Adobe Acrobat
How to write and publish an eBook.
Ebooks are powerful tools for self-publishing and content marketing. Learn how to put one together and reach your readers.
Ebook basics for beginners.
An eBook, or electronic book, is a document designed specifically to be read on a computer or mobile device. There’s no set word or page count for writing in the eBook format — they can be anything from 10 pages to as long as a dictionary.
Understanding the eBook format.
Ebooks are fixed documents. Even though they’re digital, eBooks remain complete and unchanging upon publication. They might have new editions now and then, but like traditional books, once the text is in place, it stays. Like printed books, eBook content can cover any genre of fiction or nonfiction. Anything that could be published as a traditional book can also be published as an eBook.
Ebooks are also a popular form of content marketing. An eBook lets companies go into detail about how their product or service works and why it solves problems. It’s a great way to show off in-depth information and use cases, all of which can be important to lead generation, i.e., creating interest and buzz for a product or service that can eventually lead to a sale.
How to create an eBook.
For beginners and successful eBook creators alike, the first step of creating your own eBook is to start writing it. For that, you can use any number of word processing programs.
1. Writing your eBook.
Microsoft Word is a tried-and-true word processing program, but it’s not the only one. Programs like OpenOffice, Scrivener, Google Docs, and WordPerfect can also save documents as .doc files, which is a common word processing document format. Adobe Acrobat can easily read .doc files and convert them into PDFs.
2. Designing your own eBook.
If you’re publishing a book with a traditional publisher, there shouldn’t be any need for you to create an eBook yourself. Authors generally don’t deal with things like kerning and font choice. However, if you’re self-publishing, you have to act as your own designer.
Because word processing programs all deal with formatting, images, and graphics differently, it’s not always the best idea to use them for formatting your eBook. Adobe InDesign is purpose-built for formatting documents such as eBooks, and it’s designed to work with Acrobat.
In InDesign, you can choose styles for things like fonts for your main text, long quotes, and chapter headings (known as “body text,” “block quotes,” and “headers” in the publishing business, respectively). InDesign lets you add graphs, illustrations, page numbers, a table of contents, a title page, and other essential elements of long-form writing. You can even design your eBook cover here.
3. Discovering eBook templates.
Formulating a particular style for an eBook can be a lot of work, especially for your first eBook. Fortunately, templates for eBooks and other electronic publications are easy to find and work with. A template can help you quickly find the book format that works best for you, including elements like the color scheme and font choices that will determine the general feel you’re going for with your eBook.
4. Getting feedback on your eBook.
Don’t, however, act as your own editor or proofreader. If you can, get someone else to read your work and give you feedback. Having an additional set of eyes on your work is an essential part of the writing process and eBook creation. Every creator, whether they’re a graphic designer or a blogger, can benefit from feedback, so seek out feedback as part of eBook creation.
Acrobat makes gathering feedback easy. Whether you’re sending out your own novel to beta readers for their initial reactions or creating a B2B-focused eBook for an organization, you’ll need to get other people’s eyes on things. Acrobat’s note-taking feature lets your proofreaders, clients, stakeholders, or whoever else is reading your eBook send you feedback about text, graphics, formatting, and every other feature of your publication.
Prepping your eBook for distribution.
You can’t gather feedback on your eBook if its file size makes it a bear to share. These are a few things to keep in mind when thinking about how to share your eBook:
- When you’re done designing your work, save it as a PDF. PDFs are the most common file format for eBooks, and for good reason. If you format and publish your eBook in a less standard format, you risk losing information or your reader seeing a distorted document. PDFs are called “portable document format” for a reason: They preserve information in a way that word processor, text, or graphic document file types often don’t or can’t.
- Ebook readers like Amazon Kindle and Microsoft NOOK can handle PDF files. Windows and MacOS both include applications that read PDFs. Best of all, PDFs keep your formatting the same on all of these programs and devices. A reader perusing a PDF eBook on a NOOK will see the same thing as someone who opens the book using Microsoft Edge on a laptop.
- Ebooks can be as long as traditional books, which means bigger file sizes and longer download times. Fortunately, the Acrobat Compress tool allows you to quickly reduce a PDF’s size and make things easier for your readers. You can shrink down the size of your documents without losing any of your text, graphics, or illustrations.
3 reasons to compress files for first-time eBook writers:
- It makes them easier to submit to publishers.
- You can share them quickly with editors and reviewers via email while keeping attachment sizes down.
- They can be more quickly distributed to readers who’ve purchased your work directly.
Putting your eBook out in the world.
Letting people know about your eBook is just as big a task as creating one.
Promoting your eBook.
Once your eBook is out there, talk about it. How you use your eBook depends on what type of eBook it is. Promoting an eBook that’s part of a marketing strategy is different from promoting a more traditional literary electronic book.
Ebooks as marketing.
If your eBook is part of a content marketing strategy, you’ll need to promote it via LinkedIn, your email list, homepage, and anywhere else your target audience might visit. If possible, make a search engine optimized (SEO) landing page for your eBook. A marketing eBook is valuable because it’s your opportunity to communicate with a potential customer at length and really show them what you can do.
Ebooks as literature.
If your eBook is more traditional fiction or nonfiction, post about it on social media, promote it via media like podcasts and author appearances, and make sure that your eBook title and your name are out there in front of readers. Promote it like you would any other traditionally published paper book. After all, you’ve made something big. You might as well shout about it from the rooftops.
No matter what your eBook publishing goals are or how long your book is, there is a way to make it work. Use the Compress tool to get your file right-sized and take advantage of the many other eBook resources available to make something you can be really proud of.