With the demand for eBooks reaching an all-time high owing to rapid technological advancements, wide adoption of smartphones, and availability of sophisticated reading devices, the need for eBook conversion service providers is also increasing.
This is simply because creating, designing and formatting an eBook to make it publication-ready is a very technical and time-consuming process that requires professional expertise.
Availing eBook conversion services is one of the best ways for publishers as well as authors to convert their digital manuscripts into professionally designed eBooks compatible with popular eReaders, tablets, smartphones, and other similar devices.
This blog aims to discuss eBook conversion services, including their key benefits and top factors you need to consider while choosing the best service provider.
Benefits of Outsourcing eBook Conversion Services
While there is always an option for publishers/authors to create eBooks using free and paid software tools that support various file formats, it is ideal to use professional eBook conversion services if you are looking for a top-quality and hassle-free conversion. The main benefits of outsourcing eBook conversion services include-
- Easy Access
The eBook conversion service providers can work on a range of different formats. They have a team of dedicated professionals with the required expertise and coming-age technologies to manage formats like PDF, XML, Word, etc. They also ensure that all these formats are compatible across various platforms like smartphones, kindle and tablets.
- Interactivity
The professional eBook conversion service providers include various interactive elements such as audios, videos, links, graphs and more in the development of eBooks, thus enhancing the readers’ engagement levels.
- Low-cost
In most cases, the outsourced eBook conversion service providers render the best conversion solutions at very affordable rates. Further, these eBook conversion service providers will also enable the publishers and authors to update any section of the book at any time.
Factors to Consider While Choosing an eBook Conversion Service Provider
There are several ways that publishers can benefit from eBook conversion. However, it is important to consider the following factors while choosing an eBook conversion service provider.
1. Quality of Conversion
Quality of eBook conversion is the foremost thing you should look for when hiring a service provider. It is best to hire a professional eBook conversion company specializing in varied and complex eBook conversion projects and multimedia conversion, fixed-layout ePUB conversion, eBook formats and more.
Further, a professional eBook conversion company will also give you the advantage of validating your eBooks on trusted tools such as ePUB check and ePUBPreflight.
2. Security
Security is one of the major factors to consider when looking for a service provider to convert eBooks into any desired formats like PDF, ePUB, KF8 and many others. It is of paramount importance to go with a service provider that assures complete security of your data, thus eliminating the risk of theft or damage.
3. Design Excellence
Design excellence is another important criterion to look after when picking your eBook conversion service. This is primarily because, unlike the flat text versions of physical books, eBooks need to be designed professionally so that they can be read conveniently and should function properly on all the important platforms.
The advantage of hiring a professional company is quality eBook conversion services with a range of features such as-
- Detailed table of content in eBook text
- Accurate embedding and resizing of the cover image
- Effective and accurate conversions for some specific and compatible formats
- Formatting of paragraph alignments and indents similar to the source file
4. Layouts – Fixed or Reflowable
Most of the eBooks are available in two different layouts- fixed and reflowable. You can choose the layout based on your eBook content. While the fixed layout is mostly used for eBooks with a lot of illustrations and graphics, the reflowable layout is primarily used for text-heavy books.
Among the examples of books that use fixed layout formatting are coffee table books, children’s picture books and recipe books. On the contrary, when creating eBooks for K-12 and higher-ed students, some of the books might contain a lot of graphs, charts and tables. It is, therefore, important to choose a conversion service provider that can design a fixed as well as a reflowable eBook layout.
5. Interactive eBook Conversion
Another important criterion when choosing an eBook conversion service is the ability to add various kinds of interactivities. The service provider should take care of the entire process of creating interactive eBooks along with seamlessly adding the following features to your interactive eBooks-
a. Interactive elements
The conversion service providers should be able to add interactive elements such as assessments, exercises, quizzes, matrix completion, yes/no answers, fill in the blanks, match the following and dictionary pop-ups.
b. Audio, video and animation
They should embed audio, video and animation effects into your eBooks to deliver a complete content experience.
c. Content linking
They should link content to various external references or internally to cross-references, annotations, footnotes, indexes, etc.
d. Collapsible table of content (ToC)
For smoother navigation, the conversion service providers should make your table of content (ToC) collapsible.
In Conclusion
Various service providers offer eBook conversion services. While the exact kind of conversion services provided may vary from one service provider to another, the process would primarily entail converting a physical manuscript to an eBook.
However, eBook conversion services aren’t just about getting a physical book into a digital one, but also about multiple other aspects such as the font type, charts, size, bullets, tables, and other similar things, which enhances the overall outlook of the eBook.
To ensure the success of an eBook, it is, therefore, important to choose the eBook conversion services wisely. Following the above guide helps you choose the right type of eBook conversion service and enhance your eBook in the best possible way.
