Electronic Publishing

Maybe you simply want to get out the message God has given you, and you don’t care whether it gets into printed form.

Many authors publish their writings on their own websites, e-newsletters, and/or blogs.

An e-book publisher will take a Word or WordPerfect file, design an electronic cover for it, format it to look like a book on screen, and send it back to you in PDF format, which can be read by anyone with a computer using Adobe Acrobat. (The Acrobat reader can be downloaded for free.) Once the e-book publisher has formatted your book, you can send it to anyone you want by e-mail or on disk.

Alternately, you could convert your manuscript into PDF format yourself. (Several websites and word-processing programs offer free conversion. For a more professional-looking document, consider hiring a typesetter.)

Most e-book publishers can convert your manuscript into the appropriate format for Kindle (or the proper format for all other e-book readers, such as Nook and Sony). Some can put your manuscript into both formats.

If you plan to publish electronically, I strongly encourage you to get a professional edit/proofread to make sure your writing flows smoothly, doesn’t contain anything that could potentially be misread or found offensive, and is free of typos, inconsistencies, or errors in punctuation, usage, grammar, and spelling. (If you think you know enough about those things to proofread your own writing pretty well, check out my page of “PUGS Pointers.” If you’re interested in having me edit/proofread your manuscript, contact me. If you’d like help finding another editor/proofreader through my Christian Editor Network, click here.)