Ebook Creation Step by Step

Here is a step by step description of how I put together an ebook one evening, as a test of the process. I did this for my BellaOnline editors but of course anybody interested in how ebook creation works will find this interesting.

Creating the Ebook
At 7pm I am working on my Sangria Recipes pages and decide they will make a great selection for an ebook test. I have over 50 sangria recipes, plus appetizer suggestions and more. As far as I know there aren't any sangria cookbooks out there to compete with me. I decide to see how long it takes.

I open up InDesign, a page layout software package. I could have opened up Word, they really do the same thing. I have my internet browser open in one window, my layout software open in another. I start cutting and pasting the recipes one at a time from my website into InDesign. I start each recipe on its own new page. I tag each title as a "title". This will make the titles show up in the table of contents. In about an hour I have all of the content pasted into my book.

I track down an image and create a cover in PhotoShop. Really it just means I take the image and add some text to the top. Always make a pretty cover - people really do judge a book by its cover. Hire someone to help you if you aren't good at this part; it's worth it. I feel my cover is adequate, paste it into InDesign as the first page and move on.

Next I decide that I want each chapter start (for example the "Fruity Sangrias" chapter) to have an intro set of paragraphs. I write an intro page for each chapter start. Once that's done, the book is done! I save it as a PDF.

Loading the Ebook
At 10pm I am now ready to start making the ebook available to the public. Since this is for the WineIntro site I load my ebook onto that site, and create a few pages talking about the ebook and what it offers. That is my Sangria Recipes Ebook page. I get a "buy" button quite easily at PayPal.com, they have that whole process automated. Note I did write special code in ASP so that the buyer can instantly get the ebook mailed to them. If you're going to have your ebook on your own personal site, you can choose to mail it manually to the person when you get the PayPal alert. Just make a note on your PayPal landing page that it might be a day or two before they receive their ebook. If you really want to learn how to code in ASP, to have your website instantly email them the PDF they've bought, I do offer an Learn to Make ASP Shopping Carts ebook :)

Of course if you're a BellaOnline editor we provide an entire ebook sales interface for FREE so you can sell your ebooks there! No coding necessary, no paying server fees, and no sharing the profits with anybody!

OK, back to my test process. Now that I had an ebook sales page set up, I added links to this new ebook sales page from all of my sangria pages. This provided free publicity for my new ebook. Note this is CRITICAL for an ebook to sell well. If you have zero pages on sangria recipes and then load an ebook on sangria recipes, nobody will ever find it. If you have 50+ pages on sangria recipes, and are the #1 result in google for sangria recipes, then it's likely that lots of people who enjoy sangra recipes will find those pages and therefore your ebook. The key is always to offer all the information for free on your site - to draw in visitors - and then to offer them an ebook version once they're there. Believe me, they will gladly pay the few dollars to get the PDF version to print and use. If you try to sell an ebook of "hidden content" - first, nobody will ever find that ebook to want to buy it. Second, they don't trust that the content is any good. They can't "flip through it" like they would in a bookstore.

By 12:30am the ebook is now live and fully functional. Lots of sangria pages link to it. I've done a test purchase from the live site and the ebook was properly emailed to me once the payment went through. I am now ready to move on to getting this ebook on Amazon.

Ebooks, Amazon and MobiPocket
I had done tests with MobiPocket - the Amazon ebook creator - last year sometime. Since then I have upgraded computers to a new one and never reinstalled the software. So I go to MobiPocket.com and re-download the software. I then imported my PDF into MobiPocket. Once it's imported, I tell it to get the table of contents using H1 as the primary titles and H3 as the secondary titles. I can see those values by looking at the sangriarecipes.html file it generated.

Once the table of contents is set up, I edit the HTML file itself. I delete the "page numbers" from the table of contents area. Ebooks don't necessarily have pages the same way books do, since it's all flowing HTML. You use links in the ebook - you don't try to "go to page 8". It's a tedious process but takes maybe 10 minutes. Then I go paste in "page breaks" between each of my recipes, to get it to look nicer. Not necessary, a bit tedious again, but it makes me happy. The page break code is <mbp:pagebreak/>

That being done, I save the HTML file. I save a backup copy too just in case. I fill in the metadata info in MobiPocket - the title, author and so on. That being done, I hit BUILD. It creates a MobiPocket version of my ebook! The software comes with a built in viewer, but I want to see it in an actual reader. The reader software is also free from MobiPocket, so I use that to view my new sangriarecipes.prc file. I notice a few missing pagebreaks so I go back, edit the HTML file, save it, and rebuild the PRC file with MobiPocket. After a few minutes the MobiReader version looks fine.

OK this time I build it with the content encryption digital rights management option. Then I choose to deploy it. I already have a logon with MobiPocket, so I log on to it. The deployment is successful. Now they want me to log on to manage my ebook.

When I log on I see a HUGE list of retailers - including amazon.com - are set up to sell this ebook. They would use the title, author, description and cover image that I entered myself in MobiPocket. I go into my ebook library, where I see the one sangria ebook waiting. I click on it and choose the "activate" button. MobiPocket is now 100% set.

OK, on to Amazon. In Amazon I go into the Kindle area and there are links in there to publish a book onto the Kindle. It wants an UNencrypted version of the Mobi file to work with. Use MobiPocket to build an unencrypted version for Amazon (just like you did in your first test). Upload that unencrypted version in their interface. There's a preview button - things look good.

Note you COULD load in a PDF or text file but then you're back to where you started with the MobiPocket software - getting the layout to look nice, dealing with the table of contents etc. Since you have already tuned the MobiPocket output to be perfect - and since Amazon speaks the MobiPocket language - it's best to use that.

OK, set a price. I went with the same $5.99 I used on WineIntro.

When I go to publish, it sends me into the account page to fill in my tax info and my bank account info. This is so they can pay me! Nice to know. Looks like you earn 35% of each sale, so they take a substantial amount for the "sales" side of this. If you research how little you would earn as a "published author" per book sold in the real world of bookstores, this becomes a really good deal. On the other hand, if you're a BellaOnline editor you can publish your ebooks 100% for free :) Free is nice!

Voila! It's published! It'll now take up to 72 hours to go live in the Kindle system, but it's on its way!

Ending time: 2:43am

Total time elapsed is just under 8 hours, but I admit to taking breaks in there, getting some food and so on :) Plus I had to reinstall software and so on. I bet I could get this down to 4 hours for future books, assuming of course the content is all written!

The real key for ebooks is to write the content over time, doing the resesarch and getting feedback from visitors. That way when it comes time to create the ebook everything is sitting there waiting for you, already reviewed, already commented on by visitors, and ready to compile.

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