Using Open Office and Calibre for Ebook Creation

In my book, How to Make an Ebook: Using Free Software, I detail a method for creating epub, mobi, and in the appendix, pdb ebooks. One of the ways to accomplish that was through using some Open Office Writer add-ons for the epub and pdb ebooks. You could also create those through using Calibre, but I found, at the time, that the conversion from Open Office's odt file to be a bit buggy when it came to graphics.

That has since improved, and I've also discovered some steps you can take to ensure a more accurate graphic representation. I will be updating the ebook in the near future. But wanted to get this modification out also on my blog for any that can use the information before I get the ebook updated. Here are the steps which are more simplified using this method, and avoids some of the bugs of the method in my book (like the epub add-on, you couldn't use apostrophes in the description field without the app crashing).

How to Make an Ebook: Using Free Software

The book is available! My steps to creating your own ebook and putting them up for sales, in one volume you can reference on your ereader.

Want to create an ebook but don't know how? Don't have the cash to spend on programs to generate them? Author R. L. Copple shares his logical, step-by-step method of ebook creation. He begins with setting up the document to write your book, and ends with creating the cover art, the PDF, EPUB and MOBI ebooks, and then putting them up for sale at major online retail outlets. The appendices also describe how to make a PDB ebook and how to use the "nuclear" method to clean hidden formats in a document while retaining italics, bold, and heading formats. All using free software you can download!

The book breaks down the process into seven steps: Step 1 – Creating the Source File; Step 2 – Creating the Cover; Step 3 – Creating the PDF Ebook; Step 4 – Creating the Smashwords Edition; Step 5 – Creating the EPUB Ebook and Uploading to Barnes and Noble; Step 6 – Creating the MOBI Ebook and Uploading to Amazon; Step 7 – What to Do With the Ebooks.

How to Make an Ebook: Step 5 – Creating the EPUB Ebook and Uploading toB&N

The EPUB format has become the widely accepted standard for ebooks. Every non-dedicated e-reading device out there (cell phones and tablets) have apps that can read this format, whether we are talking Stanza for the IPhone or Aldiko for Android. Additionally, Barnes and Noble's Nook uses a modified version of the EPUB format, which is why I suggest using an EPUB file to upload your book to their PubIt service. It can take other formats, but if you're going to create an EPUB, it makes sense to upload using their native format.

To manually create an EPUB file, however, is not an easy task. The EPUB file is actually a zipped file containing several files. There are some control files that "direct traffic" so to speak, artwork files for any graphics used, and the text in an html format divided up by any needed page breaks. But luckily there are some programs that will automate this process, even free ones, that will make quick work of the conversion process.

How to Make an Ebook: Introduction

This series will eventually become an ebook I'll make available for sale once we complete the chapters and I can make time to edit them. If you appreciate my efforts and find them useful, please consider a donation (top, right) to aid the continued work on this book. Thank you.

As of this writing, it is obvious that ebooks will, at some point in the near future, overtake the sale of physical books. The trend accelerated during 2010, and all indications are that the movement has sped up to a road-runner pace during 2011. Publishers have been scrambling to lock down ebook rights on old contracts, while authors who retain those rights, have realized their old backlist is a new gold mine of potential income. More and more readers are buying ereaders like Amazon's Kindle, and Barnes and Noble's Nook, and the expectations for the future look bright for anyone who has hopped onto the ebook train.