From Print to E-Book…what an adventure!
I am an article writer so actually publishing anything beyond my 750-1,200 words is a big step for me. Going from print to e-book has been even a bigger learning adventure. Thankfully, I have friends who know how to navigate the process and I am not to proud to ask…or even bribe with chocolate chip cookies…for some serious help.
The first person I turned to was my friend John Vonhof. He has several booklets published and also one that has been converted to e-book. He is the one who gave me Larry Kaye’s contact e-mail.
Larry was very helpful in walking me through the conversion process and doing some fine tuning as far as punctuation and grammar. He sent me this note in an e-mail and agreed to let me share it with you. Hope this gives you a glimpse into what is involved.
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Editing is always necessary and it should always be done by somebody else as it is too easy for the author to miss the mistakes in grammar and spelling. Correct Punctuation is often missing from sentences. I find this always, even after it has gone through the editing process.
There are too many eBooks out there with numerous mistakes that could have been corrected in the proofreading stage. It is also not too late for the author to correct them now, resubmit the corrected Word document and update their book.
Unfortunately negative Blogs on their book has already occurred and the sales potential drops, even though it may be a good story…unfortunately it is a terrible read.
My take on this is that the stages of a book should be:
1. The author writes a book and corrects as many errors as possible (in spelling, grammar and punctuation).
2. Give it to someone, with a good command of English and have them edit the book. Here the author sometimes lets their Ego get in the way and recommended changes are not accepted by the Author.
3. Once the book has been edited it needs to be Formatted for the eReaders.
4. At this stage it is now ready to be read (on an eReader) by a Proof-reader so that the last few mistakes are picked up and corrected without disturbing the Format.
5. You can now publish your book.
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To see my book on Amazon is kind of cool. Being able to publish something and have someone in a different state buy it and read it is flat out amazing!
Thanks John and Larry!
For those of you interested in doing an e-book conversion, feel free to drop Larry a line. His rates are super reasonable and he is very prompt and great to work with.
email ~ larrykaye@shaw.ca
