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Welcome to the Best Ebook Publication Page:

A Word from the Memoir Network Director

Denis Ledoux, memoir expert
Hello ,

Publishing your memoir or non-fiction book independently is an exciting project—but it can also be daunting. There are many tasks to perform. Some of them you may already have mastered but most of what needs to be done is probably new to you. Luckily, you do not have to do every task yourself. We can help. Creating an ebook is an important next step for many writers. You have come to the right place to learn how you can work with a professional team to turn your manuscript or hard copy book into a well-prepared ebook.

If after reading the following Best Ebook publication pages, you still have any questions or if you are ready to schedule your ebook production project, call me at 207-353-5454 or email me.

To your success!
Denis Ledoux

Hard copy is not the only promise anymore.

best ebook production

For most writers, the published hard-copy version of their book has been the promise fulfilled. We writers have wanted to hold our book in hand and flip through its pages and feel the bulk of our tome and think, “I’ve done it.” But…

Publishing your book as an ebook is now viable.

Ebooks are on the ascendancy. Every year, their share of the book-reading audience grows. Granted you can’t experience the ebook as a satisfying weight in your hand (unless it’s the ereader you are feeling) nor can you feel the page turning, but…

The ebook has become nonetheless a good choice at many levels.

An ebook is a good buy for the reader.

The ebook is a good buy for the reader because

  • it is economical (usually costing 10% to 20% of the cost of a hard copy),
  • it stores in a Kindle, Nook, etc.
  • it is easy to tote, and
  • it is super quick for the reader to purchase and read immediately.

An ebook is a good product for the independent publisher.

The ebook is an attractive option for the independent publisher because

  • it is economical to produce and so does not require a big upfront investment.
  • it can be published at any length—no need to pad a text to justify a bigger cover price.
  • It can be revised and edited quickly and cheaply.
  • it is easy to distribute via Amazon, Barnes and Noble , Smashwords, etc.

If you do not have a digital version of your book, you are losing out on both sales and on expanding your audience.

This is a good time to publish an ebook.

Which of the following describes you as a writer—whether you are an experienced writer or a spanking new one?

  • You have a manuscript that is ready for publication. Ought you to publish it as a print book or as an ebook or both?
  • You have a book already in print and are wondering if an ebook could help revitalize its sales.
  • You want to bring your writing to a new readership, a new audience, which accesses reading more readily through a digital format.

Whether your focus is on audience or on the marketplace, you should produce an ebook.

Our Experience with ebooks

At The Memoir Network, we have both a line of print books that have e-versions and a line of ebooks that stand alone without the support of a printed hard copy.

best ebook production

The ebook line has permitted us to publish manuscripts that are not long enough to publish viably as hard copy. For us, spine wide is important and short books are too narrow to have wording.

We sometimes want to test how a book will appeal to a readership. The ebook is an easy way to do some of this.

We also use the ebook, because it can be purchased for relatively little, as stimulus for an impulse purchase. We already have the manuscript so why not publish it in an alternative form to glean whatever sales are available digitally?

Can you learn to produce an ebook yourself?

Yes, you can. Here’s what you will have to learn:

  • you have to create effortless navigation from table of contents to chapters and back to table of contents.
  • you will have to make it possible for readers to click external links that bring them to a blog post on your website or to another web page. For the non-fiction writer, this is providing just-in-time learning at its best. For the memoirist or novelist, a link is an opportunity to send the reader to photos, illustrations or to text that has not made its way into the finish version of your book but which will enhance the reader’s experience.
  • you must let the reader review another section of the ebook or navigate to endnotes—and come back to the spot they were reading—just as s/he would with a hard copy. Otherwise your reader will find your ebook “difficult.”
best ebook production

Can you really learn to do this? Of course you can, but…

Before you commit to producing an ebook yourself, you do well to consider:

  • whether you now have the skills to succeed at this new project and, if not,
  • what you might expect the learning curve to be to learn the skill you need, and
  • how many times you will use this hard-earned skill as to make learning it viable?

But, Consider this…

You can also learn to wire your house and do the kitchen and bathroom plumbing.

Of course, you can learn these skills. If the technical work is something you enjoy, why not dive in and regale in electrical work or plumbing—or ebook production! But…

What if the technical work of converting a manuscript into an ebook is not your idea of a fun way to spend several weeks or even a month (and it can take that long if you don’t know what you are doing)?

What if becoming a computer geek doesn’t “float your boat?” Why would you spend time learning specific skills when you can hire the work out and spend your day doing something you enjoy more?

An Impasse That Took All Day to Resolve

Recently, Bruce, our ebook technician, came up against a technical impasse as he was preparing our flagship book Turning Memories Into Memoirs for its best ebook publication. The conversion from manuscript format to ebook had been a piece of cake until…

best ebook production

He hit a problem because the book had been formatted previously for hard copy and some undetected—and seemingly undetectable—coding was interfering with progress! What to do? Well, after trying every permutation of a solution he could come up with, he went on the ‘net and searched a number of forums and blogs to see if he could find someone who had written up a viable solution.

Finally, after hours of reading posts and leaving his own messages, he found someone who picked up on his question, and with the help of this man, he arrived at a solution that was exactly what he needed to move forward with e-publication.

He will use this solution many times as he prepares many more ebooks and offers you a best ebook publication option. For your part, do you want to spend an entire day finding a solution you may use once?

I know I wouldn’t.

There is an easier, quicker solution.

You can hire someone to produce your ebook. The Memoir Network, for instance!

You Can Avoid the Confusing Array of Choices

There are many choices to make when you are readying a book for electronic publication. Each step is weighted with its processes.

  • How do you set up hyperlinks—internal and external—and how can you maximize their effectiveness?
  • What are tags and how do they work?
  • What do anchors do? Do you really need them? How do you code them?
  • Should you go with a flow or a fixed format? What are the advantages of either?
  • What’s the difference between mobi and epub and pdf as ebook formats—and should you have all formats ready? Which one does Kindle require and which is a Nook platform? Are each prepared separately or is there an order of creation that saves time? (If you do one format first, does that make doing the second and the third less difficult? Or, if I do the wrong one first, do I have to start all over with the second?)

We know how to do all of this easily and elegantly!

Making a “Best Ebook Publication Choice”

There is no question that you can do the work yourself. You can acquire the skills and knowledge to produce an ebook. I’m not going to try to tell you otherwise. But…

It always comes down to: “Is doing everything yourself the best choice?”

  • Would you rather be writing another book than struggling with creating anchors?
  • Would you rather be earning income at your day job—being a therapist, an accountant, a nurse, or an Indian chief—than figuring out why a particular hyperlink does not return as it should?
  • Would you say you have talent for detailed work (computer work is very detailed!) that often calls for going back over and over again to coding?

Click on the book image to receive your free sample of one of our ebooks.

best ebook production
The cover photo of The Nice-Nice Club Holds Its Last Meeting links to a memoir.
Memoir Writing 101
Click the book image to link
to an example of a non-fiction book.

Take the next step. Call us today!

I’d love to walk through the best ebook publication process with you.

Call 207-353-5454, M-F, 9-5 ET, or  email us to set up a complimentary consultation. Suggest three dates and times that work for you and we will confirm one.