Is an E-Book a glorified pdf?

[@HeatherSmithAU]

..................that was my question short & sweet..............................

[Adam Randall]

Originally Posted by MYOB

..................that was my question short & sweet..............................

A PDF is a mechanism or medium for ebooks.

Its like saying is a car a glorified Holden.


Its just a PDF is a safe and easy format and much nicer than scrolling through a word document.

You could write an ebook in text pad if you wanted, but it wont look very nice.

[LeelaCosgrove]

I think I understand your question ...

I get really annoyed at this ...

I spent $900 on having the inside of my "How to Write your Bestseller" book designed and another $150 on the cover. It looks AWESOME and was worth every cent.

I very often see e-books which are just word documents that have been pdf'ed.

I guess it comes down to WHAT you want from the exercise.

I'm very heavily involved with the Aussie business development seminar circuit with major clients in this arena. A couple of years ago I was at an internet seminar. There were some people up speaking who literally said that it didn't matter what the content of your e-book was, if you were using the fake-name, landing page, single product format. They had hundreds of products being sold from sites like these.

Because not one of the sites had their names on it, it wasn't an issue for them.

However, if your ebook has your name on it and you want it to advertise you, it needs many things:

* Proper editing,
* A nice layout,
* A good landing page,
* Outstanding copy.

In my (considerable) experience, without these things your product will suffer.

[@HeatherSmithAU]

Hi thanks for your response - maybe it is my estrogen but I don't exactly get the car analogy...I will keep thinking.

Leela - yes I think you have hit the nail on the head - I have heard from some people promoting ebook coaching - and there material looks ordinary.

Due to the nature of what I do, I create a lot of customised training manuals for people, but, with a few alterations it can become quite generic, and I am happy to load them up to my website - to both educate, and give potential clients examples of my work.

Am I a fraud calling them an e-book?

e-training manual is a bit of a mouth full!

e-pamphlet sounds silly

not sure what to offer them as??????????

[MissieK]

An ebook can be a document that is converted to PDF.

If I do a free report - I do it as a word document & PDF it - I'm giving it away & don't want to spend too much $$ on it!

If I do one to sell, then I do get it designed properly & then it's PDFd.

Does that answer your question? For me, an ebook is a book that is delivered electronically.

Melissa

[KarenC]

An eBook is often a book that didn't get published to paper and only got published electronically, or was in paper and now is offered as an eBook.

PDF - portable document format - has many forms.
When used in commercial print it has very definite specifics - must be high res with any images 300dpi, bleed and trims must be used, all images and colours must be CMYK ie no RGB, web or spot colours, colour profiles embedded, fonts either embedded or converted to outlines and specific versions of PDF are required according to the imagesetters used to make the plates, as not all imagesetters can use the latest PDF versions. Each publisher, newspaper or magazine has definite specifics for commercial print PDFs.

PDF versions 5 and over can use transparency. PDF versions 4 and under cannot have transparent areas or effects.

Web versions of PDF do not have the same restrictions - but they do require images to be low resolution in order to get the PDF down to a manageable web size.

For example, a recent 4 page brochure (A3 folded A4) in full colour with high resolution photos, was around 5mb in size for the print PDF. The same brochure I converted to 4 single A4 pages in one file for the web for downloading and email was only 540kb.

(On the other hand, many times people convert a Word doc to the inbuilt PDF and do not embed the fonts. If they have used fancy or special fonts, these fonts will not show on other people's computers and the text will go awry.)

In other words, PDFs are varied according the the output application, whether they are commercial versions or web versions.

[LeelaCosgrove]

Heather,

I call them Information Products.

Products containing information, to put it simply!

This can encompass anything from an ebook, to an e training guide, to a hard copy book, to a membership site - I'm sure you get the drift.

[@HeatherSmithAU]

Thanks for such detailed response!

I will load them to my website and call them eGuides.

[Melinda B]

Originally Posted by LeelaCosgrove

I think I understand your question ...

I get really annoyed at this ...

I spent $900 on having the inside of my "How to Write your Bestseller" book designed and another $150 on the cover. It looks AWESOME and was worth every cent.

I very often see e-books which are just word documents that have been pdf'ed.

I guess it comes down to WHAT you want from the exercise.

It also comes down to the price you're selling for and your intended market. I'm putting together a series of pdf ebooks intended for startup work at home mums. They're looking for free or cheap, so they'll be sold for under $10. I'm not going to put your kind of money into these ebooks because I'm unlikely to recoup the cost. And I doubt this market would even appreciate the quality....

Marketing to a more lucrative market, with a higher value product, yes, definately worth the extra cost.