The biggest challenge facing publishers when going down the ebook conversion route is the number of compromises that will need to be made. Your beautifully designed, elegant manuscript could turn into a jumble of words, broken images, incoherent headings and impossible navigation.

Our suggestion is that you err on the side of caution and remove things that can cause problems, work round them with some creative thinking or, even better, don’t add them in the first place. Things to consider:

1. Images – plain text books work best for ebook conversion, so for us non-fiction publishers where a picture can replace a thousand words, we have the task of ensuring the images are included correctly.
2. Headings – if you use styles / stylesheets correctly when designing your book then headings will not pose a problem, but will actually assist you in the conversion process.
3. Tables – will often format badly in the ebook standards, best to change to lists.
4. Page numbers & references – often in a manuscript you will see, “see page 16″, this does not work well in ebooks as page 16 could be 14 or 18 depending upon the ereader used, the zoom and the format rendered. Remove all page references.
5. Footnotes & endnotes – some formats handle these really well, others don’t. Add them into the text if possible.

In fact the only ebook format that will ensure the reader has a chance of seeing what you intended is the PDF, but this has its own issues.

So, what’s the process? What follows is our process for turning our Word documents into files that can be converted into all the e-book formats. This isn’t the only way, and I’m sure there are cleverer people who have managed to do this easier or faster, but this works for us, and is a good place to start.

Step 1 – Tidy Up

Your first task is to get the document into its most simple format, whilst retaining the layout you like!

We use Open Office as it produces a file that is slightly less problematic for ebook conversion. You can continue to use Microsoft Word if you want. First:

• Remove tables.
• Remove non-essential images.
• Remove Table Of Contents (especially page numbers).
• Ensure all headings are formatted as a style – H1, H2 etc.
• Remove boxes, unusual formatting, odd fonts.

Then save your document as an Open Office format – mybook.ODT

Step 2 – Install A Conversion Program & Create Docs

There are commercial conversion programs out there, but we like to use Open Source, both from a philosophical perspective and a money saving one!

The Calibre ebook management system is a good starting point. The software is updated frequently, so look out for updates.

Once downloaded and installed play around with it a little. In essence, you add an Open Office (or Word) document, then configure the settings for your document, then produce ebooks in the format you choose (Epub, LIT, MOBI, etc).

Settings to look at:

• Table of contents – you need the conversion program to do this for you to be sure you have a clickable TOC, that doesn’t have page numbers.
• Make sure all your metadata is included – the title, author, keywords etc will help your book be found on ebook sites, and make the ebook owning experience better for the reader.
• Add your cover.
• Go through each screen in the conversion process and make sure you have selected the correct settings for you.

Step 3 – Test & Refine

The great thing about the Caliber software is that it includes an emulator, so after you’ve created your ebook you can see what it should look like when real readers read it on their gadget!

Check for:

• Clickable table of contents.
• Images don’t sit on text.
• Headings look correct.
• End/Start links work.
• The title and cover image are correct.

If anything looks wrong, go back to your original document and double check. Fix the problem and re-create the ebook.

If all this just seems too difficult (and believe me it’s not much fun!), then outsource it!