The Ebook Rant - By: Ryan Ambrose

I had real trouble trying to learn how to make an ebook.

I mean, how hard should it have been? I just wanted to make a PDF file. But when I bought a PDF file maker that said something like "Well, you use it just like a print command, only it prints to your PDF file", what did I get? Plain white garbage. My "printed" PDF barely qualified as a document, much less a sellable ebook. And even worse, the same sorry program didn't produce live links. They just turned into blue words with underlines.

Well, the ebooks made by the competition aren't plain white garbage. All of them look good, and some are spectacular. They have live links. They have graphics, icons, and formatted page templates, and they blow away the plain white garbage. In fact, if someone were to buy plain white garbage from me after seeing what a real ebook looked like, they would probably return it.

It's not like I asked someone to ship me all the gold in Fort Knox. I just wanted to create a nice, simple information product so I could sell it. The kind where I could add a little formatting, maybe an ebook template, and produce something I could in good conscience ask someone to pay money to receive. So why should it have taken me so long to muddle through all the things I required to actually do it?

I certainly muddled into everything else I didn't want. I didn't want an EXE ebook maker, because EXE ebooks are miserable. I didn't want someone to make it for me. I didn't want plain, vanilla, ordinary blank white insides. I sure didn't want to get a program and find out I couldn't use images like, oh, ebook covers, because it didn't stand for much formatting. I didn't need theory, although now that I know what to do, it helps. All I wanted were some simple instructions and a good utility to make a real ebook, not just a sentence here or a paragraph there saying that I should.

Now for the punchline. After wasting money and stumbling through all of this, I discovered that a wonderful program I've found to make real, well-formatted, sellable ebooks was free. I didn't need the stupid monthly fee PDF file creation services I'd bought previously. I didn't need the cheap, miserable programs that said "Well, we make your PDF files with just a print command". I could have had a thorough, user-friendly PDF maker with the OpenOffice.org Writer if I'd only known about it sooner. Surprise of surprises, I couldn't find that out either for the longest time.

All of this, just to learn how to make one of the most fundamental, building-block products of the online marketing world, the ebook. I wish I knew then what I do now.

About the Author

Does this sound familiar? Does it sound like something you'd like to avoid? Instead of blundering around the Internet, why not find out what you need and then learn how to use it to make real, sellable ebooks? You can, with my special report, The Ebook Walkthrough. Make your life easier, and get the scoop with The Ebook Walkthrough today! My name is Ryan Ambrose, and I'm the author of The Ebook Walkthrough.

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