Sigil to DOC

[thewitt]

After using Sigil to finalize my ePub file for publication, I found I needed to go back and perform all the same steps on a DOC file for CreateSpace - using their template for publishing.

It struck me as a total duplication of effort.

What would be really nice is to be able to finalize my format in Sigil for creating an ePub, and then exporting that to DOC format to be used with CreateSpace.

I suspect others submitting to trade publishers would have similar desires.

Possible to do this with a plug-in?

[theducks]

Even Calibre does not output DOC

Sorry you have wasted your time.

Maybe you should find a different publisher ?
You might ask in the 'Writers workshop' forum

[thewitt]

Storyist, the app that I write in, will export DOC or RTF or RTFD and other interesting formats - as well as ePub.

Since publishers seem to want DOC files, and CreateSpace - a POD service - is pretty picky about the input format, I don't think we are getting away fro DOC anytime soon.

For CreateSpace I could use a PDF, but it still needs to be in the same format with page size, gutters, margins, etc.

Just seemed to make sense to me to Write, then use one app to fine tune the appearance not two.

[Doitsu]

@thewitt: You don't need a plugin. You can create a DOC in three easy steps yourself.

1. Select all files in the Book Browser.
2. Right-click the selected files and select Merge.
3. Select all text in Book View mode and copy and paste it into Word.

Alternatively, convert the book with Calibre to RTF, open the RTF file with Word and save it as a .doc file.

[Toxaris]

Actually copy/paste from Book View does not always do the trick. Some formatting will be lost and certain tags cannot be copied. The best way, unfortunately, is to actually import the HTML pages directly into Word. The HTML pages do need some work first though...

Perhaps I will create my second plugin to facilitate this. Much of the coding is already done for the import ePUB function in my Word add-in.

[thewitt]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

@thewitt: You don't need a plugin. You can create a DOC in three easy steps yourself.

1. Select all files in the Book Browser.
2. Right-click the selected files and select Merge.
3. Select all text in Book View mode and copy and paste it into Word.

Alternatively, convert the book with Calibre to RTF, open the RTF file with Word and save it as a .doc file.

I tried this already and it was really not much better than using the RTFD or DOC files generated by Storyist - which is from before the finish formatting in Sigil.

I don't have any issue getting the actual book text in Word (actually OpenOffice) but in preserving the formatting from Sigil.

In the end it might not be all that valuable anyway. I'm still trying to come up with a workflow for this that let's me format using the page size, gutter and margins needed for CreateSpace as well.

[Toxaris]

What formatting do you want to preserve? The method I described does preserve most formatting.

[thewitt]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

What formatting do you want to preserve? The method I described does preserve most formatting.

I have not tried importing the HTML into Word. I'll try that and see what it gets me.

Notes and observations from both methods will be helpful, so I'll do both as soon as I finish my final editing and submission to CreateSpace - which I'm working on now.

[Tex2002ans]

There was a topic called "EPUB to Docx conversion" a few months ago:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=245948

Not much has changed in the three months.

[thewitt]

Brilliant. Thank you.

[exaltedwombat]

Originally Posted by thewitt

Storyist, the app that I write in, will export DOC or RTF or RTFD and other interesting formats - as well as ePub.

Why don't you write in Word? If you make consistent use of Heading and Paragraph styles, a DOCX converts seamlessly to EPUB through calibre.

CreateSpace will accept your book as PDF. This is the usual method when publishing on paper. With an eBook you have limited control over page layout. With PDF you have full control.

[thewitt]

PDF may be the ultimate right answer, but that's an output format from the word processor, not an authoring tool. At least not in any form that I'm comfortable with.

As for why I write in Storyist, it's a lean, writing specific application that runs on my Mac and my iPad with tight integration and doesn't have all the baggage and extra nonsense that bloats Word.

[Notjohn]

I can't imagine uploading a doc file (however generated) to Createspace. Print editions should have a professional appearance. No automagical conversion is going to achieve that.

I finish my books in Word, then fork them into separate paths: to html and Sigil for the e-book, to Open Office Writer for the print edition. (I find OOW much better than Word for doing the actual layout--headers & footers, hyphenation, drop-caps, widows & orphans--and much, much better in creating the PDF. As Exalted says, PDF is the gold standard for print editions, just as epub is for digital. (All IMHO, of course!)

Sure, this means you must maintain two distinct books, but as a practical matter you'll be doing that anyway, since e-books are so easy to modify and update, and print editions so time consuming.

[exaltedwombat]

If you find OOW better for page layout than Word, you haven't investigated Word fully!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

[B]Alternatively, convert the book with Calibre to RTF, open the RTF file with Word and save it as a .doc file.

There are too many bugs with the conversion to RTF. It's actually better to convert to HTMLZ and load in the HTML file into Word and go from there.