Publishing eBooks are exciting and changing reading habits. It is an electronic version of a printed book which can be read on a computer or a specifically designed handheld device. Now you can create and your eBook using Adobe Dreamweaver, Calibre, Sigil and Kindle Previewer without touching Adobe Indesign.
Make sure your eBook looks and reads great on all the popular eReaders, like Kindle, iPad, Nook, and more. The new iOS 8 from Apple has recently updated his eBook reading app called iBooks. Some people are facing problems with their eBooks as they are using their old methods/coding to formatting their eBooks.
Today I will help you formatting your eBook according to updated eReaders. Here are some easy tips and tricks you can follow.
1. You don't need to create different xhtml files for different chapters. Just create one html file with all your chapters. Put <div style="page-break-before:always"></div> at the end of every chapter. It will automatically create separated xhtml files during conversion with Calibre or you can put your headings and subheadings in <h1> and <h2> tags. Calibre auto detects chapters with these tags and creates separated xhtml files in your eBook.
2. To extract epub file, just open it with WinRAR or any installed zip/rar extractor in your pc/lappy or you can simply change the extention from .epub to .zip.
3. In iOS 8, the updated iBooks app is not showing your eBooks well formatted. For example, if you are using chapter title as an image and inserting it in a <div> and style it align:center or text-align:center, it will not align center. You will have to put your image inside any tag from <h3> to <h6> and style it to align:center or text-align:center. This is a bug in iBooks app in iOS 8 or may be Apple has changed eBooks formatting methods for iBooks.
4. To make full page graphic (spread an image on entire page), just size your image 600 x 860 (width x height) and insert it in a <div> tag. No need to center align, it will automatically spread on entire page on both portrait and landscape mode because 600 x 860 is magic size for ibooks!
5. If you want to put cover link in table of contents, just hyperlink cover like this:
<a href="titlepage.xhtml">Cover</a> and convert with Calibre. (Note: Cover link doesn't work in Kindle mobi file).
6. To remove underlines from the hyperlinks in Kindle mobi, use <mbp:nu> tag like this:
<a href="chapter-1.xhtml"><mbp:nu>Chapter 1</a>(Note: Don't make any space before or after <mbp:nu>, otherwise underlines may be visible).
7. To create hanging indent, use css like this:
.hangingindent {padding-left: 22px; text-indent: -22px;}(Note: It is only supported by epub. Kindle mobi doesn't support hanging indent by this method as mobi doesn't support negative units).
8. Don't use direct width or height in <td> tag in table as it is unsupported in epub. Instead you can apply width or height with style attribute.
9. You can test your eBooks on the Google Chrome browser with Readium app for Chrome.
Get info about mentioned softwares and tools:
Adobe Dreamweaver
Calibre
Sigil
Kindle Previewer
WinRAR
Readium
I hope you will find this information useful.
Happy eBooking :)
No comments:
Post a Comment