Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

Does anyone know how to do this?

I need a program for Mac to do this so I can post my book on the site.

I don't want to spend a lot of money.

any ideas?

I pay to have the conversion to mobi and epub. I could probably figure out how to do it but just don't have the time. Book Baby converts and uploads for 99 bucks.

caCHING.

It's flying out the window

calibre is a free software - converts to mobi, epub, pdf, whatever. Should work for Mac as well.
http://calibre-ebook.com/
You can import PDF and convert them for free.
I don't pay to convert. I upload Word.doc saved as html to KDP and word.doc on Smashwords. For XinXii I provide the epub and mobi files done with calibre.

None of the page breaks transferred on Calibre

:(

I use Calibre too, but maybe it's different on a Mac

Luke wrote: "None of the page breaks transferred on Calibre

:("

can you do a word.doc saved as HTML on Mac? That's what converts best on KDP and also on calibre...

Luke and others, This is all for a Mac.
I find that the word.doc or docx, needs a few formating rules applied before converting to HTML. That is done by saving as a web page.
You need to be sure there is no space before a paragraph break.
You can do that in Find/replace. Get it up, then click the blue button with arrow to pull down a menu. Select 'Special' then in the drop menu select 'paragraph mark'. This will apear in Find like this: ^p
Before it, put a . and one space. Then cut and paste this into replace and remove the space. Then click replace all. All spaces before paragraph marks will be removed from the document.
It won't be seen but it will make a differnece to how calabre formats.

The other thing to check is in Calibre while formating, check the Look and Feel menu. One can add or remove line spaces between paras. You just need to play around.
(I've found no problem with line spacing or page breaks.)
Make sure page breaks are done in word by 'insert page break' and not with returns or line spaces.
Alignment should be set in Calibre to 'Left' or 'justified' if you must, but Left works best on most readers.
No page numbers are best. Some e-readers make a dreadful mess of those so best not have any.
Also be sure your origonal doc has no hidden HTML. Like if you cut-paste words from somehwhere like Wikipedia. That will show in the final epub as a live link.

I hope this helps/
davidrory.

Barbara wrote: "calibre is a free software - converts to mobi, epub, pdf, whatever. Should work for Mac as well.
http://calibre-ebook.com/
You can import PDF and convert them for free.
I don't pay to convert. I up..."

Luke wrote: "caCHING.

This is SWEET as I sent out my ARC in PDF format to early reviewers but found that if you want to read on a Kindle from the PDF you cant adjust the font and its too small to read comfortably. I just downloaded and converted my ARC to epub AND you can adjust the font. THANK YOU!


It's flying out the window"

Luke wrote: "Does anyone know how to do this?

I need a program for Mac to do this so I can post my book on the site.

I don't want to spend a lot of money.

any ideas?" I did mind on smashwords. It's free and they give you step-by-step instructions. It's easy even for a semi-illiterate like me. Once you follow the instructions and put it into their format, they will use that to creat epbu, mobi and all the others.

Peggy wrote: "Luke wrote: "Does anyone know how to do this?

I need a program for Mac to do this so I can post my book on the site.

I don't want to spend a lot of money.

any ideas?" I did mind on smashwords. ..."

yes, but you can't reuse the Smashwords-generated files on other sites - it's in their terms. So if you uploaded the Smashwords-generated mobi files to KDP, don't.

Luke wants to sell from his website, so he needs calibre.

Luke wrote: "Does anyone know how to do this?

I need a program for Mac to do this so I can post my book on the site.

I don't want to spend a lot of money.

any ideas?"

Luke, there's an Apple program for Mac called IWork (I think it's about $79). IWork includes a wordprocessing program called Pages that does conversion to EPub. It works great, but you need to use "sections" to get chapter breaks (no page breaks). I write in Word, copy into Pages and use Pages to do the formatting for print version (pdf), ePub version and KDP (Kindle version). All works great.

I use Scrivener on Mac.

It makes publishing to any format easy and overall makes it much easier to write period.

General word processors are good for writing short papers but fail at anything larger.

You can get an idea of what I mean by reading Hewson's "Writing a Novel with Scivener" (on the Kindle :)). It's the book that convinced me.

And I've now written 2 novels with it and never want to go back.

Thanks SO much, Mark. I'll give it a shot.
Question: Will this work for Createspace formatting?

There's a very handy program called Calibre that will format books from .pdf or (more ideally, in any format) from filtered HTML (it's just another extension.)

It's really good, has heuristic logic filters for a bunch of things. Also very, very easy to use, offers lots of uses, including as a multiformat reader.

EDIT: Oops! Sorry Barbara, missed your earlier post!

Patrick,

Createspace requires the text be in PDF. You can set up your text in your word processing program (MS Word or better yet Pages if you are on Mac) with the book size layout and font you want. You may have to go back and forth between WP, PDF and Createspace a few times to be sure you get just what you want, but for sure you can come out with a very professional looking book. Cover is a separate issue.

I found out how to do this, though it is quite a long job,

First you use Calibre to convert to EPUB

Then you get a program called Sigil which was free when I downloaded it. This is an EPUB editor where you can write your book if you want or you can edit the newly converted PDF.

Be warned, there is a lot of work to do!

There's no need to go through ePub to create a PDF edition. Either MS Word or Pages (for Mac) will export directly in PDF. For ePub editions I use Pages which exports directly to ePub format. For Kindle I use amazon's converstion from ePub. In all cases I do all the editing and formatting in Word and Pages.

Luke wrote: "Does anyone know how to do this?

I need a program for Mac to do this so I can post my book on the site.

I don't want to spend a lot of money.

any ideas?" Google it. I use a free online program for my conversions, but don't think it'll work for a Mac. But there must be similar programs out there just waiting for you to find them!

For those have issues with page breaks not being recognized and are using Word, there is a technical difference between using page breaks and section breaks. ePub doesn't recognize one of them. Sorry I don't remember which one is the problem, but I would try switching one break that isn't working to the other type and see how it converts.

Denise wrote: "Calibre is the software I use. I convert my Word to HTML and then to mobi and e-pub. The HTML helps me tweak what needs to be fixed and reconverted. It's much easier."

I agree Denise. This is an excellent free program I use too.

Grampy wrote: "Luke wrote: "Does anyone know how to do this?

I need a program for Mac to do this so I can post my book on the site.

I don't want to spend a lot of money.

any ideas?" Google it. I use a free onl..."

IWork for Mac (about $75) includes Pages that will convert anything you import into Pages (MS Word, PDF, whatever) directly to ePub. For best format, convert whatever to Pages first and reformat. Use Section Breaks instead of Page Breaks.

Whatever method you use to create your pdf or epub files, please look at the file properties before you put the file out for publication.

I keep getting pdf files that have good file names that are the actual book titles -- but the file "title" is useless (blank or something not related to the title of the book).

Many of the ebook readers & reader apps will pick up the file title, not the file name. So, if the file title is not right, this makes it harder for those using the ereader to find it later when they are ready to read it or re-read it.

The title is in the file properties; you should be able to change it to be the same as your file name before you save the file and start sending it out.

Please consider eBook Wizard. It is part of the Cheetaah for Writers software package. Converts Microsoft Word manuscript to .mobi and .epub without a lot of pain. Visit http://wizardsforauthors.com