Any good editor for creating epub in 2026?

[BetterRed]

See ==>> calibre user guide: E-book conversion - in particular the Format Tips section.

If you want something that will (with effort) map the MS Word/Libre Office style definitions to CSS have a look at the Sigil DOCX Import plugin

There's also the Toxaris's eBook Tools MS Word add-in - I use some of its features regularly, but not it's HTML or EPUB creation features.

BR

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by ableal

no one has the nerve to say they can´t handle a Word document.

I do.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by phillipgessert

What's the workflow here? Someone is prepping files for you? Because the best tool for that might be something different than e.g. some standalone software you'd like to recommend to someone building an ebook end-to-end with no coding experience.

Someone operating totally independently will almost certainly wind up using something in the Vellum / Atticus / Kindle Create slate of tools, regardless of what more ebook-savvy folks may think of the output. Someone helping you create something more bespoke will probably be better served stopping short of an actual EPUB, instead focusing on giving you an exceptionally clean and well-structured Word file that you hike over the finish line yourself. And in that scenario they’re developing a more transferable skill, which is a decent carrot in lieu of pay.

No matter how good or not the code is, Kindle Create is crap and needs to go away forever. It has a major flaw. It outputs Mobi. And you could lose features use want to use because Mobi doesn't support them.

Vellum also needs to go away forever because it creates the some of the worst code ever. Sure it's valid, but if you need to make changes to the ePub, it's may not be easy especially if the person doing the changes is not knowledgeable enough in HTML/CSS.

I'm guessing Atticus could also be bad given it's lumped in with to other awful programs.

The best solution is to make sure you create the Word Document properly using styles and only styles. Never highlight and click a button on the toolbar.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Vellum also needs to go away forever because it creates the some of the worst code ever. Sure it's valid, but if you need to make changes to the ePub, it's may not be easy especially if the person doing the changes is not knowledgeable enough in HTML/CSS.

Valid code that works. That you seem to think that an automated code generator should create code that matches your preferred coding style says more about you and less about the generated code. Unless you can post an example where Vellum produces code as an example, that makes the page display slow down, there is nothing wrong with it.

And really, do you think someone who is using Vellum is also going to be manually editing the ePub? For the authors I know, that is generally where I have the offending ePub sent in my direction for fixup instead of the author wasting valuable writing time on learning CSS/XHTML.

[DiapDealer]

Give it a rest, Jon. You don't get to decide for everyone what's acceptable to use. Your objection to everything except that which you choose to use is duly noted. Now please go away.

[phillipgessert]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

No matter how good or not the code is, Kindle Create is crap and needs to go away forever. It has a major flaw. It outputs Mobi. And you could lose features use want to use because Mobi doesn't support them.

Vellum also needs to go away forever because it creates the some of the worst code ever. Sure it's valid, but if you need to make changes to the ePub, it's may not be easy especially if the person doing the changes is not knowledgeable enough in HTML/CSS.

I'm guessing Atticus could also be bad given it's lumped in with to other awful programs.

The best solution is to make sure you create the Word Document properly using styles and only styles. Never highlight and click a button on the toolbar.

KC exports EPUB now. Is it "good"? Probably not. Most of these types of software generate a lot of cruft. But if the user is someone that's not comfy with code, and presumably isn't already interested in getting there, I'm not sure software of any other style is realistic to recommend. At least, none that end at an EPUB. I agree that focusing on the Word file will be better, with OP handling the final conversion.

[ableal]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

I do.

But you could if you wanted. You're one of those LaTex high elfs, you have nerve to spare

[icearch]

I have tried both convertion in Calibre and Sigil.

Calibre will try to preserve every style in the original file and cause every paragraph have a class, even blank ones.Even use settings to remove some style still leaves class in every paragraph.

The Sigil Docx2epub would ditch most style, but just leave p and h, so no point to waste time to fine formatting in MSword anyway.

Considering the actual need and future maintenance, barebone epub from scratch seems more logical.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by icearch

The Sigil Docx2epub would ditch most style, but just leave p and h, so no point to waste time to fine formatting in MSword anyway.

I think you might have missed a big part of the plugin. Namely the ability to create custom mapping matrices to map Word styles to css.

[JSWolf]

In the Word document, each paragraph has a style. So calibre is keeping that.

However, if most paragraphs use the same style, you don't need a class for those paragraphs in the ePub as you can style p for the most used paragraph style.

For example, this is the CSS I use for most paragraphs.

p {
  margin-top: 0;
  margin-bottom: 0;
  widows: 1;
  orphans: 1;
  text-indent: 1.2em;
}

[icearch]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I think you might have missed a big part of the plugin. Namely the ability to create custom mapping matrices to map Word styles to css.

Yep, it's probably I just didn't know better. I will looking into it afterwards.

[phillipgessert]

Yeah, the DOCX2EPUB plugin is fantastic, you might look up mammoth documentation to work out the mapping stuff, which is tremendously useful. You can have as much or as little style retention as you want, and can nest elements together (e.g. div.class > p.whatever > span.etc). Very useful if you’re structuring all your Word files the same way, and re-using any CSS.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by icearch

We have lots of separate text needs to be bundled into epub. And due to lack of spare time and energy, it better be done by more people.

If the content is created from scratch and the contributors have the latest Windows 11 versions (v11.2510.6.0 or higher), they could simply use the Notepad app that comes with Windows and create Markdown files. (Microsoft added WYSIWYG Markdown support to it some time in the last quarter.)
There are also countless online WYSIWYG Markdown editors. You could then easily convert the Markdown files to HTML with Calibre or cmark-gfm and add them to your book.

[rjwse@aol.com]

I have been using the editor in calibre exclusively for many years for original writing. That is to say, I do not use any kind of word processor at all. To create the necessary code is trivial: just wrap each paragraph in <p> and </p>. Add <h1> and </h1> around the single line tile. At this point you are done. More complicated things you can learn as you go. Actually adding these tags is via calibre also: the snippet feature can pop in these tags quickly without fuss. My snippet for the P tag is pp followed by ctrl-j. Later, you can learn to modify the tags internally by adding style ("s, ctrl-j" = "style=""). Many people disdain collections of styles called "class" but I like them very much ("c, ctrl-j" = "class="") My classes are like "tac" = "text-align:center", "df" = "display:flex", "aic" = "align-items: center". Over the years all this has become automatic <ol>, <li>, "bia" = "break-inside-avoid", "jcse" = "justify-content:space-evenly". Depending on if the book has lots of images with top, bottom, side captions and so forth this method creates absolute precision of placement for size, left or right, etc. The epub is finished completely in calbre's editor. You can open it in with "v" in calibre's main screen to read it as an epub with the built in viewer. While in the viewer you can click "c" to convert it into PDF for sending to amazon for printing. Calibre does not have its own PDF viewer but you can set a keypress from calbre's main screen to open a PDF to read it that way after conversion. I have ctrl-e for evince and ctrl-o for okular. You really don't need two. Yes, to be fair, you can spend months and even years to teach yourself how to enhance via tags. But it takes the same amount of time and effort to learn how to use all the details of an ultracomplex word processor. The conversion process from word processor file to epub is sometimes not precise and it is very hard to tweak. I do not recommend my method for everyone; it is personal.

[msel]

Two other suggestions for creating or preparing epub documents:

1. OnlyOffice Desktop (free): It offers directly the creation of an epub document (File | Save as). This is a free office program like LibreOffice.

https://www.onlyoffice.com/download-desktop

2. LibreOffice has some extensions to create epub, e. g.
https://extensions.libreoffice.org/e...ow/epublishing