Build Your Own EBOOK

Preface 

The document  details the various  ways to complete a  EBOOK,  We  showcase some of 
the trials and tribulations of  building an Ebook using  various tools. The work was done by 
Maureen Hilyard and Glenn McKnight  If you have any suggestions  please provide to  Glenn 
Mcknight with email ​[email protected]  

About the Author 

 
Glenn McKnight has been actively involved in technology solutions
including the rollout in North America of the BAYGEN Wind Up Radio
from South Africa, the INK MEDIA Computer a competitor to the One
LapTop Per Child and many other projects. He has produced a a
number of Mobile apps and more relevant to this project the creation
of Ebooks for the Internet Society.  

Scope of the Project

The short Ebook provides some of the experiences of Maureen Hilyard and Glenn
McKnight in their use of various Ebook tools to produce two Ebooks based upon the
webinar series deployed with AtLarge

What is a  Ebook 

According to Wikipedia the definition of a EBOOK is

‘An e​lectronic book​(variously: e​-book,​​eBook,​e-Book, e​book,​​digital book​or ​e-edition)​
is a​b​ook-​length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable
on computers or other electronic devices”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book

A key difference of e-books and normal print books in print books, you control the
layout in a fixed format, no variance, no hyperlinking. What you see is what you get.
Ebooks are different. If you try to make your ebook look like an exact facsimile of a print
book you will have a poorly formatted, unreadable ebook.
Example
In this case the book when exported to be read by an ereader it become improperly
formatted despite looking perfectly fine as a PDF
PDF VERSION Before Conversion



As you can see you might produce a great document, converted it to a PDF, then to a
EPUB and when testing in a EREADER the work becomes completely unreadable

Ebooks are designed for “reflowability,” which means your words and paragraphs will
shape shift and reflow and look good on any screen size, whether it’s a small iPhone or a
larger iPad, Kindle, or personal computer screen. Reflowability enables your reader to
customize the font sizes, fonts, and line spacing to suit their personal reading preference
and device.
With print books, readers use page numbers to navigate. With ebooks, there is no “page.”
Ebooks use hyperlinks to navigate making the resource more practical and accessible

History on Ebooks 

If interested you can link the Wikipedia article on the history of Ebooks from the early
pioneers. For our sake the Ebooks phenomenon really takes traction with the Open
Ebook platform as subsets of XHTML and CSS better known as Epub. Online bookseller
Amazon.com​reported sales of e-books for its proprietary​K​indle​outnumbered sales of
hardcover books​for the first time ever during the second​​quarter​of 2010, saying it sold
140 e-books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there was no
digital edition​.​[47]​In fact, the New York Times predicted that by 2018 e-books will make up
over 50% of total consumer publishing revenue in the United States and Great Britain.

Benefits of Ebooks

Some of the benefits include
● Reflowability
● Portability
● Storage capacity
● Readable in low light
● Text to Speech software
● Change font size
● Definitions
● Hyperlinking
● Search
● Low distribution cost, lower cost to consumers
● Environmentally sustainable
● More democratic distribution
● More financial share to authors
● Raise of Indie authors

Digital Rights and Formats 

As of August 2012, there are five main e-book formats:​E​PUB,​​K​F8​,​​Mobipocket,​​P​DF​, and
Topaz, The​​Amazon Kindle​uses KF8, Mobipocket, and Topaz; it also supports native PDF
format e-books and native PDF files. Other e-book readers mostly use EPUB format
e-books, but with differing DRM schemes( Digital Rights Management).

Online  Repositories  

Many of your local libraries now have permission to distribute Ebooks to their patrons at
no cost Other free online sites includes The Internet Archive and Open offers over
6,000,000 fully accessible public domain e-books ​www.archive.org
Apple Ibooks is the number 2 largest global distributor of Ebooks with 1 billion iOS
devices sold and they have 45% of the market outside of the US

Online sites to purchase copies of Ebooks include: Amazon, Barnes and Noble and others

Tools  to read  Ebooks with a  Reader   

The consumer has lots of choices to read PDF’s and EPub books from their Laptops,
Tablets and dedicated E-Book readers ie Nook or Kindle IPAD or IPAD Mini uses IBooks
apps to read E-books via IBooks and IBookstore. Also you can download from Google
Play or Itunes your favourite mobile device app to read your favourite book

Burid  E Book Reader  

E-Book reader for EPub and PDF formats. Linux desktop and tablet, perhaps later Linux
phones.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/burid/

MAC  Reader  

http://www.winsite.com/Home-Education/Miscellaneous/EBook-Reader-for-Mac-OS/
An affordable digital book reader compatible with Intel Mac computers running Leopard
(OS 10.5) or later. The User is assisted with downloading free eBooks and removing
unnecessory characters. Parsed eBooks are saved to a Bookshelf folder created
automatically in the Users Documents Folder. eBooks can be displayed in fonts sized from
10 to 24. The User can read the eBook or have it read to him. Place in the eBook is saved
between sessions. The eBook Reader window is adjusted automatically to fit the screen
resolution.

Firefox Add-ons

http://www.epubread.com/en/welcome.php
Instructions

● Go to the webpage where you want to download the ePub file and click on the
download link. If you already downloaded the ePub file to your PC, just open it via
the "File/File open" menu or drag the file on the Firefox window.

● Now EPUBReader starts working: it downloads/opens the ePub file, uncompresses
it and does some other processing. At the end it will present you the ready to read
ePub file immediately!

● EPUBReader created a page where all the ePub files, you downloaded/opened, are
listed. You can open this page at four locations:
○ EPUBReader added a bookmark to this page called "ePub-Catalog" which
you can find at the end of your bookmark list.
○ You find a new menu item in your Firefox "Tools" menu, called
"ePub-Catalog".
○ You can add a button to your Firefox toolbar. If you use Firefox 4.0 or later,
the button has been added automatically.
○ When you are reading an ePub-file, you find a button in the bottom toolbar.

Adobe Digital Edition

http://www.adobe.com/ca/solutions/ebook/digital-editions/download.html

Download Digital Edition 4.5​​Macintosh (23.2MB)
Download Digital Edition 4.5​​Windows (8.13MB)

Step One:  Before you Start  

Ebook Requirements
● Checklist for Publishing an Ebook
● Have volunteers review the book for errors
● Add images and graphics
● Format the book prior to conversion
● Prepare cover image
● Prepare the metadata ( see below)
● Ebook conversion
● Pricing
● ISBNs(see below)
● Copyright
● Piracy
● Distribution to retailers and libraries
● Preorders
● Marketing

Note ISBN
International standard book number, a ten-digit number assigned to every book before
publication, recording such details as language, provenance, and publisher

Meta data includes:
● Author
● Book Title
● Price
● Book Category
● Language
● ISBN
● Publication Dates
● Tags
● Book description

 

Step Two: Things  to consider for ICANN Style Guide 

ICANN as other corporations have standards for publishing consistency in the print
material

Background color: Hex #0098d5
Font: San Source Pro
Header 24 pitch
Subheader 14 pitch
Text 12 pitch

Step Three:  Creating  A  Cover Page  

The choice is up to the author to determine if they want a professional cover page for a
Ebook. You could create a cover in design programs such as GIMP, Photoshop or
Illustrator to customize a cover page

Canva
Canva is one site that provides templates for book covers. You can add and edit the
template

The APRALO cover uses your own images and the text to the file

Another service is Coveractionpro to create cover pages
www.coveractionpro.org
Create a great cover page for your book covers
Cost $49 for the standard version as a plug into Adobe Photoshop

Step Five  Using  Ebook Authoring Tools 
 

MS Word and Open Office   

Cost:  FREE 

A simple way to start your process of creating your ebook is start creating the

Open Office or MS Word to create your document and add images, hyperlinks and more

to the document and upon completion your can save as a PDF

You are limited in the formatting of ebook and when converted into EPUB format you

may encounter format templates depending on the program you decide to use. These

programmes do not convert to EPUB format You need to go to Step Seven Converting

PDF to EPUB

Blurb/BookWright
www.blurb.com
Beta Free( Lots of crashes)
This program off-line has you create the tempate ie. A4 and cut and past per page i a
RTF format
You download the Bookwright program and cut and past each of the content and add
separately your images

We have been Beta Testing this product which is free but it has crashes lots of times in
the creation of the documents. You first set the size of the publication, You need to add
each page in RTF and drag and drop the pictures into the pages.

Scrivener
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/index.php
Cost $58
Scrivener is a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate
on composing and structuring long and difficult documents. While it gives you complete
control of the formatting, its focus is on helping you get to the end of that awkward first
draft.
Good if you need help in crafting your books but not as powerful for graphic layout and
manipulation

Sigil
https://github.com/Sigil-Ebook/Sigil/releases
Cost Free
Tried to import files to edit but wasn’t successful

Other tools
Antechinus eBook Wizard v3.1
http://www.c-point.com/eBook.php

iBooks Author
http://www.ibookseditor.com/
This is an online service providing the author a third party service to produce your ebook
providing the skills for layout, add images, edit and more . The prices are on their webiste

 
 

 

 

Step Six: Option  Online Service 

A number of  online services exist  that  can take any file  and creating a Ebook using many 
templates.   Other services are better 

Canva   

www.canva.com

Cost $120 a year

If you operate a non profit you can get a free account

https://support.canva.com/hc/en-us/articles/206659968-Can-my-nonprofit-get-a-discoun

t-for-Canva-for-Work-

We produced one

Tutorials
https://youtu.be/tS8zyLaweus
https://designschool.canva.com/teaching-materials/ 

AnyFlip    

 

Download the  application from AnyFlip   ​www.anyflip.​com  to edit your  EBOOK .  A  basic 

Ebook can be created but if interested in adding  images, music, voice­over and video.  

 

This file is located at ​http://anyflip.com/wluv/hvty

To edit the program you can edit the content . If you choose the Audio and Vimeo
features you need to upgrade to the Premium package

Step Seven  Convert  PDF  to  EPUB  

If you don’t opt for an online service you need a way to convert the PDF to the ePub
format you will need a tool to convert the file to EPub format to read the in an e-reader

Calibre

This is one of the most popular tools to edit and convert your ebook and test in various

different formats

http://calibre-ebook.com/​ Cost Free

Calibre is a free and open source
e-book library management
application developed by users
of e-books for users of e-books. It
has a cornucopia of features
divided into the following main
categories
Calibre supports the conversion
of many input formats to many
output formats. It can convert every input format in the following list, to every output
format.

Input Formats:​AZW, AZW3, AZW4, CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, DJVU, DOCX, EPUB, FB2, HTML,
HTMLZ, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ

Output Formats:​AZW3, EPUB, DOCX, FB2, HTMLZ, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PMLZ, RB,
PDF, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ, ZIP

Calibre helps you organize all your books and allows you the ability to import and convert
your files. This image shows the various books completed or under development and
opened in Calibre

Open a EBOOK for Editing

You can see here that you can save the document in various format for publishing

Wondershare MePub
www.wondershare.com
Wondershare MePub allows you to add your documents created in Open Office or MS
Word into the reader directly and then it converts the book into a Ebook

http://www.wondershare.net/ebook-software/epub-builder.html?utm_source=bing&utm
_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=PDF_SS_US%2BAU_pid%281140%29_&utm_term=conve
rt%20ebooks%20to%20%2Bepub
Cost $39 US
In this case we produced each of the chapters in Open Office, saved them as PDF then
added the content per chapter then built the book as a EPUB. The cover on the left was
created in CANVA

Step  Eight:  Testing EBook 

Testing for Kindle: Download Kindle Previewer 2.94
Kindle Previewer is a tool that emulates how books display on Kindle devices and
applications. Kindle Previewer makes it easy to preview the layout of a book and make
sure its text displays properly for any orientation or font size. This tool is recommended
for publishers, eBook conversion companies, and individual authors in combination with
KindleGen to produce the highest quality Kindle books. It is available for both Windows
and Mac OS X platforms.

Documentation for Kindle Previewer is available for download in​​Kindle​and​P​DF​formats.

Testing on a IPAD Download the IpadGeek
http://ipadpeek.com/
This is an emulator to test the book on a IPAD via your PC

These are various files at Archive.org to demonstrate the simulation of IPAD.

Step Nine Promotion 

ClicktoTweet
So many different social media applications can help you promote your ebook, but
ClicktoTweet​is a favorite. It lets you create a tweet, preferably one that includes your
@handle and a link to your ebook, and then create a link that readers can click to share

that tweet. Look for opportunities to add ClicktoTweet links to blog posts, newsletters,
even within your ebooks.

What happens next after publishing? The next critical step is getting awareness of the
ebook
Recommend

● Write an enticing brief on your ebook
● Post blog posts
● Encourage cross community communication