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A Writer's Guide to E-Publishing

Part 1 -- The Technology

Adobe PDF

Any writer who is serious about e-publishing needs to know about PDF. Adobe's PDF software generates duplicates of almost any kind of electronic document for viewing and printing with an Adobe Acrobat Reader. Besides providing a near-universal tool for easy document exchange, PDF preserves the appearance of the original publication, whatever kind of word processing or layout program was used to format it. Its universality and layout capabilities make PDF another excellent e-publishing tool, especially for e-books.

Online publishing services have begun marketing books and booklets in Adobe PDF. Fatbrain.com, which specializes in business and technology titles, is pioneering this electronic book market with its "MightyWords" division of digital titles. MightyWords lets authors upload their digital manuscripts for storage as PDF documents -- and at a great price of merely $1 a month.

Authors advertise their work on the MightyWords site, with a description of their book or booklet and a price. When their work sells, MightyWords receives a 50% cut on sales. The remaining 50% are the author's royalties -- a significantly higher royalty than any conventional publisher can offer. This is one area among many where electronic publishing clearly works to the advantage of writers. Another advantage: MightyWords welcomes articles and booklets of 10 to 100 pages that traditional presses wouldn't consider publishing.

PDF will continue as the format of choice for publishers like MightyWords, and it seems likely to have a future on e-book readers. Glassbook is already selling a dedicated reader that display PDF documents. Unlike hypertext, PDF is a proprietary format, and the software needed to generate documents in it is expensive.

The latest news about PDF: As this article is being written, Stephen King has announced the release of his next online novella -- this one, though, in PDF.

Next . . .

For a printer friendly version of this article, click here.

Contents of this article
Part 1 - The Technology
Introduction
What You're Reading Now
E-Book Readers
E-Publishing on Your Computer
Hypertext / HTML
Adobe PDF
Print On Demand
Online Publishing

Part 2 -- The Outlook
Publishing Economics
Some Other Realities
Some Good News & Some Dangers