Newb: Sigil for Kindle publishing ?

[saoir]

Hi all,

I am 90% finished with my book. It is simple fiction. Nothing fancy in formatting at all.

I have used Scrivener to write it and it has been brilliant. However although Scrivener has a powerful compiler that does output for ePub or kindle etc. I am really really struggling with it.

Having done web design in Dreamweaver for several years, some years ago, I thought maybe Sigil is the job for me.

So I outputted my book from Scrivener in ePub format, where it joined everything up and put chapter headers in place, and opened it in Sigil.

Am I going to have to take any special steps to make it Kindle publishable other than convert it to Kindle format after the final ePub is edited ? Will it be more or less WYSIWYG ? I notice a lot of Scrivener code inside the ePub such as multiple classes.

And is there a manual somewhere ?

Tks

[varlog]

manual

[saoir]

Originally Posted by varlog

manual

Many many thanks.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by saoir

Am I going to have to take any special steps to make it Kindle publishable other than convert it to Kindle format after the final ePub is edited ?

Amazon recommends adding guide items for the cover, the TOC and the beginning of the book (Text), which you can add in Sigil via the Add Semantics context menu, if Scrivener hasn't already added them to the .opf file.
(For backwards compatibility an HTML TOC is also recommended.)

If you add all the recommended guide items and an HTML TOC and the ePub passes ePubCheck Online, you shouldn't have problems with the Kindle conversion.

[saoir]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Amazon recommends adding guide items for the cover, the TOC and the beginning of the book (Text), which you can add in Sigil via the Add Semantics context menu, if Scrivener hasn't already added them to the .opf file.
(For backwards compatibility an HTML TOC is also recommended.)

If you add all the recommended guide items and an HTML TOC and the ePub passes ePubCheck Online, you shouldn't have problems with the Kindle conversion.

Tks Doitsu - I'll check up on what all of those things are :-) Appreciate it.

[zonker]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Amazon recommends adding guide items for the cover, the TOC and the beginning of the book (Text)

which file do you have to reference for TOC guide item? the optional html index you have to create?

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by zonker

which file do you have to reference for TOC guide item? the optional html index you have to create?

The optional HTML TOC. Just right-click it and select Add Semantics > Table Of Contents from the menu.

[zonker]

Thank you, I didn't know it. I just converted an epub without toc guide with kindle previewer and indeed index is not linked in Kindle app.
One last question: is it better to upload to kdp an epub or an epub converted to mobi with kindlegen?

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by zonker

One last question: is it better to upload to kdp an epub or an epub converted to mobi with kindlegen?

Theoretically, it shouldn't make a difference, since KDP will convert ePubs with KindleGen anyway. You'll probably slightly reduce the processing time by uploading a .mobi file generated by KindleGen/Kindle Previewer.

Note that you'll also need to separately upload a high resolution cover image.

Good luck with your book!

[zonker]

thanks!

[saoir]

Thanks for the help a few months ago, Doitsu.

I have now completed my first book - using Scrivener. However I have discovered that it has severe limitations in how it compiles the output. One major problem is that it cannot handle a Title and Copyright page (!)

If I compile the rest of the manuscript (80,000 words) with Scrivener, and omit a TOC and a cover and a title page and a copyright page, and output to ePub format, can I then import that ePub into Sigil and add those elements in a fairly straight forward way ? and then proceed to upload to KDP ?

I have been a web page designer in the past and am used to using Dreamweaver for example.

(I am assuming I can upload the ePub file to KDP as you say so in a comment above)

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by saoir

If I compile the rest of the manuscript (80,000 words) with Scrivener, and omit a TOC and a cover and a title page and a copyright page, and output to ePub format, can I then import that ePub into Sigil and add those elements in a fairly straight forward way ?

That depends on the output that Scrivener creates. If Scrivener formats chapter headings as h1..h6 tags, you can automatically generate a TOC with Sigil (Tools > TOC). Sigil will also automatically generate a cover page (Tools > Add Cover) if you add a suitable cover image.
As for the title and copyright pages, you could simply add blank pages to your .ePub, insert the contents and and apply the proper semantics via Add Semantics.

[saoir]

Thanks,

This is the TOC section that Scrivener puts at the front of the ePub file.


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta content="text/css" http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" />

<title>Vineyard</title>
<meta content="Cocoa HTML Writer" name="Generator" />
<meta content="1265.21" name="CocoaVersion" />
<link href="../Styles/stylesheet3.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<style type="text/css">
/*<![CDATA[*/

h3.sgc-1 {font-size: 133%; font-style: italic; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.0px}
/*]]>*/
</style>
</head>

<body>
<h3 class="sgc-1">Contents</h3>

<p class="p2"><br /></p>

<p class="p3"><a href="../Text/body.xhtml">Chapter 1</a></p>

<p class="p3"><a href="../Text/body1.xhtml">Chapter 2</a></p>

<p class="p3"><a href="../Text/body2.xhtml">Chapter 3</a></p>

<p class="p3"><a href="../Text/body3.xhtml">Chapter 4</a></p>

<p class="p3"><a href="../Text/body4.xhtml">Chapter 5</a></p>

<p class="p3"><a href="../Text/body5.xhtml">Chapter 6</a></p>

<p class="p3"><a href="../Text/body6.xhtml">Chapter 7</a></p>

<p class="p3"><a href="../Text/body7.xhtml">Chapter 8</a></p>

<p class="p3"><a href="../Text/body8.xhtml">Chapter 9</a></p>

<p class="p3"><a href="../Text/body9.xhtml">Chapter 10</a></p>

<p class="p3"><a href="../Text/body10.xhtml">Chapter 11</a></p>

<p class="p3"><a href="../Text/body11.xhtml">Chapter 12</a></p>
</body>
</html>

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by saoir

This is the TOC section that Scrivener puts at the front of the ePub file. [...]

Assuming that the book actually contains the files body1.xhtml, body2.xhtml etc. the HTML TOC should work, but you'll also need an NCX TOC, which Sigil can automatically generate if each chapter heading is enclosed by a heading tag. For example:

<h1>Chapter 1</h1>

or

<h3>Chapter 1</h3>

If you used heading tags, simply press CTRL+T in Sigil to generate an NCX TOC; if you didn't use heading tags, change whatever tags the heading is enclosed by to <h1>...</h1> and press CTRL+T.

[saoir]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Assuming that the book actually contains the files body1.xhtml, body2.xhtml etc. the HTML TOC should work, but you'll also need an NCX TOC, which Sigil can automatically generate if each chapter heading is enclosed by a heading tag.

I just obtained ePub Zip/Unzip and unzipped the epub and it has a file "toc.ncx" inside it.

Sorry Doitsu, I am so so frustrated. I invested 6 months into learning and using Scrivener to write my book and now I have a full ePub that reads fine on the Kindle and it's ready to go to KDP.
But instead now I have to start learning Sigil from scratch and all I wanted to do is add a title and copyright page FFS.
After spending all of today on google, I thought I could unzip my ePub and just add a few extra .xhtml files using Dreamweaver ... but now after zipping it again it won't read. I am guessing that the files structure that I changed don't match the original toc.ncx. But I can't edit the toc.ncx.