Overall "eBooks Compiler" is worth the $14.95 the developer is asking. It can be used to produce e-books, and it is fairly easy to use. However, I feel like there are more feature rich and better documented e-book compilers on the market.

E-books are being used more and more by publishers, marketers, and businesses these days, and software developers have taken notice. A few years ago there was only a hand full of e-book software packages on the market, now there are dozens if not more. The challenge for consumers is finding the right one at the right price.

Recently, I came across "eBooks Compiler" and decided to give it a try. The product downloaded and installed smoothly, and I have not seen any evidence of system instability or performance degradation. If you want to check out the system requirements for this product, then follow this link.. www.ebookscompiler.com/support.html#requirements



The "eBooks Compiler" main screen does not have the comfortable windows feel, but it is very attractive, and it does not intimidate the user with an overly complex look. The screen has two menu choices, and seven buttons that actually guide the users through the seven steps needed to produce an e-book with this software.

The home page advertisement for "eBooks Compiler" claims that the product is easy to use. That’s true, but a little misleading. The product is easy to use if you already know how to create web pages, and if you already understand how e-book software works.

When software is not intuitive and easily understood to beginners, the developers will usually provide a well documented tutorial and help system. Unfortunately, "eBooks Compiler" falls short in that area. The tutorial makes no provisions for users who do not understand how to use HTML, or do not know what branding and re-branding means. Most good documentation would provide a brief explanation, or at least link the user to a website that explains those things.

The tutorial was certainly lacking in providing information about the functionality of the bookmark feature and the branding/re-branding feature. While the author did explain how to complete the screen information for these features, there was no mention of how the results would be seen or used in the e-book.

In spite of the weaknesses of the help and tutorial, the product does seem to do the job that it was designed for. After using the product for a few days I was able to create a few e-book samples that got the job done.

The trial version of "eBooks Compiler" is fully functional. However, it does place a marketing label on every page of the output. Personally, I would like to have seen my e-book samples without this obtrusive brand. If the developer had wanted to limit the product’s use, it might have been better to have limited the trial functionality, or maybe limit the number of times the trial could be used.



This brings up another issue. The "eBooks Compiler" software is a little behind other e-book software when it comes to security. Most of the software that I have used includes the ability to create an expiration date, or limit the number of uses for the output. With "eBooks Compiler" password protection is the only option available.

It is apparent to me that "eBooks Compiler" was probably one of the first e-book software on the market, and it does a good job overall, but it is lacking in some features that newer software contain. For example, some of the newer e-book compilers output their e-books with auto generated "Table of Content" frames that are included on the "start" page, and available from any page. This is not the case with "eBooks Compiler". With this product, the users are required to build their own "Table of Content", and, to give it that professional look they will need to consider using framed HTML pages.

I am pleased that "eBooks Compiler" keeps the e-book creation process simple. Most users will be able to output their e-books within minutes using the seven steps required by this software.

The developers claim that this product provides "exclusive user defined features". They make good on this claim. Beginning in step one, the user can define the window size for their e-books, and they can select an icon to be included at the top of each page. In step four, the user can select the toolbar choices that will be included at the top of each e-book page, as well as the icon and text that will be used for each toolbar choice.

Some e-book compilers are capable of using non-HTML documents for input. Unfortunately "eBooks Compiler" does not do that. I hope the developers will include this capability in future releases. After all, some folks don’t know how to use HTML.

Most authors will be pleased with "eBooks Compiler" "right mouse click disable feature". When the right mouse click is disabled, readers cannot print the e-book or read the html source code. I like the fact that the developer has set the default for this feature to "disable" status. This eliminates the need for me to remember to do so.

Overall "eBooks Compiler" is worth the $14.95 the developer is asking. It can be used to produce e-books, and it is fairly easy to use. However, I feel like there are more feature rich and better documented e-book compilers on the market.