E-book Creation Software
...has anyone ever tried it? There are so many and most of them boast ease of use as well as protection for your content like only being able to open the e-book on one computer, disabling content after a trial period, no printing and the ability to add pictures, music and links. I am not interested in adding sounds or pictures (except perhaps a cover) but am interested in the protection they speak of. Does it work, or does it just make looking at the book a pain in the a$$?

I don't know much about it. I do know that a lot of readers hate the DRM (digital rights management) tech and won't buy books that use it. Most presses and self-pubbers thend to go with simple open formats like pdf.

I think I wouldn't bother with digital rights management. I had a reader lose her copy of an ebook and run out of the time period to download the novel she purchased. She was devastated. I know it's not the same thing, but if a computer craps out on someone, DRM stops that person from reloading the story onto her computer if she had to wipe her harddrive and load the operating system from scratch. I don't think that's fair. It's not at all like passing a book from one shelf to another. It's like saying you can only keep a paperback on three shelves, but you can't use the book if you change houses. All shelves are no longer valid.

Hmmm, I understand. It is just that I have seen how upset authors get, and rightfully so, when they see their work ripped and placed on file-sharing sites. I guess it is a catch-22 situation.

As a writer I understand that DRM as it currently works won't change that. Making my readers happy is more important than making the pirates lives difficult. I have one DRM book that I bought. The password was publisher issued, I forgot it within a few days. Now I can't read the book. That was enough that I only buy open access now.

Oh I see :) Well, how about the idea of using the software just to create your own e-books and publish them yourself? Has anyone ever done that?

I know KM has, and Dusk self-pubs a magazine... I am sure they will turn up soon.

Primo PDF creates adobe readable PDFs. Doesn't have all the bells and wistles, BUT it's free and actually has an option for print as e-book (and form and a few others). Plus you can put security on the document -- to the extent that no one else can come in and change the content. It also alows you to "lock" the document via password protect if you really want to. I use it in my law practice for "printing" forms and then emailing them to my clients. For a free program I'm pretty happy with it.

Locking does make sense. Readers don't need to be able to edit the book.

Yes, the ebook versions of my books on Lulu are actually created with OpenOffice. I had a reader mention to me that Lulu's version pdf files are not tagged, which basically means that a book's size will not flow to fit whatever screen size a reader happens to have. OpenOffice gives me a tagged PDF. Unfortunately, it doesn't translate pages exactly at the front of the novels or at the ends of chapters, so I have blank pages where I shouldn't. Other than that, it's a very readable copy. I have yet to use OpenOffice from beginning to end to create a novel. I hoping the software will eventually improve so that these blank space glitches no longer occur. For the print books, I must use Lulu's version PDF so my readers get properly formatted pages.

I use OpenOffice, after having written my novel in Word. I've written a whole lot in OO, and don't find it all that different apart from the fact I still haven't got spellcheck working right (this is linux, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was a seperate install). OO also prints to PDF, which is cool. It's a good (free) alternative to Word.

I know I am probably going to incur wrath from somebody for saying this, but....Gods I hate pdf! I know it is used because it opens across all platforms, but one of the reasons the creation software appealed to me in the first place is a lot of it says that many people (including me) find pdf cumbersome and complex. In response to that, many of these programs generate their own browsers and work within Windows. Of course, anyone on MAC will be out of luck in reading... My husband recently built me a new computer and to date I've not even installed Adobe Acrobat, and don't know if I ever will. Whenever I try and download anything and it comes up as pdf, I don't download it. No offense to those who like it - I just hate it LOL! Btw *jumps up and down* Thanx for all this feedback!!! :D :D :D

"It is just that I have seen how upset authors get, and rightfully so, when they see their work ripped and placed on file-sharing sites." As veinglory says, DRM won't prevent that. It doesn't take much sophistication at all to figure out how to break DRM. All that DRM does is penalize honest buyers. If you'd been following Google's tech news recently, you'd know that there's been a big swing away from DRM in music publishing. The reason for this is that music publishers discovered that DRM wasn't preventing piracy. It was *aiding* piracy, because buyers who would have been honest enough not to share MP3 files (which don't have DRM) got so sick and tired of all the hassle of dealing with DRM-protected music files that they began going to peer-to-peer networks to obtain illegal MP3 files. As a result, sales in the music industry plummeted. For a while, the music industry thought that the answer to this piracy was more DRM. :/ Now they're coming to their senses and starting to release music in DRM-less formats. Honest buyers no longer have any reason to go to peer-to-peer networks, and dishonest users have no greater an ability than before to swap illegal music (because it was always easy to break the DRM on music files). As for e-books, the most common formats seem to be HTML, LIT (Microsoft Reader), PRC (Mobipocket), and PDF (Adobe). I believe that all of these except HTML can be used with DRM, but they can all be used without it. PDF is the hardest of the e-book formats to work with, because it's intended for reproducing the look of print books. If you already have a book set up for printed form, it's ideal. Otherwise, you have to put together the same sort of design that you would if you were doing a print book, which is much harder than doing other e-book formats. LIT and PRC are both easy to format, as far as I can tell. I'll be able to tell you more in a few days, when I produced my first e-book. :) PRC is just a modified version of HTML. HTML, of course, is dead easy for anyone who can create a Web page. From the point of view of accessibility (says the visually impaired reader), PDF is the worst choice and HTML is the best choice (if one doesn't supply RTF e-books, which most publishers don't). HTML can be read by practically any screen reader, the reader can choose their own font, and HTML can be converted into TXT, which is even easier for screen readers to read. HTML is also readable on practically any mobile device. So my suggestion would be HTML format, plus (if you want to go to that trouble) at least one other e-book format. Here's the choices that some publishers have made: Allure: HTML, PDF, PRC. Ellora's Cave: HTML, LIT, PDF, PRC, REB (Rocketbook). Freya's Bower: HTML, PDF. Loose ID: HTML, LIT, PDF, PRC. Phaze: HTML, LIT, PDF, PRC, REB. Torquere: HTML, LIT, PDF, PRC.

Thank you!!! :) :) :) (I am visually impaired) When I write, I use Word, but I believe that I can save it into HTML format, rather than DOC format.

The only complaint I have about PDF is the initial size. Even a 3k story can come in at 100kbs. But the first 100kbs probably holds a lot of formatting and stuff. Then again, this is the broadband era ... Other than that, I got no complaints at all. Until I can find a format that can be read on any platform and remain uneditable. I hate TXT format. Just having had stories plagarised almost word for word in the past.