How to create a digital book

[Rick1971]

hey guys I am writing a short story...I want to put it on my girlfriends e-reader as well as my own, how can I create a .pub, .mobi of any other format that we can dead it with?

[HarryT]

Lots of ways. One of the simplest is to write in Word, save as "filtered HTML", then convert to ePub using a tool such as Sigil or Calibre.

[Rick1971]

Cool, I will DL Calibre

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Lots of ways. One of the simplest is to write in Word, save as "filtered HTML", then convert to ePub using a tool such as Sigil or Calibre.

The best way is to write it in a text editor and them format it in Sigil. Stay away from Word.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The best way is to write it in a text editor and them format it in Sigil. Stay away from Word.

Sigh, not that again. It is not true, you just need to know what to do. It is the same for each program, you need to know how to use it.
If you use it right, Word is a fine source for e-books.

[mncowboy]

Like Toxaris said, used properly, Word is probably the easiest and best way to create a document that will be an ebook.
Bob

[HarryT]

It's certainly the easiest for someone who's an author, rather than a computer geek.

[JSWolf]

Word is easy enough to use to word process. But if you then don't know about making an eBook, it's royal pain.

[Toxaris]

So is making formatting from scratch in Sigil. Like I said, you need to know what you are doing.

[SBT]

I use vi....

'If you've ever wondered what a word processor does with your words, think about what a food processor does with your food'

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by SBT

I use vi....

'If you've ever wondered what a word processor does with your words, think about what a food processor does with your food'

And vi is a fine tool for someone who's comfortable writing at the HTML source code level. But it's unreasonable to expect all authors to be HTML experts, and nor should they have to be. It's a great shame if we're still at the stage with e-books where that should be the expectation. And I don't personally think we are.

[DSpider]

I think you mean vim, which has syntax highlighting (or so I hear), not plain old vi.

My advice is not to worry too much about the program (they're all fine as long as they can export as HTML), and focus on the content instead. But if you wanna do it right, Adobe is considered the leader in desktop publishing. Get their Creative Suite and grab some tutorials from lynda.com. Of course, you can also talk to a publisher and they'll take care of it for you. But for a short story to put on your girlfriend's e-reader, any program is probably overkill.

[JSWolf]

If an author does not know HTML/XML/CSS then that same author won't know how to clean up the garbage left behind by a Word > ePub conversion. So it's best to learn HTML/XML/CSS and let go of Word.

TEXT EDITORS RULE!

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If an author does not know HTML/XML/CSS then that same author won't know how to clean up the garbage left behind by a Word > ePub conversion. So it's best to learn HTML/XML/CSS and let go of Word.

TEXT EDITORS RULE!

You are certainly entitled to your own opinion but the fact is that it takes less knowledge about these formats to remove garbage than to generate correct syntax out of the blue on new documents.

Dale

[mrmikel]

Some people are over concerned with how beautiful the HTML is as opposed to how it appears on the reader. Calibre makes good looking epubs out of practically anything. But its HTML is not beautiful. Does the non-technical reader care? Not at all.

Since you have a Sony, you will want to check it on your PRS-350 to make sure things that look good on the computer screen look good in the ebook. You might download the older version of the reader for PC software from the Sony Reader site. It works better in my unhumble opinion for checking than the new software does.

One caution if you go back and forth between them- Sigil does not grab ownership of a file once open, so you can open it in the Sony Reader for PC at the same time. The Reader software does grab ownership and will cause an error in Sigil if you try to save while it is displayed in the reader. Just clicking on the list, rather than display of a particular epub will avoid this conflict.