How to transcribe your book into an ebook format
Website design By BotEap.comThere is a question that would never have been asked just a few years ago. A few years ago, eBooks were sold through their own website. And the market was not that big.
Website design By BotEap.comBut that market no longer exists. In its place is a market that is one of the fastest growing industries. A market where the main resellers clamor for the product. A situation that books have never enjoyed!
Website design By BotEap.comAs a result, many small publishers and unpublished authors are dusting off their stack of books and transcribing them into an ebook format to ship to major bookstores. And you can do it too!
Website design By BotEap.comBut then the question is “How to transcribe your book into an ebook format?”
Website design By BotEap.comFirst of all, you need to realize that eBook readers use multiple formats. Each of the resellers want their books shipped in their own format, if possible. Therefore, he must determine what formats to transcribe to.
Website design By BotEap.comMost manufacturers have settled on one or the other of the above electronic publishing formats. The Apple iPad currently uses the MOBI format. The Kindle, on the other hand, uses the ePub format. Most of the others prefer the ePub format. Of course, the actual formats that each accepts will vary over time.
Website design By BotEap.comUnfortunately, Word and PDF are not common, or preferred as source documents.
Website design By BotEap.comThat’s the bad new.
Website design By BotEap.comThe good news is that each of the manufacturers will translate various formats into their preferred format. That means you can use plain text or HTML as the common format.
Website design By BotEap.comWhich is a lifesaver for the author with a manuscript in Word format that he wants to transcribe.
Website design By BotEap.comCurrently, most word processors (for example, MS Word, OpenOffice Writer, and WordPerfect) provide some form of HTML. Unfortunately, most of them also provide a weird form of HTML with special non-standard codes to cover their own quirks.
Website design By BotEap.comThis is made worse by the fact that the HTML supported by eBook makers is actually a subset of HTML.
Website design By BotEap.comTo overcome this, the technique I’ve found most useful when transcribing books into eBooks is to remove all formatting and page titles (footers/headers) from a temporary copy of the book. This book is then saved as a text file which removes all codes.
Website design By BotEap.comI can then retrieve the text file in an HTML editor like Frontpage, Expression, Dreamweaver, or one of countless free variations. Using copy and paste gives me the control I need over the file. This allows me to mark up the text file correctly without worrying about bogus codes.