How To Make Your Ebook “User Friendly”

March 28, 2008

How To Make Your Ebook “User Friendly”

With more and more people accessing electronic information via electronic book readers, PC’s and laptops, this is the age of the ebook. And the great thing about ebooks is that they are not just restricted to words. You an easily include images, videos, links to external websites, music, the possibilities are endless. And all of this increases the experience of the reader.

Of course, you do still need the writing, and it is important that its style and layout helps the reader get your message.

You must figure out how to keep your writing engaging. Often anecdotes, testimonials, little stories, photos, graphs, advice, and tips will keep the reader turning the pages.

Write with a casual, conversational tone rather than a formal tone such as textbook diction. Reader’s respond to the feeling that you are having a
conversation with them. You don’t necessarily have to write from a third party point of you, you can refer to I and you. Break up the length and structure of your sentences so you do not send your readers to sleep.

In an ebook that is read on the screen, be aware that you must give your reader’s eye a break. You can do this by using white space. Use plenty of white space. You can have wider margins than normal, double line spacing and larger spaces between paragraphs. Unlike a real book, you don’t need to worry about saving paper.

Make use of lists, both bulleted and numbered. This makes your information easy to absorb, and gives the reader a mental break from dissecting your paragraphs one after the other.

Finally, decide on an easy-to-read design. Find a font that’s easy on the eyes, and stick to that font family. It is a big mistake to change fonts every paragraph as this subconsciously confuses the reader.

Of course, don’t forget to run a spell and grammar check, and ask someone, with a keen eye for detail to proof read it for you.

Last of all, create a contents page, index and bibliography. Make sure your page numbers on the contents page are correct. You could provide links to each chapter from the contents page. You do this by adding bookmarks at the start of each chapter and then using the select hyperlink option in your word processor, link to the relevant bookmark.

That’s it! You’ve written a book!

Now all you have to do is publish your ebook online, and wait for download requests from your website visitors.

Craig Summer is the compiler of
The Ebook Process
- How to Write Publish and Market an Ebook
which can be found at
www.e-bookcountry.com/ebookprocess

Tags : internet publishing,ebook, ebook writing