Has anyone ever written an EBook?

No but I have typed one.

If you are self-publishing you'll need to learn how to convert your text to an e-book epub. Epub is the most used and easiest to convert to Amazon.com's format (azw3, used to be called mobi).

Write you text using MS Word, LibreOffice Writer (freeware), Apple Pages, or similar.

Have an editor review and comment on your text.

After editing save your text file as html. Save it as separate chapters with the chapters names in sequence, like chap01, chap02, etc.

Import the html into Sigil Ebook (freeware). The chapters will be organized by name, but you organize them as you like in Sigil.

Format the text the way you want. You need to understand some html and css (cascading styles sheets which force the epub to look the way you want, like a certain font-type) to do this, but you can set it up so that the chapter titles are headers (h1, h2, etc.). Sigil will generate a table of contents (toc) based on the header levels. Titles of parts of a book can be set as h1, and chapters as h2. The generated toc will indent the h2 titles. You can also force certain fonts to be used via a css file.

You can use Sigil to create book cover (by inserting an image), a title page, copyright page, and whatever else you want in the book. Make sure the cover and title are the first two items, and the copyright goes where you want. In Sigil this is a drag and move into position operation on a list of what is in the book.

The end result is something the looks good in an ebook reader. You need to test the book in a few readers to see how it works. Then makes changes as necessary.

There are people who are pretty good at converting a document into an epub but they, like a good editor, will cost some money.

I have never tried to sell an ebook, but I have created them for others; our Homeowners Association documents, and a few technical documents for my daughter.

UltraTX wrote:

Is it worth it? Any resources on getting started? Advice?

Thanks!

You won't make any money if that's what you mean by "Is it worth it?"

I wrote a book on running a few years ago. I didn't make enough in sales to cover my expenses even though the book had testimonials from several AG world record holders and two OT qualifiers.

I used CreateSpace (now Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)) as a tutorial to help me set up the book and format it as an ebook.

Basically, write it in any word processing program... Word, Pages in the Mac, or LibreOffice. Buy Grammarly to find most of the typos, grammar, and punctuation errors. You might think you can edit it yourself or your friends can edit it, but they won't catch everything that Grammarly catches. Grammarly by itself won't be enough either. There are common mistakes that will require developmental editing.

Use KDP to format it as an ebook or you can hire someone on Fiverr to do it for you. You can also hire relatively inexpensive services on Fiverr to create the cover page, create the front and rear matter, get an ISBN number, edit, and format the book.

Once you have a book, you can put it on Amazon to sell, but unless you are a celebrity, the odds of it making enough to pay your expenses is low.

I’m a self published author and can live off of it. Not because my books are amazing but because people know about our work. Unless you’re extremely lucky you won’t sell many books without being very visible in the community you’re in. This takes some creativity but mostly hard work and some luck.