By Ronald Gibson
Copyright 2005 Ronald Gibson
Now that you have your information all typed up, it's time to'package' it. There are a few key things involved with thisstep, so I will go through each one separately below to make itas easy as possible to understand.
CHOOSING A FORMAT
This is a particularly important step. And the reason is becauseyou want to make your new niche product available to as manypeople as humanly possible. Statistically, most internet usersare running on a Windows Operating System format. And that meansstatistically, most internet users can benefit from executableformatted products, or those that come in the ever popular .exefile extension.
Now, that's all fine and dandy, but if you decide to only usethe .exe format, you're leaving out a good chunk of potentialcustomers that run on non-Microsoft operating systems, such asMacintosh or Red Hat. But luckily, there is a solution to offeryour niche product to almost every potential customer, no matterwhich operating system they run on.
And that is by using.....
The Portable Document File, or PDF, made possible by Adobe. Thegenius of this particular file format for information productsis that because the .PDF files run on an independent programthat can be utilized from any operating system, it then makesthe document files platform independent themselves so long asthe customer has the program to run the .PDF files from. Andthis gets even better…Adobe Reader is completely, 100% free foranyone to download. Plus, those wanting, or needing Adobe Readersoftware have to download it directly from Adobe's website.
So the obvious choice would be to go with the .PDF file format,right? WRONG.
Even though using the .PDF format opens your product up to themaximum amount of customers you could possibly get, it islimited in terms of what can be done with it as far as runningHTML type scripts and fill-able forms. Executable formattedproducts can do those things as they are essentially HTML pagespasted together with a sort of 'virtual glue' when using an .execompiler.
Depending on what it is you wish to accomplish with your productwill determine what type of file format you will chose for yourproduct. Some authors choose just one. Others choose both. Thequestion you need to ask yourself is "What Do I Want My Productto Do?" If you simply want to give good, quality information toyour customers while getting your business noticed and reach themaximum amount of customers possible, then the PDF format wouldbe best for you. But, if you want to use specific scripts totell the current date, or to use automatic update functions foryour product, or to add your customers to a product updatemailing list, then you would want to use the EXE format.
At this point, you have probably already reached your decisionon which format you will use. Now all you need are the tools.I'm not going to list every available tool here, because that'sreally not necessary. You don't need all the tools listed; youjust need the best tools listed. And that's what I'm going togive you - a list of the best. And a list of tools I personallyhave, and still use.
-- .EXE COMPILER TOOL --
http://www.webadvertisingsecrets.com/activ.htm
This is really the only .exe tool you need. The cost is aminiscule $29.95 when compared with other available tools. Ihave used other .exe compilers before, and ran into problemswith them, but this was the best deal and value for my money. Iencourage you, if you have not yet purchased an .exe compiler,or even if you have, at least give Activ Ebook Compiler a try.You won't be disappointed with its performance or features. Youcan use it to create rebrandible products, simple ebooks,password protected ebooks, and more. You also receive freeupgrades when they are made available too in case something everneeds to be fixed, as with the Windows XP SP2 .exe ebookdisaster that happened recently. Activ has no problems with thiserror. It's simply is the best exe. compiler for the price andquality.
-- .PDF COMPILER TOOL
http://www.openoffice.org
See, this program is absolutely fantastic. And I stand by it100%. Plus it's totally free too.
To use it as a PDF compiler, all you need to do is open it up bycreating a New Document. Then when you finish writing up andformatting your original product as far as font settings, linespacing, adding images, and things of this nature are concerned,all you need to do is hit the Export as PDF button and ZAP! Yourdocument has been exported in .PDF form. Easy as 1-2-3.
Now normally, the links inside the document won't be clickablewhen you open up the finished PDF file in Adobe Reader. But,there is a way to work around this. Two ways actually. Thefirst, and easiest, is to simply add the entire link within thedocument so that your readers can copy and paste them themselvesto their own browsers.
The second and a bit more complicated way is to download a PDFediting program. One free option can be found at:http://www.pdfedit995.com . However, if you are going to usethis option, you'll also need to download the PDF995 program athttp://www.pdf995.com - that works like an additional printerand creates the PDF files this way. Sounds complicated, but it'snot really. All the information you could ever need about usingthe PDF995 line of software can be found right at their website.
COMPILING WITH YOUR CHOSEN FORMAT
I won't be going into specific details about how to compileusing the products I mentioned above. Instead, I'd rather justgive you the already created and written information about usingthe products as they are most likely much better than what Icould have written up for you.
HOW TO USE ACTIV EBOOK COMPILER
http://www.webadvertisingsecrets.com/active.exe
TUTORIALS FOR OPENOFFICE.ORG
http://www.tutorialsforopenoffice.org
LEARN OPENOFFICE.ORG VIDEO TUTORIALS
http://www.learnopenoffice.org
You have just completed a major step in the creation of your newinformation product.
Article Source: www.ArticlesBase.com
