Become an E-Book Author - Part II
... Selling your knowledge!

by Edward B. Toupin

There are several steps involved in packaging a manuscript that is important to providing a professional presentation for your work. You must also protect your work with a copyright and determine whether you will use an ISBN number for your product.

Packaging

Once you've completed the manuscript, you can package it in several different formats. The format choice depends on your target audience as well as your desired presentation. Of course, you can always have an e-publisher generate the package, but they too will use one of the formats discussed in this section.

* Portable Document Format (PDF)
Developed by Adobe (http://www.adobe.com), PDF is a document packaging format that is compatible across several platforms (i.e., Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Macintosh, etc.) A PDF document is viewed on the free Adobe Acrobat viewer, which is itself platform-dependant.

When developing PDF documents, stay with standard writing practices involved in creating manuscripts. Adobe Distiller, which usually comes with FrameMaker, works with just about any word-processing environment (e.g., Microsoft Word, TeX, etc.) and generates a PDF of your manuscript directly from the application.

* E-Book Compilers
E-Book compilers take HTML files and package them into a single executable application. This format is, however, limited in its distribution as it will only run on its target platforms. For instance, one of the better compilers, Activ E-Book (http://www.ebookcompiler.com), is targeted to run on Microsoft Windows platforms.

You will need a compiler that supports all of the major facets of HTML as well as password protection, configurability, and branding. Branding allows you to create e-books branded with your affiliates' or distributors' names. Note that the vendors for some of the more expensive compilers will not only charge for the compiler, but also charge royalties for distribution rights.

* Handheld E-Book Readers
This category of e-book formats is very wide because of the multitude of e-book readers available on the market today. In most cases, all you have to do is generate a solid manuscript and submit it to one of the e-publishers in Microsoft Word format. They will usually package the manuscript into one or more of the different formats acceptable for the more popular e-book readers.

Copyrighting Your Work

Once you've created your e-book, the last thing you want is for someone to illegally copy your work, or worse yet, claim it as their own. It's true that there are technical means (i.e., password protection) that can make this kind of theft more difficult, but none offer total security. No matter what you do, there's a chance that you could be a victim of this kind of theft---it could even go on for a while before you discover that it happened.

Even worse than discovering that you're a victim, is discovering that you're a victim with either no, or very limited, recourse. But there's a way to make sure that it doesn't happen to you---take steps to protect your work ahead of time. Visit the following sites for information on protecting your work as well as registering your work online:

- MediaRegister (http://www.mediaregister.com)
- Click and Copyright (http://www.clickandcopyright.com/)

International Standard Book Number (ISBN)

If you're serious about publishing an e-book, you'll need to have your own ISBN number. The ISBN is a number that identifies book products published internationally. To distribute your work in books stores, online and otherwise, you have to obtain an ISBN number.

An ISBN consists of 10 digits preceded by the "ISBN" prefix. The number is divided into four parts, with each part separated by a hyphen. The number establishes and identifies one title or edition from a specific publisher and is unique to that edition. This supports a more efficient marketing scheme for products by booksellers, libraries, universities, wholesalers, and distributors.

Currently, you must order a minimum of 10 numbers for a charge of $225. You can order online and it only takes a few days for delivery. For more information and to apply, visit:

- RR Bowker (http://www.bowker.com/bowkerweb/)
- ISBN Home Page (http://www.isbn.org/)

Sell or Free

As you package your e-book, decide if it will be distributed free of charge or for a fee. Usually, free e-books contain bits and pieces of information that induce the sale of other products and services and increase traffic to the host Web site.

* Free E-Books
A free e-book should be a leader to something better that must be purchased. If you create an e-book that you want to sell, it's always a good idea to either block certain pages with a password or distribute a subset of the main e-book free. When determining how to provide a free version of your e-book, think about the following questions:

- Which chapters will everyone be able to read?
- Do I create a free version and a for-pay version?
- How will I get people to pay for the e-book once they review the free one?
- How will I promote and distribute the product?

* For-Pay E-Books
As for the for-pay version of the e-book, you can use PayPal (http://www.paypal.com) or ProPay (http://www.propay.com) to accept payment because they are much easier to setup on a simple site. The only problem is that they are not very flexible when dealing with automating order processing. If you have the time and the funds later, you can always upgrade to a merchant account, order-processing environment.

You also have to develop a set of procedures for handling purchases. These procedures identify the steps for collecting funds, handling returns, and sending the password or key to unlock the e-book. An example of these procedures is as follows:

- User submits a purchase request.
- You accept the request and receive payment.
- You send the password, key, a URL to the complete product, or the complete product itself via e-mail.
- If the user wants to return the product, determine their reasoning and refund the money.

* Selecting the Right Price

Selecting a price for the e-book is always a tough decision, but a very important one. Remember that the main advantage to e-books is in the inexpensive methods of production. You can usually write an entire e-book and have it published in a very short time. On top of that, when you generate the finished package, you can simply distribute that same copy instead of having to continually re-run the process to generate a new product---as in the print market.

To price your e-book correctly, research your competition's prices and determine if you have any added value above and beyond your competition. If so, either price it at their price or add 10%. With a good write-up and press release, you will draw readers because you are newer, have a larger footprint (i.e., more pages), and have more information.

Once it has been out there for a while, speak with your past customers or drop the price a little until sales begin to pick up. There are many tactics for setting the right price, but with proper market research, you should be able to come up with a solid price the first time around.

What's next?

Once the product is properly packaged and ready, you must promote it to the masses. This is not an easy task as there are so many decisions that must be made. Part III goes into some of the essential elements of e-book promotion and provides some references to help you get started.