It’s no surprise that the number of eBook formatting services is exploding as the popularity of eBooks grows. A range of choices is good, since there’s something for everyone, regardless of their knowledge of XHTML/CSS and the money they do—or don’t—want to spend.
Kyle from Folium Book Studio alerted me to the online service that will convert a DOC, DOCX, RTF, or TXT document to an ePub book for $79 USD. For that price, you can also use their cover designer to create an eBook cover, and they provide you with an ISBN for the ePub version of your eBook.
Using Folium Book Studio’s tools, you can include and arrange images in your eBook, and create an interactive table of contents. But they don’t support tables. They recommend converting tables to images and including them that way. Most e-readers don’t handle tables well unless they’re included as images.
Folium Book Studio isn’t a distributor, like Smashwords and BookBaby. It’s a file conversion service. You have to upload your eBook to online stores such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
If you don’t want to mess with XHTML and CSS, Folium Book Studio could be cheaper than hiring someone to format your file for you, especially if you’re American and don’t mind your book having a Folium Book Studio ISBN. Using their cover designer to do your cover may also save you some money.
For non-Americans, Folium Book Studio is a harder sell. To get into Barnes & Noble, one of the more important sellers of eBooks in ePub format, we have to go through an aggregator, and some aggregators want to format the file for you. Also, some countries (like Canada) provide free ISBNs to their citizens. Whether to consider a conversion service like Folium Book Studio will depend on which aggregator you plan to use, and how much you pay for ISBNs in your country.
Thank you for taking the time to learn about the Folium Book Studio and to list some of its many benefits in your blog, Sarah. Of course the complexities of the ISBN are present, no matter where the author lives and who does the final distribution to the sales channel. With FBS, we do offer a free ISBN, and the author or their selected partner is listed as the publisher of record. We have purchased the number, but we give it freely to those who want or need it for their project.
More importantly, we do not require that a particular ISBN be used. If the author or publisher has an ISBN in hand, they simply list it within the project information and it becomes part of the metadata for that book. We do not require that our customers use an ISBN provided by us, nor do we ask that Folium Book Studio be listed as the publisher.
One of the most important reasons for using FBS is the freedom to create a book design that suits the work. Rather than relying upon some standard styling that the typical service uses for every project, our customers have the freedom to make their book look as they like. Our tools also catch and correct typographical mistakes, turning manuscript conventions into typographically correct text. There is simply no more excuse why an iBooks product should look like it came from Word.
Perhaps best of all, FBS makes it possible to import a manuscript, tweak the design, and export the finished product in under 30 minutes. Even adding images and captions takes mere seconds. All in all, we are quite proud of the tools that comprise Folium Book Studio, and the kudos we have received from authors and small publishers alike continue to encourage us. We are looking forward to releasing our next update, and hope that you will continue to keep your eye on us and inform your readers of all the goodness you find.
Cheers!
Thanks for the additional info, John.
I mentioned the free ISBN because it may make your pricing/service more attractive for those who have to buy ISBNs. Many formatting services charge less than $100 to provide ePub and Kindle versions of books, but they usually don’t include a free ISBN.