I've tried Activ E-Book 4.22 and just cannot figure out how to use it. Can anyone recommend a good free eBook maker that is easy to use? TIA! Ney

I did not even know that there were free e-book makers out there. Shows what I know. However, if you count PDF as an e-book format, I know for a fact that Open Office can export to PDF, if that's any help at all. jon

Darn! Open Office is showing almost 7 hours to download. My ISP boots me on a regular basis, plus that big of a download will probably time out. :( But thanks anyway jstro. :)

Attached Link: http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/

Yep, it's big. Not something you want to tackle if you don't have a high speed connection. I know it's takes away the glow of getting it for free, but it is available by CDROM as well (see link). Also, since it is Open Source software, if you know someone near you that has a fast download, they could download it for you and burn it to CDROM. Hopefully someone else will chime in with a smaller alternative. But I do highly recommend Open Office (for a variety of reasons). jon

Attached Link: http://www.pdf995.com/

There are several free pdf creators out there. As an aside, the problem with ebook makers is that a lot of people are reluctant to open an unknown exe file. Pdfs are generally accepted as being a safe alternative. You didn't need that explanation. I'm feeling verbose today.

P.S.regarding the pdf creator for the link I provided. If you use it, you have to suffer an advertising splash screen after you send the file to "print" on the free version. It's a pretty small irritation for a decent enough product.

Thanks dialyn! :) But I'm not sure what I'm supposed to download in the first box. There are 3 different links ... http://www.pdf995.com/download.html

You can download all three for free, but the one that converts to pdf is the Pdf995 Printer Driver. I don't know how familiar you are with pdf files, so please bear with me if I've become obvious woman on you, but you choose the pd955 as if you were going to print, but then the results get sent to a file (under the name of your choosing) instead of a printer.

Okay ... got it, installed it, tried it ... and just created my very first eBook! Yay! Thank you so much for your help! :D

Attached Link: http://www.primopdf.com/

Oops, too late. Anyway, I've been using PrimoPDF for a while. Works well, although a few of the support features are a bit buggy (setting doc props & security settings seems broken) but it genreates NICE PDFs, and it's free. No splash screen either.

Thanks Jimdoria! I'll try that one out as well and compare them. :D

By the way, there are other reasons to get Open Office besides the fact that it exports PDF. So if you can find that friend who has a fast download it still might be worth your while to have him/her download it for you. I use nothing but at home, and use both Word and OO at work. Frankly, I prefer OO. For example, the thesaurus in Word is pathetic. The Open Office thesaurus, on the other hand, is quite robust. And it exports to Word's .doc format too. But nothing's perfect. Word's grammar checking (looking for active vs. passive voice, sentence fragments, etc.) is much better than OO's. At least for OO Rev. 1.1. I have not had a chance to try out 2.0 yet. Maybe it's improved by now. If it sounds like I'm sold on Open Office it's because I am. :-) jon

At the moment, I don't know anyone that has high speed. But we're moving soon, and I should be able to find someone to download it for me once we get settled there. Thanks again jstro! :)