking another book template/outline and re-cycling the structure.

It is now time for the implementation phase - writing the content of the sections/chapters. Some ebook authors choose to outsource sections of writing (for example, to experts). Start this process early and agree the file formats of the content you wish to receive (so that you may more easily collate the content into one single file).

As you write, or compile the copy received in from other writers, you should safeguard the work by saving versions of your master document to an external drive or some other format. Use the auto-save function available on most processors to periodically save your work as you write.

Next decide upon the design of your ebook. You can outsource this design too if desired. Try to maintain an overall branding for the book with a consistent to the header section, footer section, cover/splash page (the first page in the book that generally sets the tone of the book) and the choice and sizes of fonts used.

Feel free to experiment with page formats. Ebooks are read online or via readers (such as the Kindle) so don't always need to follow strict page design. Sometimes a variety of graphics and font sizes (as would be seen in magazines) can help emphasize and differentiate your work.

All that is left to do is to use your word processor to export the file in PDF format (Microsoft Word users can use the 'Save As PDF' option). Ask some colleagues to proof read your book and once the final fixes are made then the ebook is ready for publishing on-line.

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DRM Advancements In The EBook Business14 March 2010

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is an area of technological advancement that authors within the eBook business should pay close attention to over the coming years as these innovations are striving to safeguard their written work.

DRM relates to protecting creative output in digital media formats (CDs, DVDs, eBooks, etc.). DRM technology attempts to stop your written eBook being resold or duplicated without your permission. The music industry was slow to react in protecting their music in digital formats, meaning tunes were widely available on the net without the music publishers profiting.

In the eBook business, intellectual asset management was built in from the onset as eBooks are a product of the software industry rather than having grown out of regular book publishing sector. As a result, eBooks have used innovation from an early stage to protect the intellectual property within eBooks.

Historically, it has been software producers such as Adobe who pioneered the PDF file format for writing eBooks. Their software can be configured to constrain/restrict certain functionality of PDF readers. You may have seen this before where you receive a PDF book but are perhaps unable to copy/paste any of the text. It is possible to even restrict the user from printing out hard-copies of the document. This is DRM in action.

Most PDF file creators/readers/add-ons now provide this functionality. Some prime examples are the Adobe Reader and Microsoft Reader. The Microsoft reader goes one step further by ID stamping PDFs with the purchaser's details in order to discourage sharing the PDF with others.

In new and recent developments in DRM, players like the Kindle Reader can send notifications back to their home servers if eBooks are being illegally read or shared. At that point the vendor can then choose how to deal with the file sharer (possibly through litigation). Could they remove the PDF? Yes, apparently this is already possible, as detailed in a recent case when Amazon remotely removed PDFs from customers' Kindle Readers (http://mashable.com/2009/07/17/amazon-kindle-1984/). This does open up a potential can of worms regarding the privacy rights of device owners so expect to start seeing Terms Of Conditions for digital readers containing statements about remote access permissions of vendor.

In parallel with the hardware producers firming up the DRM security, software publishers are also including functionality into their PDF publishing tools to include the ability to disable an eBook remotely if a customer uses fraudulent credit card details or is seeking a refund (two traditional means of obtaining PDFs at no cost). For most authors writing eBooks, protecting their PDFs through simple configuration of PDF creation software is an ideal solution.

These technological advancements in the eBook business may be too late in coming for the existing published PDFs. These still have copyright protection on their intellectual property once it is written. The new advancements in PDF security and copy protection should however make it even more secure and viable for the average person to start writing eBooks and start profiting from selling eBooks online.

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