Formatting Your eBook: Converting Your Book (Step 3)

Various distribution sites — as well as readers and reviewers — will ask for different file types when you send off your book. This section will talk about how to convert each of them. Here’s what we’ll cover:

Choosing a conversion software

Converting your book to PDF

Converting your book to ePub or MOBI

Choosing a conversion software

All formatting software is not created equal. Some of it sucks. Some of it’s grotesquely complicated. Some of it will make you cry. Just kidding. Mostly.

My personal favorite is Calibre because it’s free and (mostly) simple. I couldn’t get the auto-generated TOC to work, here, so aside from converting my pre-made HTML file to ePub, I don’t use any of the program’s frills. You don’t really need to. It gets the job done.

You can also use it as a library, but any books with DRM will not open in the program. Just a head’s up.

There are more conversion programs, of course, and you can check out Media Bistro for a pretty good list of the top 6. Of course, Calibre is at the top of that list.

Converting your book to PDF

This is pretty easy and a good place to start. Why bother? Good question.

What with all the kindles, nooks, and other assorted eRedaers, it almost seems like you would never need a PDF. However, some readers prefer to read on their computers, or just don’t have and don’t want to download the Kindle for PC app or the Nook for PC app.

No matter what you do, you should have something for everyone. It’s good to be prepared, and even if you never give out a PDF (you will, but what if), it’s best to be prepared for that one person who might ask.

PDFs can also be read on any eReader that takes an ePub (correct me if I’m wrong on that, darlings). Though they don’t auto-adjust to the screen (which means they can be harder to read), they can be read.

The Conversion Process

Create a separate Word file and save it as a PDF source file. You’ll be making changes, so it’s good to have a separate copy so that you don’t tweak with the original.

Important note: you cannot create links using Adobe Reader. You’ll need Adobe Writer to do this, which is a paid program. It shouldn’t matter, though, as people usually just jot down the page number where they left off when they close the file, and use the page shortcut to find their last place.

Make the file exactly as you want it to be read — down to spacing, font, everything. The nice thing about PDFs is that they, essentially, take a snapshot of the document. Whatever fonts, images, etc. you have in the file will be preserved in the PDF, no matter if the reader doesn’t have the font or image source. To that effect, PDFs are awesome, don’t require any HTML editing, and are a very easy-to-navigate file type.

Converting a Word document to a PDF:

Open the Word file.
Hit “File> Save As” (or F12)
In the bottom left, change the file type to PDF.
Select “Save As” at the bottom right of the dialog.
You’re done. Yay!

And voila! You have a PDF. But now you want to go on to the harder stuff, right? Nah, I’m kidding. It’s not that hard to get an ePub or MOBI file either as long as you have the source HTML ready.

Converting your book to ePub or MOBI

This process differs for each program, so I’m going to walk you through what I know: Calibre. The others will have similar processes.

Remember, the ePub is for most readers (like the Nook) and a MOBI can be read on a Kindle. That’s why it’s good to have both.

Here’s what the Calibre Dashboard looks like when you open it (click for a larger image):

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The menu at the top is pretty straightforward. To add a book, go to the first button, or “Add Books.”

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From there, you’ll browse to the HTML file we talked about in the last post. Make sure you’ve already tested this HTML file in your browser to save yourself wasted time. Any errors in a converted file are usually from the source HTML file.

Once the book adds, select it and go to “Edit Metadata” in the menu. You’ll see this screen (click for larger image):

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You’ll notice that this is a completed book. When you open yours, it’ll be blank: no series data, no cover, no author data, no synopsis. Add all the items until you’re happy with how it looks. Click OK.

By now you’ve probably guessed that we’re working down the menu from left to right. The last step is “Convert books.” Click that, and you’ll be given a screen that looks like this:

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There are a few changes you’ll have to make:

Go to “Heuristic Processing” on the left. Disable this feature.
Go to “Structure detection” and delete all fields. This detects chapters for the TOC (even though I’ve never actually gotten it to work), which is unnecessary since you’re TOC is manually made.
Go to “Table of Contents” and delete/disable everything here. Your TOC is prepped and waiting.

Once this is done, look at the top left. It should say “Input format: ZIP” This is your HTML file that you uploaded when you added the book.

At the top right, you’ll see “Output format: ePub” EPub is the default. You can leave this, since you do want an ePub. When you go to make your MOBI, just repeat the other steps but change this output format.

 

More on uploading eBooks to the distribution networks tomorrow, with how-to specifics for anyone stumped by the sites or who just needs a direction with where to start.

 
The Full Formatting Bootcamp Syllabus:

Creating Your Source File
Customizing & Editing Your Book’s HTML
Finding a Conversion Software & Converting Your Book
Uploading Your Book for Sale