However, the one thing all CC licenses have in common is allowing people to share and redistribute the original work, and that made me uncomfortable. I want to know where my book has been posted, and be able to remove or change it if I see fit, and if I allowed people to post it themselves, I wouldn't be able to do this.

I decided to write my own license for the book, which I think covers everything I wanted. I'm not a lawyer, but if you are releasing your own ebook I do give you permission to re-use and/or modify my license statement if you'd like to.

Here's the license agreement I put at the start of the ebook:

You do have the right to:

• Read this book on your computer;
• Read this book on any handheld device you can get to read it (if you use a Palm-based handheld or a Kindle, there is a Mobipocket version of the book available at my Web site);
• Print this book out for your own use;
• Photocopy this book as you see fit;
• Pass the electronic and/or printed version along to anyone else who might want to read it (also, feel free to send people to my Web site to get their own copy);

You do not have the right to:

• Do anything with the book that in any way makes you money (with the exception that you may recoup your costs if you, for example, had a copy printed for a friend);
• Claim this book is yours;
• Repost the book on your own Web site or blog or anywhere else (posting links from your site to my site is absolutely fine and there's no need to ask permission);
• Print this book through lulu.com or any other self-publishing company (essentially, you may not print it in a way that makes it look like a "real" book);
• Post any part of the content of the book on your own Web site or blog (with the exception that you may post up to 100 words as an excerpt if you choose);

While parts of it seem repetitive, I was trying to cover all possible permutations. In essence, I wanted people to be able to read the book in whatever way made them comfortable but not to be able to make it look like a commercially-printed novel. And of course, if anyone is going to make money from the book, it should be me.

File conversion
Once I'd made my licensing and DRM decisions, it was time to convert the book to Mobipocket and PDF.

Before I began, I made sure that the original Word file was consistently formatted. I wanted the book's title and my name to appear on alternate pages in the PDF, and I definitely wanted each chapter's headings to look the same. Using Word's styles makes this considerably easier, but I still looked at every page to make sure they were correct.

It should go without saying, but it doesn't given some of the free books I've downloaded, that I did also make sure the book had minimal spelling and grammar errors. On re-reading, I've spotted a word I left out, but the book's quality is easily comparable to books I've bought.

Once my original file was complete, I installed Mobipocket's free eBook Creator and opened my Word file within the program. Figure A shows one of the result screens, in which I can set my book's metadata (title, author, genre, etc.), which will go with the book when it's converted.