Notjohn's Guide to E-book Formatting

The self-publisher's bible! In this clear and entertaining ten-step guide, a prolific American author tells how he formats his books using free software for upload to the world's leading sellers of digital content. "Most beginners write their books in Word or Open Office," he says. "Then they upload the same file and hope it will convert to an e-book. Sometimes it works; more often it doesn't, because word processors litter the file with hidden formatting. The result can be a disaster."

Instead, the word-processing document should be converted to clean HTML, the markup language used to create a web page. (All e-books are web pages at heart, and e-book readers and apps are just special-purpose web browsers.) The conversion from document to HTML file takes seconds. It can then be plugged into a simple template that Notjohn includes in this Guide and makes available on his blog for anyone to use, along with a model style sheet..He concludes with chapters on purpose-built software, how to present and price it for the greatest return, and how to adapt your e-book as a paperback edition. The twelfth edition of this indispensable guide, revised and updated November 2021.