Word document conversion help

[martybess]

I would like to take my word documents and convert to ebooks. Is there a detailed tutorial for this somewhere?

Also I have a Nexus 10 and a kindle fire so I'm looking for "reader software" that will let me highlight, annotate and sync to a cloud or dropbox etc. Are there any that do all this??

-Marty

[DaleDe]

Try HowTo: Create an eBook in our wiki.

[DSpider]

Adobe InDesign is the leader in the publishing industry. It's also pretty expensive and has a rather steep learning curve, but man, you can do some amazing work in it. I would recommend a few tutorials from Lynda.com:

"InDesign CS6 Essential Training"
"InDesign CS6 to EPUB, Kindle, and iPad"
"Creating Long Documents with InDesign"

I'm sure you'll learn a lot. Basically, you produce an ePub, then, if you want, you can convert the ePub to Mobi.

Alternatively, you can export the Word document as HTML and dick around in Sigil to manually clean up the code, write the CSS, etc.

[goldilocks]

Originally Posted by DSpider

...Alternatively, you can export the Word document as HTML and dick around in Sigil to manually clean up the code, write the CSS, etc.

Actually I save mine as a Filtered HTML (less Word garbage). Uh..."dick around"...that's a real technical term.

[Toxaris]

And, if you use InDesign you still need Sigil to clean up and fix things.

[martybess]

Wow this sounds much more complicated then I was hoping.

Thanks for the replies.

Marty

[Stephen B]

Originally Posted by martybess

Wow this sounds much more complicated then I was hoping.

Thanks for the replies.

Marty

Hi Marty,

Smashwords provides a pretty comprehensive guide here http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52

You can download it for free as a pdf or whatever suits you. At first reading it all seemed pretty bamboozling to me, but just this weekend my wife and I sat down and went trough it a step at a time and I got my new short story uploaded with no problems. Once formatted for Smashwords the manuscript is easily uploaded to Amazon et al.

Hope this helps!

[martybess]

I study religion books and high light stuff in them. I’m a Sunday school teacher and refer back to highlights and quotes. All these books are free and can be copied. I copy each chapter into its on word document where it’s easier to clean up. I then compile it into a big word document.

Thus far I know I need to do the following but not sure how yet.
1- Clean word documents.
2- Add TOC etc.
3- Convert into an ebook.

--Still working on what app will work well for highlighting and annotations and also saves to a cloud. (Using the new Nexus 10)

-Marty

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by martybess

I study religion books and high light stuff in them. I’m a Sunday school teacher and refer back to highlights and quotes. All these books are free and can be copied. I copy each chapter into its on word document where it’s easier to clean up. I then compile it into a big word document.

Thus far I know I need to do the following but not sure how yet.
1- Clean word documents.
2- Add TOC etc.
3- Convert into an ebook.

--Still working on what app will work well for highlighting and annotations and also saves to a cloud. (Using the new Nexus 10)

-Marty

I take it that the highlights are in the word document as are the annotations. For best results you need to have a template in the word document that contains the styles you want to work with. Paragraph styles for original text and a different one for annotations and another for headings. However this can be corrected later.

Save as the document as filtered HTML then open up a copy of Sigil. Import the document into Sigil and use Sigil to format the document the way you wish using CSS statements. Word will save some styles at the top of the file. These can be left there are better to move them to a separate CSS, particularly if you decide to break up the single document into multiple files which is easy to do in Sigil. highlights will typically be saved in the file proper with statements like: <span style='background:yellow'>highlighted text</span>

This can be left as is or use a search to replace it with a span reference to an entry in the CSS.

Sigil can use heading styles to automatically create a TOC which will be in a separate file but instantly accessible in various ePub readers. It you also want an inline TOC Sigil can build that also although if you build a TOC in word it will be saved as an inline TOC in the filtered save HTML document.

Sigil also allows you to enter the title, author etc. of the book which it will save inside the book as metadata.

Once you save the Sigil document you will have an ePub eBook for use in various readers.

notes: Highlighting read on monochrome eBook readers can be problematic so you should inspect the results in the reader.

Sigil has its own forum here at MobileRead with lots of help and is a free download.

Dale

[martybess]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

I take it that the highlights are in the word document as are the annotations. For best results you need to have a template in the word document that contains the styles you want to work with. Paragraph styles for original text and a different one for annotations and another for headings. However this can be corrected later.

Save as the document as filtered HTML then open up a copy of Sigil. Import the document into Sigil and use Sigil to format the document the way you wish using CSS statements. Word will save some styles at the top of the file. These can be left there are better to move them to a separate CSS, particularly if you decide to break up the single document into multiple files which is easy to do in Sigil. highlights will typically be saved in the file proper with statements like: <span style='background:yellow'>highlighted text</span>

This can be left as is or use a search to replace it with a span reference to an entry in the CSS.

Sigil can use heading styles to automatically create a TOC which will be in a separate file but instantly accessible in various ePub readers. It you also want an inline TOC Sigil can build that also although if you build a TOC in word it will be saved as an inline TOC in the filtered save HTML document.

Sigil also allows you to enter the title, author etc. of the book which it will save inside the book as metadata.

Once you save the Sigil document you will have an ePub eBook for use in various readers.

notes: Highlighting read on monochrome eBook readers can be problematic so you should inspect the results in the reader.

Sigil has its own forum here at MobileRead with lots of help and is a free download.

Dale

Sorry wasn't to clear... I compile new books to read and as I read them on the Nexus I highlight. I will start getting familiar with Sigil and the tips on it's us you gave, thanks.

-Marty

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by martybess

Sorry wasn't to clear... I compile new books to read and as I read them on the Nexus I highlight. I will start getting familiar with Sigil and the tips on it's us you gave, thanks.

-Marty

What app do you read them with? Is the highlight data exportable at all? What form does it take? This is the first step you need to solve. Is annotation also on the Nexus?

Dale

[martybess]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

What app do you read them with? Is the highlight data exportable at all? What form does it take? This is the first step you need to solve. Is annotation also on the Nexus?

Dale

Dale I'm hoping to find an app that will sink my highlights and anno's to their servers and could even be loaded onto a different device/reader app like my phone which is android based as well. It looks like moon+, google books and the kindle app all have highlighting and annotations functions. Now to test and see if any of them sync the book info to their servers.

Is there a sub-forum here where I can ask if anyone has had luck with such a thing?

-Marty

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by martybess

Dale I'm hoping to find an app that will sink my highlights and anno's to their servers and could even be loaded onto a different device/reader app like my phone which is android based as well. It looks like moon+, google books and the kindle app all have highlighting and annotations functions. Now to test and see if any of them sync the book info to their servers.

Is there a sub-forum here where I can ask if anyone has had luck with such a thing?

-Marty

There is a forum devoted to eBook Reading and eBook Readers as well as eBook Managing but I would doubt if it would be better for this. Since your tools seem to be android based I would suggest the android forum for their experiences.

Dale

[martybess]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

There is a forum devoted to eBook Reading and eBook Readers as well as eBook Managing but I would doubt if it would be better for this. Since your tools seem to be android based I would suggest the android forum for their experiences.

Dale

I've had the Ipad which does get more attention and as far as apps go they are superior but the android readers are getting things ported over slowly. These features I need are working well for the Ipad. Oh well not switching over for me.

- Marty

[ghostyjack]

If you want syncing of books highlights and notes on an Android, them you might want to looks at Mantano.

There are three different versions available in the Play store, ranging from free for the basic one up to around £7 or so for the premium version. They also have a cloud service available for syncing, although there is a small yearly charge to use that.

Mantano is also one of the better epub readers out there and it also supports pdf as well.

And it's got an excellent library management system which will also sync.