In the Prepping Your Work series of blog posts, we’re going to give you suggestions as to how best to prepare your digital work for sale on CybaSumo and SumoStores.com.

Making sure your digital goods are in a convenient, accessible, and attractive format can make all the difference between a sale and a prospect passing you by. In this first entry, we’re going to look at the BookBarn - where you can sell eBooks and other documents.

File Formats

eBooks and other documents come in wide variety of file formats on the Internet. The most-supported file formats are:

• HTML - obviously everyone who buys your eBook through a browser will be able to view an HTML file in that browser.
• PDF - Most Web users have a PDF viewer on their system. There are over 200 million PDF documents on the Web in total. PDFs provide an attractive visual representation of your work.
• Plain text (TXT) - This is the most compatible and compact solution, but also can be the least attractive, since no formatting is available.
• Rich Text Format (RTF) - This is another widely-used alternative to plain text, which allows some formatting. There can be incompatibilities between RTF readers (Microsoft Word can read RTF, for example).
• LIT, PDB, and other eBook formats - These are formats specifically designed for eBook readers. For some, you can download free software to create the files; for others, you may have to pay to buy an eBook creator.

What we recommend: A PDF file gives you the most control over formatting and presentation.

Free PDF software

Out of the box, Mac OSX enables you to print directly to PDF from any application. For Windows users, there are several freeware applications that do this:

• PrimoPDF (Windows) - www.primopdf.com
• CutePDF (Windows) - http://www.cutepdf.com
• Go2PDF (Windows) - http://www.go2pdf.com/product.html
• PDF4Free (Windows) - http://www.pdfpdf.com/pdf4free.html

* Please note: These software links are for reference purposes only and do not constitute an endorsement or guarantee.

Linux users can save to PDF directly from OpenOffice.

Templates

Every book you find in a bookstore will have an attractive layout, readable fonts, and an eye-catching cover. You can do the same with your eBook to make it more saleable and to make reading easier.

If you use Microsoft Office, be sure to check out the templates at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx. Mac users who use Pages will find a variety of attractive templates included with their software.

What about copy protection?

Copy protection, or Digital Rights Management (DRM), is a hot topic today - especially with regards to music and videos. Many companies which distribute media are concerned about piracy and put DRM into their files so that you need a special player or other software to view them.

At this point we do not believe in DRM. DRM only makes it harder for legitimate customers to view your products. Pirates will always find a way around DRM, which simply leads to an ongoing, costly, escalating mutual arms race between encoding something and decrypting it.

The best way to manage this is to insert a statement in your document that the work is protected by copyright (since almost art is automatically protected by copyright once it’s created), and that customers should respect that.

Next time - preparing your videos for CybaSumo. See you then!