How To Turn Your Book Into An E-Book

It took over 6 months to find the right way to get my books into ebook format. For those who understand the technology it’s relatively simple, for the rest of us it’s very hard.
This guide offers you the way to do this free of charge and for those who just get exasperated this offers the best value I have found to sort various issues out. Prices may fluctuate but are correct at the time of going to press.
1. Writing the book.
Though I will not go into how to write your book, it is important to note that editing your book is vital.
a. The Free way: get two people to read and comment. But be clear about what you are asking them to do. Proof reading is not the same as editing and commenting on your book and the story itself. Be clear about what you are asking. You are looking for friends who have a good understanding of the English language – punctuation, grammar etc.
b. Pay. There are many proof readers about. The cheapest I found was going via oDesk.com and looking for proof readers. I found a British lady in Italy who proof read my book for US$50. I believe that was the best value I found.
Summary: edit/proof read your book. Once it is published it will be a real pain to do this and you will get bad reviews for poor editing (trust me I know).
2. Formatting the book/publishing
It seems that each e-book requires a different format. The best way to get the format right even if you don’t want to use this company is Smashwords.com. Their guide to formatting e-books is second to none. In fact once I found them (and unfortunately for me I had already self published on amazon two books) it was obvious that this was by far the easiest way to publish my e-book worldwide. Smashwords have formulated a simple and easy to use their website that is free to use and that will distribute your book worldwide to all the major e-book companies. It can’t get easier than this.
My tips are the following:
a) The free way: Read and digest the guidelines and reformat your document as they suggest.
b) To pay: If you have already written your book (ie not followed their formatting) then I would recommend that you use one of their listed people to reformat it for uploading. I spent hours trying to reformat my books that were already written to keep it free only to end up paying US$40 to have them reformatted, usually within 48 hours. You can pick which you want to do.
c) If you haven’t started writing your book and you want to convert your book into an ebook then start with the right formatting at the beginning. This will save a lot of heartache at the end.
3. Cover photos
a) Free: Do your own photo and follow the formatting on Smashwords.com. I have tried doing my own, some of which have turned out OK because I find this technology more easy to use. I would note though that the photographs I’ve used taken by myself do not have the same impact as those taken professionally and though I kidded myself that they were good people could easily see which ones I had done myself. If you do not have the time/finances to pay for a professional photo, it’s worth going to iStock.com and buy one of their photos. Cost varies from US$10=US$50. You will still have to format the photo.
b) If you cannot follow the format required, then use Smashword’s list for making a cover page.