You scream, I scream, we all scream for epubs. As with all internet bounty, it’s even more exciting to produce than to consume. So after you’ve glutted yourself on all those free Jane Austen novels and children’s books, and gone into hock re-creating your library on iPad, why not give something back by doing a little writing yourself?
What to write about, how to ensure quality, and how to identify and market to an audience are beyond the scope of this little post, but we can point to some dandy resources that tell how to create and test your epub. So let’s go!
Our first two resources come from Adobe and tell how to set up an Adobe InDesign file to produce a proper epub. There are other ways of creating an epub—for instance, you can author it in valid HTML, zip it up, and convert to epub using the BookGlutton API. For many readers of this site, that’s all you need to know.
But if you are a graphic designer or book designer, or if epub is only one format you are publishing to (i.e. if you are publishing traditionally printed books that double as epubs), then the next two resources are exactly what you need:
- Exporting epub from InDesign (PDF) – wonderfully compact and helpful
- Producing ePub Documents from InDesign – Digital Editions – a bit dry but useful; best viewed via the Readability bookmarklet from our friends at Arc90
Once you have your pub, you want to know that it is valid. Any of the following services will help there:
- Testing your ePubs with Bookworm – Bookworm ePub reader. This is a free program for publishers from O’Reilly.
- Alternately, there is EpubCheck, which is also free for download. It comes from Adobe and is a downloadable web app.
- Alternately again, there is a free online test from Threepress.
If the tests identify errors, you’ll need to go back into InDesign, fiddle with settings, re-export, and re-test. Once your epub validates, it’s time to go to market: How to sell your eBook via Amazon and the iBookstore. Good luck, and enjoy!
