I can tell you right now that creating your own eBooks in ePUB format is a really simple process :). You probably have a lot of Word documents on your computer that you could read on you eBook reader too. For that you could save your Word document to a PDF format, but sometimes PDF format doesn’t work so well on eBook readers. ePUB is much better for eBook readers. ePUB format is best if text is the most important part of your document. On the other hand, PDF is better when when layout is the most important part of your document (a brochure or a flyer).
Here we will show you how to create eBooks using Microsoft Office Word 2012 and Calibre eBook management software. Calibre is free software which you can download here: http://calibre-ebook.com/download
I guess that you already know how to work in Word. The thing is, you should design your Word documents using headings. Also, you should create Table of Contents using Words automatic TOC feature. TOC is created using headings that you defined in your document.
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| Headings (Home tab) |
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| Table of Contents (References tab) |
Once you have prepared your Word document, you will have to save it as HTML (filtered) file. To do that, go to File > Save As, and then choose “Web Page, Filtered” as your file type. Be sure to remember where you saved your new HTML document :).
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| File Type (Save As) |
The next step is to convert created HTML to ePUB. For that we will use Calibre, so I hope that you have it installed. When you open Calibre, click the Add books button (top, left), and select the HTML file that you created.
Next, select your book from the list and click on the Convert books button.
The following window will appear:
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| Convert Window (Calibre) |
Make sure that the output format (top, right) is EPUB. Notice that we have chosen custom cover image for our eBook. This is JPEG file that we have create using image editing software called Paint.NET. You can play with various options in this windows, but if you designed your Word document right, you can simply click OK button, and everything should look good. Once your book is converted, select it from the list and click the “Click to open” link. This will take you to the folder where your ePUB file is now placed.
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| Click to open (marked yellow) |
That’s it. ePUB file can now be copied to your eBook reader :).
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| ePUB file (with .epub extension) |
Using exactly this method we have created an eBook about Windows environments in general. The book is called PC Fundamentals and you can see how this eBook looks like on our site about Windows operating systems.