A List: Free book and ebook publishing software and resources

I’m teaching a workshop tonight at the Artisan’s Asylum, the awesome makerspace in Somerville, and thought I’d share this handout list here since then all the links can be live.

This is a list of all the free or open source bits of software and other things that I’ve used in my publishing ventures. I’ve also used a lot of expensive things like Adobe Photoshop, Quark Xpress, and so on. But not everyone has the money or the access to the high-priced programs, so part of my workshop is basically how you can do it all using free or very inexpensive options.

Book-making Software & Free Stuff You Will Need

Download a printable one-page version here: PDF

OpenOffice/NeoOffice/LibreOffice
free/donationware open software “clone” of MS Office suite
OpenOffice “Writer” is the Word equivalent
OpenOffice Plugins:
Altsearch – Alternative Find/Replace (so you can find non-printing characters) http://extensions.openoffice.org/en/project/alternative-dialog-find-replace-writer-altsearch
Writer2epub (http://extensions.openoffice.org/en/project/writer2epub)
GIMP:
Image editing software (https://www.gimp.org/downloads/)
Cover designs for ebooks must be 1400 pixels x 2100 pixels minimum
Free image sources:
Pixabay.com (free portal to Shutterstock)
FreeImages.com (very limited, free portal to Getty Images)
Cheap image sources:
Dreamstime.com
iStockphoto (also owned by Getty), Shutterstock, a few others
Sigil
WYSIWYG epub editing software INDISPENSABLE (https://github.com/Sigil-Ebook/Sigil)
Calibre
meant to be used as an ebook library tool but has crude/ugly format conversion functions and DRM stripping functions (https://calibre-ebook.com/download)
ePub Zip/ePub Unzip
Script that unzips your epub and then puts it back together again, allowing for manual deletion of encrypted files (http://en.freedownloadmanager.org/Mac-OS/ePub-Zip-Unzip-FREE.html)
Typesetting and layout
Scribus is open source free https://sourceforge.net/projects/scribus/
Adobe Indesign is the standard, costs $74.99 for one month cloud access, $39.99/mo for 1 yr.
Epubcheck
Online code validator: http://validator.idpf.org/ (does files up to 10MB)
Barcodes and Createspace Templates:
Bookow.com free barcode generator: http://bookow.com/resources.php#isbn-barcode-generator
Bookow Free createspace template: http://bookow.com/resources.php#cs-cover-template-generator

You might also be interested in my other posts:

Type and Design for Small- & Self-Publishers

Farming Out to Professionals

Elements of Book Design

Page Layouts

Widows, orphans, and hyphenation

“Smart” quotes, section breaks, and fleurs

Ebook design versus print design

The Publishing Nitty Gritty: All the Hoops to Jump through to Self-publish (slightly out of date but mostly still relevant)