From the sound of the title, it should be simple and easy but based on my experience, preparing the source file eats time more than the converting process itself. Ever wonder why most of the ebook conversion company charges a big sum of money for their services? This could be one of the reason. It took me 2-6 hours on correcting source files to have a perfect output.

Let’s make MS Word DOC as an example. From the MS Word software, our eyes could deceive us. We could also believe that everything is perfect already because we already saw how would it look when printed. For all we know, there are wrong tags like header, footer, index on a paragraph. Errors like these will make the words become noticeable because of their font size and style (bold or larger fonts).

Sometimes, ebook conversion on other format could be as easy as 1-2-3, we could convert the same file and have the same output we see on MS Word print preview. Its different on converting to mobipocket PRC format, every formatting such as font style, size, alignment, index, header, footer, page breaks, line breaks, among others will be reflected. Converting to a mobipocket format should be done with a perfect source file, one needs a keen eye on details and with a lot of patience. Otherwise, you will never have a perfect PRC format output.

Quick tips on editing an MS Word eBook:

• Use page breaks after each chapters
• Use line breaks for spaces instead of using “enter” key
• Omit any blank page unless needed
• Be careful on using header, footer, index on paragraphs

Sometimes, even if you edit the source file there are times that there’s still unexpected error that you could see only on output file (converted PRC format) using Mobipocket reader. That’s the time you will search again for that words to make correction. To easily find that, press Ctrl-F and type in the words to be searched.