Instructor: Beth Daniels. You’ve heard the siren call, haven’t you? The one that your book murmurs, “make me available on Kindle; make me available on Nook.”

Perhaps you looked into having someone format your manuscript for the conversion and found that prices begin at $200 and work their way up depending on the number of pages and whether a book cover needs to be built as well. That’s if you have someone else do it for you.

In this 1-week workshop we won’t build a cover – that’s another 1-week workshop. We’ll simply be concentrating on turning the well edited and polished manuscript into a format that looks good and looks professional for the “inner” pages of the title.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

1)either an edited and polished new manuscript or a rekeyed backlist book that follows word-for-word what appeared in the original 

2)some ideas of what you’d like it to look like – think modest appearance as this will be your first endeavor

3)an account at Amazon.com and/or one at Barnes and Noble’s PubIt.com

4)the ability to create a WORD doc and/or an .html one

5)an Internet access

6)at least two or three evenings during the workshop week to format and load your manuscript to the Amazon and/or Barnes and Noble PubIt! system

7)a ton of questions if need be

And that’s all it will take. Oh, you won’t be able to make it active without a cover, but there is a mini-workshop for that, too. Taken in tandem, they’ll soon have your work available via Kindle and/or Nook.

Beth Daniels took the Kindle and PubIt! plunge in the closing months of 2010. It took a couple of weeks of swearing, backing off and redoing, contacting Help desks, and down-and-dirty stick-to-it-ativeness, but she finally got to the point where her backlist can poof into the e-book lineup with little trouble now. She’s worked out the kinks and is willing to share the secret to formatting your manuscript for Kindle and Nook.