Introduction: How to Make Your Own EBook

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Digital Books are getting popular these days. People are reading more and more on their screens. Tablets, phones and eReaders are a good way to carry tons of text without lugging Books.

In this instructable you will learn to make an eBook on your computer using a Word Processor and free software.

What you will need:

1. A Word Processor like MS-Word or LibreOffice Writer (or anything that outputs HTML)

2. Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/)

I have used the article Basic Electronics by Randy Sarafan as the content for the book.

Step 1: Create Your Text and Add Formatting

First thing any ebook requires is the content. So we make a writeup and divide it into chapters and add formatting here.

For separating the Chapters, set all the Chapter titles to Heading 2 (h2) in the formatting.

You can add all kinds of formatting here but don't forget converting the chapter titles to h2.

Things that can be done here are:

  • Drop Caps
  • Image Captions
  • Footnotes

etc..

Step 2: Save the File As a Filtered HTML

The next step is to save the eBook.

eBooks are just HTML files with some Effects and images.

To save the file in HTML:

  • Select Save As
  • In type, select filtered HTML

That's it, the file is saved.

Step 3: Import to Calibre

To make an eBook, we need to import the file to an Open Source software called Calibre.

To Import the book, just drag and drop or press the Add Books button and point to the html file created.

Step 4: Add Metadata

To add information like a cover page and author info, select the eBook and click on Edit Metadata.

Here you can add all the information you want.

You can add a cover from an image file or you can also generate one.

Step 5: Convert the EBook for Your Device

Now the book will be converted from plain html to an eBook format.

Select the book and press Convert Books

The input format should be ZIP.

The output format will depend on your eBook device.

  • If you own a recent kindle, select AZW3
  • If you own an older Kindle, select MOBI
  • For other devices, select EPUB

Now select Structure Detection on the left side.

Click on the Magic Wand Button on the right side of the section that says 'Detect chapters at (XPath expression:)'

In the 'Match HTML tags with tag name:' drop down, select h2 and press OK

Press OK and the file will be converted to the eBook format selected.

There you have it. The file can be sent to your device from calibre itself.

You can also publist the files to your site or blog.