Create your OWN ebook
1 Prepare your text
Open your word processor and import the text of your book. First, you need to format the text using the built-in text formats: for example, select any chapter titles and format them Heading 1. You can then apply Heading 2 and other headings to sub-headings in the document – these will then appear in the table contents. When done, save the file in HTML format.
2 Create an empty ebook
Open Calibre and choose ‘Add books > Add empty book (Book entry with no formats)’. Enter the author and title details, and opt to create an empty ebook in either EPUB or AZW3 format. Click OK and an empty book will be created. Click Edit Metadata to add additional information about your book, plus attach or generate a cover image.
3 Import text file
Click ‘Edit book’ to open the main editing window. Rightclick start.xhtml in the left-hand pane and choose ‘Replace start. xhtml with file…’ Select the file you created in step one. When inserted into the file, double-click it to edit the file – you can see how your book looks in the right-hand pane, but you’ll need to edit the actual HTML to make changes.
4 Add images
Next, choose ‘File > Import files into book’ to import any images you plan to use. You’ll see these appear in the Images section of the book. Double-click an image to make changes to it – you can resize an image to reduce its size, plus there are various filters that enable you to perform additional enhancements. Changes only affect the images in the book, not the original files.
5 Incorporate images into book
Place the cursor at the point in your HTML where you’d like to insert an image, then click the ‘Insert image’ button. Select one of the images in your book and it’ll immediately appear in the text. If it’s too large, remove the reference, edit the photo as per the previous step and insert it again. Those with degrees in HTML coding can go further and align the pictures to the text.
6 Split by chapter
Introduce page breaks between chapters by splitting your HTML file at a chapter point. Click the split file button underneath the preview window and then use the green divider to choose where to introduce the break. Once done, click and the file will split in two. Right-click the first HTML file and choose Rename… to give it a more descriptive name such as ‘Chapter 1’.