Great news! Publishing has changed. Ebooks now comprise nearly a quarter of the market, and that number is only expected to grow. Amazon lists over 1.8 million titles. The ranks of independent authors are growing exponentially. How is that great news for someone who wants to publish an ebook? It seems like more competition would be a bad thing, right?

The great part is that most of the indie ebooks out there aren’t very good. Most potential readers don’t make it halfway through the Amazon preview before deciding they don’t want it. There are a lot of factors that determine a customer’s decision to buy, and we could spend weeks going over just a few of them, but for now we’ll stick with the first thing your readers notice, after the cover: the format.

If you want to make sure your book looks as professional as possible, you have two options: You can hire someone to do it (usually for a few hundred bucks), or you can do it yourself. Ebook formatting isn’t hard to learn, but it can be tricky to do right. Most of the major ebook publishers include a formatting application in the steps to upload your book, but those apps are notoriously unreliable. What you see is not always what you get.

Since most indies don’t have the up-front capital to spring for professional formatting, we’re left with the DIY option. Luckily, there are two great programs that will help you do it for free. Let’s take a look at them both while we run through the process of formatting your ebook properly.

Sigil

The first program you’ll need is Sigil. Sigil is so simple to use. It’s basically a cut-and-paste ePub creator. You start with your original document (I’m going to assume Word, since it’s the most ubiquitous), and just copy each chapter into its own .xhtml file. I know, that sounds complicated, but watch.

When you open Sigil, it starts you with a blank project that has one section listed in the Text folder. That section is open by default in the editor. So, the first thing you’ll do is copy your first chapter into the editor, like this:

 

When you want to add a new chapter, it’s a simple as right-clicking on the Text folder and selecting “Add Blank HTML File.”

In this picture, you can also see the h1 button highlighted. In Word, my chapter heading was formatted as Heading 1, which transfers right over into Sigil to save you work. Aside from the headings, though, you’ll want a pretty bare-bones manuscript. No fancy formatting. Leave the space between paragraphs, and don’t worry about indenting, either. We’ll take care of that in a minute.

That’s it for the main body of your work. Add new section, paste in your chapter, lather, rinse, repeat. This is the time-consuming part, so don’t forget to save often.

But, of course, there’s more to a book than just great chapters. There’s the cover, the front matter, the acknowledgements, and any other little thing you want to put in there.

To build our Cover, we first have to import our image. To do that, right-click on Images and select “Add Existing Files…” Browse to your cover image on your computer and select it. It will then appear in your Images folder. Next, add a new section. It’s helpful to rename this one “Cover” and drag it to the top of the list. If you don’t drag it to the top, your cover image will appear at the end of your book.

Next, you want to insert the image into your project. With your Cover section displayed in the editor (double-click it if it’s not), click the icon on the toolbar that looks like this:  A dialogue box will open with a list of the files that you’ve added. Select your file and hit OK. But, as excited as you are, you’re not done yet. You have to let the program know that this is the cover (often, e-readers will skip past the cover when you first open the book). To do that, right-click on the Cover section, and under “Add Semantics,” select “Cover.”

You can repeat the same process with your Title page and other front matter, but before you do that, a quick note: Ebooks are not sold in the same way as print books. Remember earlier when we talked about the Amazon preview? The preview shows the first few pages of the book so the reader can get a feel for it. Do you want to clutter that up with copyright notices and acknowledgments that most people just skip anyway? With an ebook, it’s better to put that stuff in the back. That way, your reader gets more of what he wants in your preview. A good format should go like this: Cover, Title Page, Dedication, Body, Acknowledgements, Author’s Note, Copyright, TOC.

And speaking of the Table of Contents, here’s how you get one:  On the menu bar, click Tools, and then Table of Contents>Generate Table of Contents. In the dialogue box that appears, just click the check box next to the headings you want in the TOC and hit OK.

Now that you’ve added your Cover, front matter, and back matter, you’re ready to move on. Save your project again, and you’ll have a working ePub. It won’t be pretty, though, until you load it up in Calibre.

 

Calibre

Calibre is a breathtakingly awesome program that does way more stuff than I can even grasp. I’ll give you the basics, which will be enough to get you a clean, professional ebook in ePub, MOBI, or PDF format.

When you open up Calibre, you’ll see this (without the awesome Freelance Rider):

Drag the file you just created into the white space in the middle, and it’ll automatically add it to Calibre’s library. Once it’s in, you can click the View button at the top to see your ebook. It looks pretty basic right now, and not at all like something you’d want to publish.

Since Amazon’s the market leader in ebooks, we’ll start by converting to their proprietary MOBI format.

Right click on your book and select Convert Books>Convert Individually. On the next screen, you can input your metadata, such as author name, series, and publisher. In the upper right corner, there’s an Output Format drop-down menu. Choose the format you want to switch to. For now, we’ll select MOBI.

Next, click on the Look and Feel button on the left side. You’re going to make two changes on this page. First, change the Minimum Line Height field to 140%. Then, you’ll check the box next to “Remove spacing between paragraphs.” That will let you fiddle with the Indent size value, but 1.5 em is pretty standard.

From there, you’ll move on to Page Setup, where you can choose the type of e-reader you expect to view your book the most.

Next is Structure Detection. Here, you’ll tell the ebook to insert page breaks before your chapter headings. There are three magic wand buttons, and you’ll want the middle one – the one under Insert page breaks before (XPath expression). In the dialogue box that opens, pull down the top menu and select H1 (or whichever heading style you used to format your chapter heads).

The next tab you’ll visit is Table of Contents, where you’ll click the wand next to Level 1 TOC (XPath expression) and again select H1 from the drop-down list.

When you’re done, click OK at the bottom of the screen. You’ll see a little loading animation in the bottom corner and it’ll say it has one job. When that’s finished, you’ll have a beautiful, working MOBI file that you can upload straight to Amazon.

Conversion steps for the other formats are exactly the same, except you’ll choose a different Output format and likely a different e-reader on the Page Setup tab.

After the conversion, always make sure you load your ebook into as many readers on as many devices as you can. You want to make sure that your book looks perfect in every format.

A well-formatted book puts you a step above all of the other authors out there who don’t know or don’t care to format correctly. I can’t guarantee sales, but I can guarantee that your book will look more professional and won’t get passed over for poor presentation. And, you’ll save a good chunk of change by doing it yourself.

 

 

About the author: Robert is a freelance writer and novelist who dabbles in ghostwriting and editing as well. He’s a learn-as-you-type of guy who passes on the knowledge he’s gained on his blog.