Things to do before you distribute your E-book on the Internet
By Dirk Dupon


If you want to have people buy, download or read your
E-book, there are a few rules that you need to follow.

The purpose in following these rules is to ensure that
you will send out a perfect E-book of high quality.

Of course you already know that your spelling, grammar
structure and link relevance should be checked twice to
guarantee an excellent product.

But here are the very first steps for you to take before
you submit your E-book to the rest of the world.

First you have to write and prepare your HTML-pages,
using your favorite HTML-editor.

Do this just like you create a web site. Put all your pages
and images in one directory on your hard disk, give it the
name of your E-book, and make sure that you make a back
up copy of them, in case something worse happens to your
PC system.

-You wouldn't believe how many people forget to make
back ups, and find themselves in complete disaster when
bad luck strikes. Think about all those hours of inspiration
and transpiration that get wasted!

If you design your E-book pages, try to focus on being
consistent and informative. Make it easy for your readers
to navigate trough your book pages, or they will skip your
material. Put navigation links on every book page.

Do not use too many colors or fancy buttons. Or have you
ever seen newspapers or magazines with orange text
on a yellow background?

There's no need to revolutionize the way publishing is
done with your E-book.

Check and re-check to see if all the hyperlinks or forms
work, and if all the images show up correctly. Many people
forget to link the images or banners to the home directory.

Try to limit the use of images, because they take up a
lot of space, and your E-book should not be too large to
download. Put your ad banners (if you use any) at the
bottom of your book pages. Do this to not distract your
readers.

Then you have to create an opening page. This page
shows up first when your E-book gets clicked on.

Be sure to place your E-book title in it, and make an index
of all the different pages or chapters. Name this page
"readmefirst.htm" so that you know which page you have
to use to start.

Then you're ready to compress all your HTML-pages and
images into an E-book format, using your E-book formatting
software.

If you want to create your E-book in .pdf format, you can
do it for FREE at the Adobe web site:
http://cpdf1.adobe.com/index.pl?BP=IE

(Their service lets you convert a wide variety of documents
into Adobe PDF files that anyone can view using the free,
widely distributed Adobe Acrobat Reader.)

To reduce the size of your E-book, compress it into a
.zip file. Click below to get the software to do it, if you
don't have WinZip already installed on your PC. -It's
free to download at: http://www.winzip.com

The last step is to upload the E-book.zip file to your web
server via FTP, and create a great sales or download page
where your web site visitors can obtain a copy.

That's all it takes. Happy promoting!

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Dirk Dupon owns http://www.smart-web-promotion.com He
also publishes a newsletter called SmartPromotion, with lots
of clever tips and tricks to make online promotion easy. Join
for FREE: mailto:smartpromotion-subscribe@egroups.com