Hey, Blue Giant Zeta Puppies,
The short answer is: If you dig design and your project is pretty straightforward--no images, just straight text like a novel--it'll just take a little research and a couple tries to get something decent. It's actually a lot like web design, but you use XML tags instead of HTML. If you have InDesign and know how to use that, you're in good shape. Search "ebook design," you'll find some tutorials and books. Here's a link to some info to start: http://kindleformatting.com/indesign.php
Super nerdy response:
Basically, you apply XML tags to each element of the page to tell it how to behave. It's a little more complex than just straight layout in InDesign because you have to be precise about the commands for each element. You can either hand-code in a text editing app or export XML out of InDesign. Haven't used Quark in a while, but I think you can export HTML from it. You can download a free plugin for InDesign that will format your file to an EPUB file, which is a format used by lots of e-readers but can be wonky with Kindle. Kindle uses a proprietary format (for now; they'll probably have to ditch that if they want to remain competitive), but it's essentially HTML tags with a few tweaks. You can supposedly upload a Word or TXT file straight to Kindle without any real formatting, but it ends up a hot mess. You can take an EPUB file and use a third-party freeware converter to make it a MOBI file, which works with Kindle.
PDFs are good for reading on a computer, but they're generally not preferred for e-readers. PDFs are static images, and one of the benefits of the e-reader technology is that it's fluid, so you can resize the text to fit your screen/preference. But PDFs are great for graphics-heavy work like comics because you have complete control over the layout (and the file size is small). Graphics-heavy books don't work so well yet in the e-reader formats other than PDF.
Hope that helps. Cheers!
-L
The Blue Giant Zeta Puppies said:
I've heard that one thing about e-books is that they make self publishing much easier, much like downloads made self releasing your music easier......
(Just read Lauren's post)
So what are we talking in terms of design? InDesign? Quark? (say) If I lay out the book to whatever the specs. are and export to (say).PDF?, or some other format, would you (or whoever) take this file and convert it into whatever a Kindle uses? Hmmmmm.....