Sunday 13 October 2013

This Trained Monkey Used Draft2Digital To Create Her Ebooks!


Goalden Girl is now published to Kobo, and I've now just published Epiworld to Kindle!

I used Draft2Digital to do both. It's so simple, just takes the headache out of converting print to ebook, a trained monkey can use it. So this monkey gave it a go and got it right!

First of all, Goalden Girl to Kobo. I tried the actual Kobo program, Writing Life, at first, and didn't like it. It converted the Word document OK but editing was needed, and the editor was just too messy and complicated - and unlike Kindle it doesn't have a proper previewer. I downloaded the Mozilla epub converter and converted the Word to epub that was, but then found that Writing Life didn't like the epub file (which kind of defeats the object of the exercise when its job is to convert to an epub file anyway!) Then when a nice man called Thomas on the Nook/Kobo forum told me about Draft2Digital.

Draft2Digital is set up in a way that it will convert your Word document to suit the programs that ereaders like Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iTunes will support after publishing. For preview purposes, it recommends different programs to view the files if any editing is needed.


For Kobo, it recommends Adobe Digital Editions, so I downloaded this. You download the epub preview, save it, and it will open in Adode Digital Editions when you open that program. This shows you how the book ought to look in a Kobo reader.







But Adode Digital is only an ereader, not an editor. I needed to tweak a few things, but how do you edit an epub? One way is to rename it as a zip, extract the files, and select each page or chapter you need to edit using Notepad as the files are converted to html. This is OK if you have a basic knowledge of html (as I do) but it's also long winded and annoying if you have to keep going back to it (this is how I used to edit my Kindle files, but not any more!) After doing this you rename the file back to an epub, and try to upload it back to Draft2Digital - which doesn't accept modified epub files for certain ereaders (iTunes) - but works OK for Kobo.

Fed up with html and Notepad, I discovered Sigil, an epub editor. I downloaded this (without the annoying add ons and toolbars which always plague me when I try to download some programs!) and when I opened the epub it extracted the files itself into xhtml files and I was able to edit without all the annoying html codes getting in the way. I didn't want the contents page Draft2Digital created for me, so I deleted that. The file was perfect and I was able to publish it.

Once done you can select where you want to publish to. I chose Kobo and four days later Goalden Girl was published to that edreading program.

Then, Epiworld to Kindle, and here I did it slightly differently. I ignored D2D's recommendation to use Mobipocket, which quite frankly I can't get on with and find a pain in the arse. Instead I downloaded the converted file as an epub again, used Sigil to tweak, and then I went into the Amazon kdp program to upload the saved epub. It liked it, and Epiworld is waiting to be processed.

Just one quibble...

When I first started uploading to Kindle there was only one preview reader to look at, a virtual simulated bog standard online Kindle reader, now there are seven! Kindle Fire, Fire HD, Fire 8.9, iPad, iPhone, Paperwhite, and Kindle! And when you check your file in all seven simulated previewers you will find to your irritation that they treat the file differently! In Kindle and iPad I have a short dashed line which appears between scene sections in the chapter. It doesn't appear in the other ereaders nor in the original document.

This is annoying, but there's naff all I can do about it. The main thing is it's laid out OK and you can read it.

Another annoying thing is that D2D doesn't seem to like extras from the Word document file like the dedication pages. It's desperate for you to add this to its layout, and in the epub this page is in the wrong place, but you can move the pages around in Sigil.

Epiworld available to download to Kindle for £2.99 UK price, £2.99 US price and Euro 2,99 in Europe. Goalden Girl is available now on Kobo for the introductory price of £0.78 p (because D2D puts this price in using US dollars and someone forgot to do a currency conversion!)

As D2D is so easy all my other books will appear on Kindle and Kobo soon.

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