Creating an Ebook, Part 2
As a follow-up to my post on creating your own ebook, I want to touch on some alternate forms for an ebook that you may want to pursue.
A PDF document is great for printing or reading on your computer, because it is a “fixed layout” format. However, it is lousy for reading on a cellphone, PDA, or ebook reader like the Kindle or Sony Reader. To reach people using these kind of devices you need to reformat your ebook in a different way, as a “reflowable” format. This allows the page to be displayed nicely on different sizes of screens, like portable devices. All of these formats listed below are reflowable formats, so they’re great for your mobile readers.
MOBI
This is short for Mobipocket. Mobipocket products support most Windows, Symbian, BlackBerry and Palm operating systems, but not Linux or Macintosh.
To create a file in this format, you need to download the Mobipocket Creator. It’s free to download. If your document is already in Word or RTF format, you can easily import it into the Creator and create the .mobi file.
Microsoft LIT
LIT files can only be read by the Microsoft Reader program, so a person would need to download Microsoft Reader to view them. To create a .lit file you use “Read in Microsoft Reader”. It’s an add-on, available from Microsoft, that can be used in conjunction with Microsoft Word (versions 2000, 2002 and 2003) to create .LIT extension e-books. It is not compatible with Office 2007, though.
eReader
This is a freeware program for viewing Pam Digital Media electronic books. Versions are available for PalmOS, iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile Pocket PC/Smartphone, desktop Windows, and Macintosh. The reader shows text one page at a time as paper books do. eReader supports embedded hyperlinks and images (a nice touch!). Additionally the Stanza application for the iPhone and iPod Touch can read both encrypted and unencrypted eReader files. eReader.com offers two Windows/MacOS programs for producing ebooks: the free Dropbook and the paid-for eBook Studio.
In Summary
If you’re going to be creating a large number of ebooks for your audience or fans, you may want to consider investing some time in creating these alternate formats. It will give your fans many more ways to enjoy your writing.
*Much of the info here is taken from Wikipedia.org — a great resource when you need to know something.
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2 comments
David (1 comments.) on March 13, 2009 at 7:03 am
I would just like to query the points made here. I greatly enjoy e-books. However, my experience has lead me to the position that I will not even consider anything that is not available in PDF format.
PDF is not only a fixed layout format, it can and does easily reflow. E.G. I own a Nokia E51 phone, on which I run QuickOffice’s implementation of the Acrobat Reader. I have currently read three novels in PDF format on my phone, all which I read in reflow mode. In summary, an inability to reflow text in a PDF file is not a limitation of the file format, but possibly the application you are viewing it with. In the case of Symbian, which holds the majority of the smartphone market, reflow is available (admittedly, at a price).
The other big reason that I have for avoiding the other formats you mention is because of DRM. Please do correct me if I am wrong. However, my impression is that when buying E-books, the book is tied to your device, which means that if you loose or change your phone it will be so much trouble to get your books transferred to a new device, most people will probably give up, thus loosing their books.
Interested to hear what you think about all this.
Keep up the great work on this blog,
David.
Cheryl on March 15, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Hi David,
That’s good to know that a PDF can reflow. Most of those I’ve used myself do not, so there must be something in how it is created that allows for that.
Regarding DRM, I think you’re correct. Buying a commercially-produced ebook probably does make the file device-specific. I haven’t delved into DRM that much to know if creating an ebook in one of the formats listed in the post has any automatic security. A writer would need to test the new formats out before releasing them to the public, just to be sure of how they will work for their readers.
I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. Thanks for stopping by!