"How To Make A Free eBook"
by Judith Tramayne-Barth
If you've been
on the net for two minutes, the first thing you
learn is there are plenty of ebooks available for
you to read. Everybody and their sister has written
ebooks on the best way to Market, HTML tutorials,
etc. and are offering them free.
Why?
Because they are an excellent vehicle to bring
visitors to your web site, create instant
credibility and tout your products in a
nonintrusive way. The bottom line here folks is
the bottom line. Free ebooks, if done right, will
bring you income.
Now this article is not going to do anything but
tell you the simple way to create an ebook. I
believe in the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)
philosophy. Everybody thinks there is some special
authoring tool you are supposed to buy or use, some
magical way you are supposed to format (i.e., PDF,
RTF, XML, etc.) -- well, I'm here to tell you it's a
matter of choice. Who's choice?
Yours, of course. You're writing the dang thing.
True, you have to take your readers into
consideration if you are selling your ebooks but
since this article is about free electronic books, I
am going to talk about the easiest format to create
it. Use HTML.
What's that you say? HTML is for creating web pages
-- well listen clueless -- it's also used for
creating ebooks. You have to have some type of
viewer so why not use the one most people have. Yes
that's right, a browser which everybody either got
when they bought their system or else they got
ripped off.
By creating your ebook in HTML, you are not going
to spend any money. Get it? Free means free both to
the reader and you - the writer. Now it's not as
hard as you think. It is definitely easier than a
web page.
All you need to know is a few Basic things.
1) Use a text editor -- I use notepad or
wordpad depending on the length. If you have Windows
95 or 98, Click on Start, go up to Programs,
Accessories then over to Notepad or Wordpad and
click.
Note: I am showing you this method because why write
your ebook in a word processor when you are going
to convert it to HTML. Save yourself a step.
Remember this ebook is free and is not going to be
put in any other format. (MAC users, you are on your
own -- I know nothing related to MACS other than
they have something called SimpleText.)
2) Put the following in the blank part of either
text editor you've selected:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0
Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Name of your ebook goes
here</title>
</head>
<body>
Don't put anything in your body tag if you want a
white background with a black text. Since I hate
staring at a white screen for any length of time
because my eyes grow tired, I use the following:
<body bgcolor="#A0C0C8"
link="red" vlink="maroon"
text="#121160">
It is a muted blue background and a darker blue
text! You of course can put any color you wish as
your background and text color. I don't use a jpg or
gif for the background because I only want one file
people have to download and open or one html file I
can send to MAC users via email.
Next, I put the following in so the browser
knows I want my ebook to have margins on the right
and left side no matter what size monitor the person
is using. I've been told by someone who owns a
Rocket ebook, this table looks good on it also.
Not having one, I have to take their word for it.
<table border="0"
cellpadding="0" cellspacing
="0">
<tr>
<td width="15%"></td>
<td width="70%"></td>
<td width="15%"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td height="1000"></td>
<td width="70%" valign="top"
align="center">
If you need more height to accommodate your ebook,
just increase the number in the table. After this,
it's a piece of cake. I write using Basic HTML codes
-- you know the ones:
<hx></hx>
for Headers with the "x" changed from 1-7
to change size. One being the largest font and 7
being the smallest. Actually, I only use from h1
through h4. The rest I've found are too hard to
read.
<p align="justify">
<p align="center">
<p align="left">
tells the browser how I want my text to be aligned.
I normally use <p align="justify">
for my paragraphs on a nonfiction ebook because
with the table width I use, the margins are
justified and I like this look. I absolutely loathe
ragged edges. But, again this is a personal choice.
Don't forget to put your ending code </p> in
because with the Open EBook Standard, which will
more than likely be implemented, requires you end or
close all your codes. So you might as well get used
to writing for it now and save yourself the agony of
putting them in at some future date.
And, I usually like my text in the following fonts:
<font face="arial, helvetica,
sansserif" size="3">
But this is a personal choice and you can change it
to whatever you want. Specifying more than one font
means your ebook will be seen in most browsers the
way you intended.If the user does not have the first
font, they will more than likely have the second and
the third choice just means use a generic font that
isn't fancy.
Now you are ready to write your ebook. Just
make sure when you start new paragraphs, you put in
the <p align=xxxx> codes and your ending
</p> codes. After you're finished, don't
forget to put in:
</td>
</tr>
</table>
or the Netscape browser won't show your wonderful
pearls of wisdom. Finally you finish off with:
</body>
</html>
Hopefully while writing your ebook, you've been
saving it. If not Click on File, Save As, put your
file name in and make sure you use the .html
extension.
Every now and again, you will want to check how your
ebook will look in your browser. It's a lot easier
to catch mistakes in it than looking at your text
editor.
Speaking of text editors, if you hate notepad or
wordpad then use 1stPage2000 by Eversoft. Once you
get used to this FREE program -- notice how I keep
stressing free, you will save yourself loads of
time. Also you can build beautiful clean HTML coded
Web Pages with it.
1stPage2000 can be downloaded at:
www.evrsoft.com
Another free program I like even better than
notepad, wordpad or 1stPage 2000 is
"EditPad". It doesn't have the line
limitations of notepad but has loads of features
which are very useful when creating HTML pages. You
can find this free program at:
EditPad at http://www.jgsoft.com
So there you have it, all the information you need
to create your free ebook to get you started on
your marketing path to success.
About the Author:
Judith Tramayne-Barth
If you want to see how this ebook template looks in your browser, just download my mystery novel at: http://www.agoodread.com
