Letter from the FounderLetter From The Founder
Dear Fellow Author,
I’ve always considered myself on the cutting edge of technology. In the early 90s I owned a graphic design business that wanted to get “online”. I researched the few web hosting options that existed at the time, spent all of my marketing budget and countless hours working on a humble website for our business. It occurred to me that the average person who wanted a professional looking website for their business had no good options. He would have to choose between paying hundreds of dollars, crossing his fingers that he wouldn’t get ripped off, or otherwise commit to a do-it-yourself solution, investing valuable time pouring over hundreds of pages of complex technical documentation. I thought to myself, there has to be a better way.
After searching for a better solution, and finding none, I decided to create one myself. I built, from scratch, an easy to use webhosting platform, which I called “The Website Manager”. In addition, I created the first documented web-based affiliate programs to market the business, long before Amazon ever did. This business quickly became a huge success -- one of the main “dot com” successes in the latter part of the 1990s. In 2001, I sold the web hosting company to the then telecom giant, Allegiance Telecom. Since then, I’ve run several successful companies, including a state-of-the-art datacenter in Boston, Massachusetts, and a social website company called iGrOOps. Please understand, I don’t mention any of this to brag about my accomplishments, but to demonstrate the parallels of the explosion of the Internet in the 90’s with the coming explosion of ebooks, and the parallels of creating my first webhosting company with creating eBookit.com.
I wrote my first book, called Year to Success, in 2004. Like many people reading this letter, I published the book myself. In 2010, I bought an Apple iPad and instantly fell in love with the iBookstore. At that moment, I realized eBooks were here to stay. And I also realized it was about time I offered my book in ebook format!
I began researching different options for converting my book to various eBook formats and making it available through the online retailers. I started out with a leading service that offers free conversion and publication, promising it’s both “quick” and “easy”. I found that before I could upload the book, I had to format it to the company’s exact specifications, following a very lengthy style guide. Given that my book is more than 700 pages long, it took me several days to finish the formatting. I attempted to upload the text of the book several times, only to find the conversion failed the validation tests each and every time, as I had missed some obscure formatting point. I would have gladly paid the company handsomely to do the formatting for me, but they didn’t offer that service. I tried multiple online tools and services that promised flawless conversions, but none of them worked as promised. I was continually plagued with errors, inconsistencies, and funky formatting. If a gadget-loving, computer-programming, software-creating, tech-company-running author like me had this much trouble, what hope is there for the typical author who may or may not have a technical background? How many self-published authors, or small to medium publishing houses, have the time to do all this?
I created eBookIt.com out of my conviction that an author should have an inexpensive, simple, and truly fool-proof way to get their book converted to eBook format, and submitted to the major online retailers fast, so they can start capitalizing on the exploding eBook market.
Through eBookIt.com, authors or publishers like you can fill out a short registration form and upload the text of the book to us. We will convert each title you submit to us to the various eBook formats. Your book will be carefully prepared for conversion, and closely reviewed post-conversion, by a living, breathing, human being. We look for any errors or inconsistencies, and fix them. We then submit the eBook to Amazon, BN.com, the Apple iBookstore, Kobo, and other major online retailers. Meanwhile, you can sit back and relax (or get to work on writing your next book!) knowing your book will receive first-class treatment, and soon be available through various online retail channels.
We look forward to partnering with you to turn your book into a high-quality eBook!
To Your Success,
Bo Bennett, Founder, eBookIt.com