When you’re looking to write your first ebook you often end of being overwhelmed by the many technical options available to you. The good news is that this need not be the case. There are a lot of different pieces of software available to help you to create an ebook, and I’m going to take you through three different ones throughout this article.
The first tool you should consider is an Ebook Compiler. There are many of these on the market and you can choose one that’s appropriate for your needs. The Ebook Compiler will take a little information and compile it into an executable file, which people can read on their machine. This has got an advantage in that you can include digital rights management to make sure that people don’t copy your ebook without your permission. There are some disadvantages with this approach. Sometimes people want to print out the ebook because they prefer to read a physical copy and this can be difficult with an Ebook Compiler. There are also issues that you may have to support the software afterwards and this can be an onerous process. However, if you’re very concerned about the integrity of your product, an Ebook Compiler could be for you.
The second option is one that most people have on their computers, and that’s to use Microsoft Word, which is part of the Microsoft Office family. The advantage of Microsoft Word is that you’ve probably already used it and are very familiar with it. It’s fairly straightforward to lay out a longer document in Microsoft Word and it has built-in tools which help you to generate tables and contents. You can use Styles to layout your document to the best effect. Microsoft Word should be a serious consideration if you have it.
If you don’t have Microsoft Word, then the good news is that there’s a free alternative available which comes as part of the Open Office suite. Open Office is an open source piece of software. It will run on many different platforms and is made available to any users at no cost. The people who created the Open Office software, they also do this for free, so it can be worth considering giving a donation if you find the software useful. Open Office Writer, which is the word processing part of the package, has many features in common with Microsoft Word, although the layout of this is slightly different. So, you may take a little bit of time to get used to it. But you can produce a very powerful ebook using this free software solution.
You needn’t struggle to choose the tools to create your ebook. Consider an Ebook Compiler if integrity of your product is most important to you, though you may risk annoying some of your customers. Otherwise use a word processor. The two best known ones are Microsoft Word and Open Office Writer, and you should use whichever one you have installed on your system or you think works the best for your own needs.
Go ahead and get started with the ebook today using a tool. You’ll have it finished and ready to go very soon.