Pdf Ebook Creator

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By David Kudler

Last month I talked about just what an ebook is — a website in a box. Ebooks come in a number of flavors, but for the purposes of this discussion I’m going to stick with the most common and most malleable format of ebook, the ePub file that is the basis of all of the major retailers’ ebook offerings.

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  • A PDF file can be any length, contain any number of fonts and images and is designed to enable the creation and transfer of printer-ready output. Actions: PDF to EPUB - Convert file now View other document file formats: Technical Details.
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R) Promote your eBook. Promoting your eBook is actually the bulk of the work. I highly recommend you follow this blogging strategy to help you understand the relationship between your website, mailing list and a successful eBook. Simply put, the idea is to create quality content on your site and other sites that drives relevant traffic back to your eBook’s landing page. The Lucidpress ebook maker software lets you export your ebook as an image file or in PDF format. You can also create a published link or embed the ebook within the Lucidpress document viewer. These options give you a variety of ways to grow and reach your audience. Zinepal is free ebook creator which converts existing web page contents, feeds and log contents into printable PDF formats and ebooks in the ePub, Amazon Kindle and Mobipocket formats. Create easy ebooks from the web pages with this application within few steps.

This free online tool converts PDF and other documents to the most popular ebook formats: EPUB, Kindle MOBI/AZW3, FB2, Microsoft Reader LIT and Sony LRF. Convert PDF and other types of documents to a variety of ebook formats, including EPUB, Kindle MOBI/AZW3, FB2.

There are four basic ways you can create an ePub file:

  1. From scratch
  2. Saving from a word-processing or page-layout application into ePub format
  3. Using a conversion app or online service
  4. Hiring a designer

The trade-off among these methods involve quality, time, and price. As the old saying goes, you can generally pick two. In order to get all three, you’re going to need to become an ebook maven yourself, which will take a fair amount of time, but which will allow you to control all of the variables yourself. Let’s look at the options, and you can see whether that’s the road you want to take.

Option 1: Create the Ebook from Scratch

An ePub file, as I’ve said, is simply a website in a box. The box is nothing more than a ZIP archive that’s been given the file extension .epub. If you want to test this statement, find an ePub file (it can’t have DRM — digital rights management — attached). Duplicate it so that you still have your original ebook to read and enjoy. Change the extension (the last three or four letters in the file name after the last period) of the duplicate to .zip, and then double-click on the file. Voilà! You’ll have a folder containing all of the files that make up the ebook:

Most of these files — the .xhtml files (a.k.a. web pages) and .css (a.k.a. stylesheet) file — are just what you’d find if you looked at the files building a fairly straightforward website.

The container.xml file serves one purpose: to tell the ereader where to look for the OPF file — that’s the one called content.opf here. That’s the heart of the ebook. It tells the ereader where to find all of the rest of the files in the ebook, what order to display them in, and what role each item serves (e.g. cover image, table of contents, etc.)

The toc.ncx file is a specialized navigation file; it contains the information that your ereader displays when you click on the contents or chapters button.

You can create all of this from scratch using text-editing software, or XML editing software, or a web-page editing app like Dreamweaver.

I don’t recommend it. The amount of labor involved is huge, and the places where you can make mistakes are many; computers are literal-minded, and a missing space or semi-colon that the human eye would fix without our even being aware of it will break an ebook.

However, it is possible to use those apps to edit an ebook after you created it using the techniques laid out below. There are even apps that allow you to do this without un-ZIPping the file, so that you can see the ebook as you edit it. Every day I use two open-source apps (Sigil and Calibre) to refine ebooks that I’ve generated.

What you see inside one of the xhtml files that make up the body of the ebook will look something like this:

That’s the title page of a book that I’m preparing for publication. If you’ve poked around web pages at all, that will all look fairly familiar — HTML tags, style attributes, image calls, a hyperlink or two. For what it’s worth, this is what the page looks like when it’s displayed by an ereader:

If all of that code looks scary to you — don’t worry. Though it’s essential to know some basic HTML if you want to get under the hood of your ePub file, there are other ways to create ebooks. And I’ll be talking some more about what all of that gobbledygook actually is in coming months. (If you’d like to jumpstart that process, I highly recommend Liz Castro’s excellent introduction, ePub Straight to the Point. It’s a few years old, but still does an great job of covering the basics.)

Option 2: Use an App That Exports ePub Files

So if you don’t want to go the DIY route, there are a number of applications that currently export directly to the ePub format:

  • Apache’s OpenOffice has a plug-in called Writer2ePub that allows you to save files as ebooks (open source office suite)
  • Scrivener (commercial writing app)
  • Apple’s Pages for OS X or iOS (commercial word-processing/page-layout app)
  • Adobe’s InDesign (high-end commercial page-layout app)
  • QuarkXpress (high-end commercial page-layout app)

The last two are particularly helpful if you are also preparing a book for print publication.

There are many more options — including add-ons and plug-ins to existing commercial and open-source apps.

All of these will create ePub files that work, and that should be accepted by most retailers.

Free Ebook Creator

What’s the downside? Well, there are a couple of things.

First of all, none of the files created by these apps will display quite the way that you expect them to in various ereaders, especially if you’ve got an ebook that’s got any complicated formatting such as drop-caps, tables, inset images, fancy typography, etc. The apps will try to reproduce on the screen what you were trying to create for the printed page, but often the style rules that the apps try to create make an incredible mess in one or more ereader. Everything may display as plain text on a Nook, while small images may fill the page on an old Kindle, while no images display at all on the Kindle app on your computer.

Here’s the same page displayed on different ereaders:

iBooks
Kindle

Pdf Ebook Creator

Nook
Adobe Digital Editions

Note that on the Nook app, the captions (which are hyperlinks) display as blue rather than red. And notice that in Adobe Digital Editions, the image doesn’t display at all.

Also, all of these programs have idiosyncrasies; most create ePub files that are very difficult to customize, since they treat any style change (italics, font size, indents, etc.) as a unique case, rather than applying a document-wide style. If you use the Styles formatting rules that all of these apps allow — apply a Body style to all body text paragraphs, for example, rather than formatting them as 12pt. Palatino and hitting the tab at the beginning of every paragraph — the results will be better, but inevitably the ePub file produced this way contain WAY too much code, enough to swell the file size. This is a problem when you upload the file to Amazon’s KDP, which will deduct a “transport fee” of $0.15 per megabyte of file size on each download from your royalty. (I’ll be speaking to all of these challenges more in coming months. I’ll also say why it’s probably not worth your time to create files in Apple’s wonderful iBooks Author.)

Option #3: Converting to ePub Using an App or Online Service

Most of us start with a manuscript — a Microsoft Word, ODF (OpenOffice Document File), or RTF (Rich Text Format) doc that we’re looking to turn into an ebook. Now, as I said last month, a Word doc isn’t an ebook. But you can format the text and even insert images, hyperlinks and the other paraphernalia that make up an ebook, and then use an app to convert the document into ePub format.

There are many, many such apps, both open-source and commercial, but I’ll only bother telling you about one that I’ve already mentioned: Calibre.

Calibre was created to convert between an impressive variety of ebook and manuscript formats, including HTML, RTF, DOCX, mobi, AZW3, and, of course, ePub. It has a number of controls that allow you to fine-tune the conversion — but if your document’s simple, the standard settings will probably do.

And of course, as I mentioned above, Calibre contains a WYSIWYG ebook editor that allows you to clean up your ePub file after the conversion.

There are also a number of ways to upload a Word document and get an ePub file. (Most of them fall under the paid conversion option, which comes below.) Many of the retailers allow you to upload a Word document directly.

Smashwords actually prefers Word docs — and will allow you to download your converted file in ePub format after they’ve run it through their famous “Meat Grinder” conversion tool (it’s actually a customized version of the software at the heart of Calibre). Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing does a pretty good job of converting Word files. Kobo’s Writing Life and Barnes and Nobles’ Nook Press have online ebook editing tools.

The downside here is the same as in Option #2 — the conversions are rarely perfect. And in most cases, there’s little that you can do about it, since the conversion is automated, and handled completely by the retailer.

If you go this route, it is essential that you check your ebook out, not just on the retailer’s “preview” or “Look Inside” widget, but on an actual ereader.

Option #4: Use an Ebook Designer or Company to Handle the Conversion

A quick disclaimer here: I’m an ebook designer, so I’m a bit biased toward this option.

Still, I know it’s not the option for everyone.

There are thousands of companies and individuals who create clean, attractive ebooks that will display properly across a variety of ereaders. Here are some reasons to use them:

  • You’ve got complex design elements (tables, lots of images, sidebars, endnotes, drop capitals, etc.) that will require special care.
  • You’re trying to create a fixed-format ebook (again, this is not a PDF.)
  • You want to add a read-aloud track, video, or other enhancements.
  • Your book contains non-Latin characters.
  • You’ve got complex chapter headers.
  • You want the ebook to look good, whatever device it’s read on, and you don’t want to spend the time learning how to make that happen.
  • The idea of looking at HTML makes you break out in hives.

Using a conversion expert or company obviously will involve some cost. It’s up to you to decide whether the expense is worth it.

Next time, I’m going to talk about how to prepare your manuscript for conversion — whether by you or by someone else.

David Kudler is a Contributing Writer for TheBookDesigner.com. He is also an author, an editor, an ebook designer and a writer for the Huffington Post.

You can learn more about David here.


Photo: bigstockphoto.com

Creating ebook can be really a pretty simple task for you if you use suitable and powerful eBook creator software. There are multiple ways to create ebook (online ebook creator tool, create ebook from pdf files, create an ebook using Microsoft word, create ebook from HTML files, create ebook from images and Scanned Pages etc) for free.

But if you are looking for the simplest method to create an ebook on Windows Computer then I would recommend you to use some well-popular and powerful free eBook creator software (suggested by eBook writing experts).

Responsive templates can be seamlessly displayed on any screen size or resolution. Mobile app html5 template download. Some of the salient features are:. Flat & Responsive:These mobile app design templates are built on the Bootstrap framework which makes them fully responsive.

In today’s Software for Windows guide, I’m going to unveil the best free eBook creator software for Windows. You can easily convert several extensions like DOCX, HTML, PDF and TXT to ePUB, PDF, PRC etc using these eBook Creator programs.

Also, you can append icons, cover pictures, details (writer’s description and bio) within the eBook. Most recommended eBook reading platforms are Windows PC, Mac, Android, iPod, Kindle etc. Without any further to-do let’s walk straight inside the list of best free eBook creator software for Windows PC.

Related tips you might like »

7 Best Free eBook Creation Software for Windows

All these free eBook creators are well popular for creating simple, stylish, intuitive eBooks. With the help of these below mentioned free eBook creator software, you can easily make eBook, add the cover image to ebook, add Meta description, and stylish table of content etc.

If you want to take benefits of a user-friendly way of creating and editing ebooks then check the below list of list of best free eBook Creator software for Windows PC:

Pdf Ebook Creator Software

Mobipocket eBook Creator

Pdf Ebook Cover Creator

Mobipocket is easy to use free eBook creator software with a sparkling interface. You can build eBooks either from scratch or import existing ones. It accepts HTML, DOCX, PDF and TXT. Now, you can input titles, cover pictures, tables and publishing date along with the description.

Navigate to the top and click “build” for commencing alteration on your eBook. Your work will be saved in PRC or PRCX extension. You can handle your eBooks from here. Well! It’s a preposterous eBook software overall. Also, it has inbuilt templates, date book, glossary, interactive question, lists, database etc.

Get from here: Download Mobipocket eBook Creator

Calibre – eBook Management

Calibre is a worthy software for writing an eBook because it supports vast formats which includes (AZW, AZW3, AZW4, CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, DJVU, DOCX, EPUB, FB2, HTML, HTML, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML) etc. You can convert those formats into EPUB, DOCX, HTML, MOBI and PDF.

You can modify your previously published or downloaded work by inserting author bio, description, covers. Lastly, you can read eBooks and add cover photos, tables with its built-in function. Clearly, it holds everything you require to create your next eBook.

Get from here:Download Calibre eBook Management

MS Word to EPUB Converter

It’s a free converter which converts MS Word files to ePUB. It acquires clean and simple to use interface. You just need to transform to ePUB format after writing in MS Word. It’ll be ready quickly after the successful alteration.

It’s a basic converter so you don’t have more features along with it. It’s quite like MS Word’s default add-ins which you can download to perform same from “save as” option.

Get from here:Download MS Word to EPUB Converter

EPUBee Maker

Best Free Ebook Creator Software

You can’t obtain better free eBook software that this possibly. I’m using ePUBee Maker currently because its Microsoft add-ins which mean you can install it on MS Word. You will see it as “ePUBee Maker”. Save your doc files after writing into ePUB and PDF version.

You’ll spot few options like quick Publish, publish, and Save as PDF. You can use these options in order to:

  • Quick Publish: It adds your files to ePUB without editing any further.
  • Publish: It prompts you to insert various details such as author, title, cover pictures and description before saving in ePUB.
  • Save as PDF: You can convert your work in PDF specifically with this option.

Get from here: Download EPUBee Maker for Windows

Sigil eBook

You can add description, cover pictures, table of content etc. Sigil has spelling check feature. You can convert HTML and ePUB format into ePUB only. You can exploit audio, video, images within your eBook. Also, you can tweak words by superscript, subscript, strikethrough, tables, lists, hyperlinks etc.

You can view it in normal and code mode. It is compilable with Windows and iOS only.

Get from here:Download Sigil eBook for Windows

TreePad Exe-eBook Creator

It’s a tiny little (1.8MB) free eBook creator which is compatible on Windows XP, 98, Windows 7, Linux operating system with 32 bit and 64-bit feature. Exe-eBook belongs to Treepad files. It’s possible to make an outstanding eBook from its database. It’s programmed directly thus you don’t need installation.

Get from here: Download TreePad Exe-eBook Creator

SCRIBA eBook Maker

“SCRIBA eBook Maker” is JAVA software which creates eBooks in ePUB, PDF and others. It gathers information from the web, files and other places. It has developed for like a “Plugin” usage.

Get from here:Download SCRIBA eBook Maker

I hope, now you got the appropriate answer for your question “what is the best free eBook creator software for Windows PC?” If you found above mentioned free eBook creator software useful for you then feel free to share your view with us through comments.

Also, let us know – What is your favorite free ebook creation tool or ebook creator software for Windows PC?