eBook Layout & Delivery Methods - Advice Requested

My thoughts:

Creating your eBook in Word or Open Office is a good idea, you don't need fancy programs.

What you can do is use predesigned templates to create an appealing layout, which you can easily export to pdf.

Here is some info on free options:

Free PDF Ebook Word Templates
How to create an awesome eBook Template using Word or Apple Pages

but I would also recommend searching the Warrior Forum, as several warriors have offered excellent eBook templates in the past as part of a WSO.

You can password protect your pdf if you want to protect your download, but making it only available online really limits the value to the user, so I don't think that is a good idea.

Once your ebook is done, you should make it accessible in as many popular platforms as you can, which would certainly include the Kindle.

Hi Lafferty,

I'd focus more upon the sales than the layout or anything else.

No disrespect intended, but aesthetics is something you only get the luxury of worrying about when you're making good money

Just my opinion. Best of luck friend

Marcus

Hi Lafferty,

Word 2007 and up will save as a .pdf. Just set your page size, margins, header, and footer the way you want it, and save as .pdf.

If you have an earlier version of Word, get the Open Office that Amy suggested. It is free, and it reads Word doc and docx. You can also cut and paste into it. Then save as .pdf.

Making your .pd ebook is the easy part of the process.

Next you need a website and an autoresponder company - Aweber, Imnicamail, Contant Contact, etc. The autoresponder company will give you HTML code to create the opt-in form. You just drop into the code of your Website to put the opt-in form where you want it.

At the autoresponder company there will be a place at their Website where you put the location of your ebook so the AR company can send people to the download once they opt-in.

You can save your .pdf with a goofy name to make it harder for people to find and steal it, or you can put your .pdf into a zipped folder so the search engines can not read it. There are other ways to protect it too.

You just upload your .pdf to your website with FTP software - filezilla is free. So, if your book is titled Thy76JjFr.pdf it would be at your site as:

http://www(dot)yoursitename(dot)com/Thy76JjFr.pdf if not zipped, or

http://www(dot)yoursitename(dot)com/Thy76JjFr.zip if you zip it.

That would be the URL you put into your autoresponder's company, and they send people to that URL when people opt-in.

:-Don

Amy gave you good links to some simple WORD templates, but I'd agree there are a little more sharp templates that warriors have sold in the past. If aesthetics matter, I'd look around for those as well. For security, besides password-protecting, you can upload the ebook to e-Junkie and use their security stamping feature.
_____
Bruce

Lafferty, I am using Aweber. A cohort of mine uses iContact. Aweber seems to be the most popular, but they are a little higher in price.

Imnicamail is owned by a warrior.

:-Don

Lafferty, I just sent you a PM. I think I can help you with your ebook formatting

Tracy

Hi Lafferty,

If you haven't already found someone then you need to take up Tracy's offer. She is REALLY GOOD!

I understand your need to embellish and put out a well polished product. After all, it is your name, your reputation and your image that is on the book, so you want to make sure that the content and the packaging is top notch.

For what you need, I will recommend Tracy without a blink!

As a matter of fact, I am working on a project where part of the objective is to put the book on Kindle and also on clickbank...and guess who will be doing the editing.....?

Tracy!

You are on the right track!

Richard

Hi Lafferty,

I too can vouch for Tracey, she comes highly recommended by a good IM friend of mine Steve D, and I have used her sites many times. One thing you could consider doing if you felt the need is you could password protect the ebook before you convert it in to pdf format in Open Office, it's free software and it's unbelievably easy to use and it's a brilliate piece of software. Your background in Marketing will definately help you with copywriting for marketing your eBook. Password protecting the pdf is not really recommended, but what you can do is you can disable the right click option, so that they can't copy your content, also putting page breaks in the orinal format prevents this too, as they'd have to copy each and every page and that will put most people off. Also, if you use ClickBank, JVZoo, Amazon.ca and other vendor platforms, then you could easily use a script to encrypt your download page, and if you also put your download page in a robot.txt file as a NO Follow, then search engines won't pick your download page up either. Hope this information helps you. Best of luck and please private message me when your eBook is up and ready for sale, if the sales copy is written by yourself and good, then I may be interested in forming a partnership with you, where I'd teach you the ropes more and you do the copy, and we split some caash, it's called Joint Venturing and I've got a lot of good products being released soon and I'd be interested in JVing with someone who can write compelling sales copy and marketing copy. Also, I forgot to mention, you could also look in to Self Publishing with CreateSpace and Lulu and other self-publishing websites, if you can write good descriptions for the listings, then you may be on to a winner with a physical book too. It's been known to happen and Self Publishing is free, unless you choose to pay for some services that the publishing company offers, but that's always optional. One last thing, I forgot to mention that you can also download an OpenOffice extention to convert to ePub format too. Cheers. Stan Fields.