THE Group for Authors! discussion

Thanks! I've used Calibre. For my last book I just uploaded to Smashwords and let their meatgrinder do it for me. For uploading to Kindle or Pubit I convert it to html and upload that instead of the word doc.

Merrill Heath
Bearing False Witness

I did mine through Smashwords - it took me a few tries to get it right, but at least now I have a template I can use for future books.

I use Scrivener as my processor. It can compile your MS for basically anything, including ePub.

Thanks for all these ideas. I'm finishing my first ebook and am wading through the different choices and requirements for publishing.

http://ebook.online-convert.com/ does conversions into all sorts of formats.

Aabra wrote: "Hi All, this is for those of us who publish ebooks and are looking for programs that will convert WordDocs to ebook formats. Specifically convert to EPUBs. I just found a program that will do it ..."

Hi Aabra: I took a look at Aspose's epub converter and my tests revealed a few things users need to watch out for when converting a word doc to and ePub:

1. It can't handle footnotes properly. The hyperlink is removed and the footnote is inserted into the text where the hyperlink used to be.
2. Automatic paragraph justification isn't present (which is good if it's a poetry book) so novelists should justify their text.
3. It doesn't recognize page breaks. In the settings you have to set the "split document at heading levels" to whichever heading you used for your chapter titles; and this setting will also automatically create a TOC based on those page breaks.
4. It doesn't scale images properly (cuts large images off instead of scaling them to fit the screen).
5. Text may be randomly centered.

I also tried converting to HTML first and then converting to ePub but that was even worse.

Your best best is to follow the Smashwords Guide (free)to the letter, especially if you are looking to convert a Word document. No. You cannot have page breaks, headers, or footers. You are publishing an e-book that needs to be read on many different devices (and sizes). In some ways you have to let go of the idea of formatting and keep it simple and unencumbered. If you work with Smashwords, as an author, you have access to all your various file formats, including epub.

I also use Calibre for looking at how the book looks for everyone else. It's free. Google it. And, if you use Adobe InDesign for your hardcopies, Amazon now provides a gadget for InDesign to convert it to Kindle which almost makes it as easy as PubIt.