I’m rushing out this post so that those of you who might be interested can avail of a remarkable deal.  The $99.00 software ePageWiz is available for FREE this weekend only — IF one buys a book by a major publisher at its affiliated website ebook.com.  I suppose the company feels it must get some attention amid this month’s clamor about e-book readers.

I’ve mentioned this software development company before.  Australian-based DNAML has developed an engaging e-book format that, until recently, seemed miles ahead of the pack.  Early on, it secured the valuable domain name ebook.com.  It even attracted into its fold a number of mainstream publishers, such as McGraw-Hill, John Wiley, Harper Collins, Hachette, Random and Harlequin.

What attracted the publishers, I’m sure, is its logical digital rights management scheme, whereby publishers and authors could offer one or more chapters for free, with purchase required for continued reading.  The format , known as DNL, also requires a proprietary reader, available as a free standalone reader or as components temporarily installed for reading within one’s browser.  Readers, for their part, could enjoy a neat page-turning feature, and even multi-media content.  To understand the format’s advantages and characteristics, take a look at the product demo.

Independent writers are also able to put their writing projects into the proprietary format, utilizing one of the company’s software packages.  Personally, I’ve been circling around this software myself for months, contemplating purchase.  It has even led me to conceptualization of two series of short e-books, one for readers of this blog, another for young musicians.

Frankly speaking, the recent emergence of e-readers, I think, puts the company’s business model in some jeopardy.  Still, I also think this format has a great deal to offer to a particular segment of writers, especially those that are writing short-form e-books that can benefit from the format’s multi-media capabilities.  It’s a natural format for how-to books — and for cookbook writers too.  In fact, the anticipated Apple Tablet might be just the right device to make this format soar.

For an example of the format’s multi-media capability, take a look at a free promotional e-brochure by Las Vegas entertainer Grant Galea.  You’ll find an audio jukebox and a video within the print brochure.

If any of this intrigues you, consider buying an e-book at e-book.com and qualifying for a coupon for a free copy of the software.  I spent a couple hours browsing through the selections to find a few titles that might interest readers of this blog.  In the process, I learned some of the difficulties that this format will encounter — but I also identified a few titles for you.

Personally, I purchased  How To Make Money With You Tube by Brad and Debra Schepp [$21.95].  The purchasing process turned out to be a bit unusual.  I had to first download components of the format reader.  Then I had to download the book and go through the free chapter.  Then, finally, I was presented with the purchase screen.  Once I purchased the book, I almost immediately got an email containing the coupon code for the free download of ePageWiz.  The program download proceed smoothly too — but I’m writing this post before installing it, as time is precious.

Another interesting book option:  Content Nation:  Surviving and Thriving as Social Media Technology Changes Our Lives and Our Future by John Blossom [$24.99].  Or another one:  Marketing to the Social Web by Larry Weber [$24.95].

For those more interested in how to write, consider Can Do Writing by Daniel Graham [$19.95], which explains a ten-step approach to business writing.

THE LEAST EXPENSIVE OPTION: For real bargain hunters who want a book and the free software at the lowest cost, look at Bookworms and Other Literary Types by Marjorie Eberts and Margaret Gisler [$14.95].  This book is geared more to students considering career paths.

I do have some complaints about the company behind this e-book format and its offerings.  I found browsing in the ebook.com website extremely frustrating.  If one already knows an author or title, it’s easy enough.  But just browsing to discover books of interest is truly irritating, due to a badly conceived navigational system.  More surprising to me were the book prices, which I found to be high for e-books.  A little comparative pricing with Amazon revealed that Amazon undercut ebook.com’s price substantially for both paperback and Kindle e-book editions.  Moreover, the Amazon site is much more useful in evaluating titles for possible purchase.

Another more substantive complaint:  the company offers several software products, but nowhere does it really explain clearly the differences among them, or how best to deploy their software.  The company, for example, offers the software Desktop Author that seems to be a higher-price competitor to ePageWiz.  Then there’s PDF 2 Page Turn.  Each package has its own domain name, which somewhat disguises the fact that the company has multiple products.   I would dearly love to see a version comparison chart, which is commonplace among software companies with different but similar products.  I fear I’ll eventually find that the software I downloaded today will be missing some elements that I discover are truly essential to its effectiveness.  Other software programs by the company seem very overpriced, especially their conversion programs to ePub and Kindle formats.  Basically, I think the company is due for some serious reconsideration of its business plan — and current developments from competitors may compell it.

In the meantime, despite my reservations, I’m very excited to have ePageWiz in my hands.  I look forward to working with it, hopefully coming up with a series of e-books for readers of this blog.  And I truly think many other writers will find this software and its capabilities very useful indeed.  I hope the word gets out in time for you to take advantage of the FREE offer.

EIGHT HOURS LATER:  FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The program installed properly on my Win 7 operating system.  [Being a Flash-based program, it will also apparently install on Mac computers.]

The program seems fairly intuitive to use, and the Help File is clear and easy to understand.

Layout options are rather limited, but will serve just fine for most ebooks. The book’s width cannot be changed, but the book’s height can apparently be adjusted. This means a portrait orientation — no landscape layouts possible [a disappointment for me, but I'll live with that].

In addition to text, one can upload photographs, in color or black-and-white. Flash video [FLV] can be inserted into the ebook pages — which is the main feature I’m looking for actually. That’s why I bought the You Tube book in order to qualify for this free software giveaway– I expect that book to help get me started with some software demo videos. I did not see anything about inserting audio, a disappointment for me for my projected ebooks for musicians.

It appears one be advised to create front and back cover with some external program with more graphics capability, but I haven’t yet actually experimented with the ePageWiz front and back-page insert feature.

Finished ebooks apparently do include the page-turning feature. This adds a bit to my confusion about the company’s overall business plan, as it also offers a separate program that does nothing more than add page-turning to PDF files, and that program costs much more than ePageWiz. Maybe PDF 2 Page Turn will work for PDF files in landscape orientation, which would answer my disappointment mentioned above.

E-book distribution is possible through an account at either ebrochures.com or ecatalog.com — but NOT through ebook.com, which requires the PRO version of the software. I presume those accounts are free, but I haven’t yet checked that.

All in all, my first impressions of the program are favorable. I’m not sure that this format, however, will withstand the competition from Smashwords and Blio, along with the ePub and Kindle formats — especially for straight-forward, text-oriented ebooks such as novels. But for books that require color photos and how-to video, ePageWiz still looks like a good option.

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