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The Best Program For Writing An eBook

This is a question I get a lot and the answer may surprise you.  As a designer, you may be thinking that I would recommend the best program for publishing, printing or designing as good design can help convert eBook viewers to eBook buyers.  While that may be true, that may or may not be the best program for you to write in.

What I have seen work time and again for eBook Authors is to use the program they are most comfortable writing in.  For many this is Microsoft Word, for others this may be a Google Doc that they can share with collaborators, and for Apple fans, it may be Pages.  All this to say, stick to the program you are comfortable with for the writing phase of your eBook.  This will allow you to focus on the most important part of writing an eBook – the writing.  It will also not slow you down with a new interface, unfamiliar tools and quirks or even the high costs of some new program.

The Best Program For Designing An eBook

Once you are finished with the writing and proofing of your eBook, it is time to design your eBook.  This is where a different program may be your best option, but don’t worry, it may be easier than you think.  If you are doing your eBook on a shoestring budget and don’t have much money for design, then Microsoft Word is an OK option as your final eBook file.  I would highly recommend at least getting a custom eBook Cover made and having a friend with a designers eye look over the pages and make suggestions for how to spruce up the text and formatting.  Adding one or two colors and different fonts can go a long way in helping it stand out from just a normal Word doc.

Below are two different layout examples of layouts I made for clients who needed the final files to be editable in Word.  In both of these cases, the eBooks had no pictures and only text.  I spent some time giving the text proper formatting and then creating a color scheme and some layout embellishments to match the branding of the eBook author.  I also used the formatting to make it easier to read with bullet points, quotes and callouts.  All of this was done while making sure to stay within the budget requirements.  If you need some help taking your Word doc to the next level, let me know here.

click image for full size

If you are wanting the best design possible for your eBook and are looking to have it stand out from the rest, then, unfortunately, Word is pretty limited in what it can do.  So what program should you use?  Well it depends on what you are looking to do with your eBook.  Below are some example of custom eBook templates design I have made in Pages, iBooks Author and InDesign:

click image for full size

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• How am I going to distribute my eBook?
  • Will it be a digital file like a PDF, ePub, or .mobi?
  • Will I possibly want to print it in the future?
  • Do I want it available for sale on Apple’s iBooks Store?
• What do I want to include in my eBook?
  • Just text and images?
  • Videos and Audio Files?
  • Interactive Quizzes and images?

Based on your answers to the above questions, the below chart should help you narrow down and pick a program to use.  If you would like me to design and convert your word document for you, contact me here and I’ll be glad to provide a free quote.

If you are planing to distribute your eBook in PDF, you can use any of the above programs.  If you are wanting to sell your eBook on the iBooks Store, you can only use iBooks Author.  If you are wanting to have the option of professionaly printing your eBook in the future, then InDesign is the program to go with.  I hope this chart and article have been helpful and best of luck with your eBook.

Other formats

One format that is not covered in the chart above is .mobi files which are currently required for Amazon Kindle.  There are a few option for this.  The first is to convert your file to .mobi yourself using MS Word export to HTML feature and then uploading that file to Amazon Direct Publishing Platform for conversion to .mobi.  This option can work, but can be tedious to make it look right and also may require some very basic HTML knowledge.  Personally I recommend paying to have it done as I have never been able to do a conversion in less that 5+ hours and there are many shops around the internet that will do it for $100 – $150 total.

If you have questions about eBook publishing, Custom eBook template designs or something else related to eBooks, please feel free to contact me here and I’d be glad to help any way I can.

*While video and audio embedding is possible with an InDesign PDF, the process is a bit tricky and computability can be an issue with tablet and smartphone readers.  For this reason, if you want a lot of audio and video interactivity, I recommend iBooks Author, but the interactive version can only be sold on the iBooks Store.

Mike came to me wanting two separate websites. One to act as the public face of Moye Sports, and one as a password protected area for potential clients and prospects. The public site would highlight Moye Sports and its players in the news and act as a type of introduction to the company. The password protected site would give more information about the company, its record breaking contracts, marketing, endorsements, history and more.

The site started out being a slightly modified template, but as the project progressed Mike requested more customization. Mike and I worked together until his whole team liked the design and then I implemented it. It was a fun process and I am really proud of the final website and the custom functionality and graphics that make it stand out. Below are some of the design elements and features we worked on. Hope you enjoy them.

Moye Sports Public Site Key Features

One of the things I am very proud of, and that the Moye Sports team and followers have really liked, is the made from scratch (in Photoshop) Custom News Flash Image and functionality. I edited the PHP code for the template to allow Mike and his team to quickly and easily update the News Flash headline and link. I also made it so that they could turn the feature on and off all with no coding knowledge or skills. You can see the News Flash graphic below.

News Flash

Moye Sports public home page. Click the image to visit the website.

Moye Sports custom News Flash graphic. Click to view large.

NewsBox

The NewsBox is another area of the site that Mike was really pleased with the functionality of. It allows his team to easily and quickly update the site with the latest media coverage and can also be linked to the News Flash on the home page.

Moye Sports Newsbox.

Moye Sports Password Protected Site Key Features

One of Mike’s ideas and requests for the password protected site was that the entrance to it somehow look like a sports ticket. Initially I could not think of a way to do this, but eventually found a plugin that allowed for the private site to not be visible without logging in. I then customized the WordPress login screen to look like a SkyBox ticket as that is the name of the private section of the site.

Moye Sports SkyBox custom WordPress login page. Click image to view large.

Record Breaking Contracts

Mike wanted a page to beautifully and easily showcase some of his record breaking deals over the years. The problem or, issue, rather, was that he has had so many record breaking contracts. We needed to figure out a way to display enough information so that contracts of interest would be easily accessible to potential clients, but not so much that they would be overloaded with information. We also wanted this to be done in a visually pleasing and creative way. After a few revisions, we arrived at the designs below – one for baseball and one for football.

Moye Sports SkyBox – Contract Negotiations page

Moye Sports SkyBox – Record Breaking Contract Negotiation details page

I really enjoyed working with Mike and his team on this site and had a lot of fun designing the custom graphics and functionality for it. Please check out the public site here. Thanks so much to Mike and the Moye Sports team for all their collaboration and hard work to get this site up and running.

All design are made in Adobe Illustrator for professional printing and I can either work with a printer of your choice or handle the printing for you.

Click to view large.

David is no stranger to HTML himself and he actually provided me with a mock up website of his idea. I took this concept and made a customized WordPress template focussing on strong unified branding and custom graphics to give this start up airline a look of professionalism and trust. I also worked with David to make the site as simple and easy to navigate as possible and used a premium WordPress plugin to allow booking and checkout on the page with secure payment via credit card and/or paypal.

Featured aspects of this project

The home page of the website is designed to be as intuitive and minimal giving the user two possible choices – book now or get more info.

Wild Orchid Airlines home page. Click to go to live site.

The booking page is built around the Gravity Forms WordPress Plugin allowing for flight class, route and date selection as well secure and painless checkout by credit card or PayPal.

The more info page is where I really got to have some fun making some custom graphics and spending time making the text easy and interesting to read. You can see what it looks like below and click the image to visit the live site.

Wild Orchid Airlines – More Info page. Click to view live site.

Here is a selection of some of the hand crafted graphics that I made for the page. Click to view large.

Since this was a brand new airline, we both wanted the website to have strong branding throughout giving the viewer added trust and confidence that they were here to stay and not just something that was thrown together. The website has only three main pages with some additional pages in the footer which allowed me to spend most of my time on the design, custom graphics, layout and user experience in order to ensure a pleasing and easy research and checkout process.

Once the website was finished up it was time to get ready for the marketing and promotion which you can read more about here.

I made the video using Apple’s Keynote program so that it could be easily updated and edited in the future with no professional software needed. I enjoy using Keynote and trying to push it to it’s limits to make it look nothing like a traditional presentation or PowerPoint.

Here is what I cam up with after about two revisions. I had a lot of fun making for David, the owner of Wild Orchid Airlines and I was glad to hear he loved it and so do his new customers. Enjoy.

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David again sent me a mock up of his idea for some pull up banners and I took these, converted them into vector format, refined them slightly (David has an eye for design as well, so they were pretty good to go from the start) added some icons to give make them a little more recognizable and memorable and sent David the ideas. He got back to me with some feedback and on the second revision, we were both happy with them. They were sent off to the printer and, so far, have received compliments and praise from the potential customers for their layout and design. Here are the two designs. These are large pull up banners each measuring 30 inches by 79 inches and we think they turned out beautifully.

Wild Orchid Airlines – Tickets Pull Up Banner.

Wild Orchid Airlines – Nude Fares Pull Up Banner.

Once those were done it was time for a fun promotional giveaway design. Again, David sent me the concept he had in mind and I made it into a professionally printable reality and here is the end result – A Boarding pass design for a promotional drawing.

Wild Orchid Airlines – Boarding Pass Promotion. Click to view large

Lastly, but certainly not least, David requested a slideshow to play on a big screen at the airline booth to highlight some of the airline’s features as well as its premier destination of Cebu, Philippines. The airline is the first and only in Australia to offer direct flights from Darwin to Cebu. Click here to read more about the project and see the video. I had a lot of fun working with David and I was glad to hear how much he loved and appreciated my work and that his new customers do too.

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