DIY: convert documents to ePub files using Calibre

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Just for the purposes of this tutorial, we used a copy of Jane Eyre, which is in the public domain, from Project Gutenberg.

For our cover, we used this public domain illustration from the 1847 edition of the book.

Recommended software:

• A word processor that allows you to save as HTML (we used Microsoft Word 2007)

• IrfanView (to edit the cover image)

• Calibre

• Adobe Digital Editions.

With the exception of Word, all of these software applications are free.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

The first step is to make sure your document is formatted correctly. We used Word 2007.

All we did here was find the chapter headings, and made sure that they were formatted as the Heading 1 style. This can be found in the Home tab; you can change the font, size and other formatting by right-clicking on the style and selecting "Modify" on the menu that appears.

Since the chapter headers in Jane Eyre all helpfully contain the word "Chapter", we made short work of things by performing a "Find" for "chapter", and making our adjustments accordingly.

The reason why we formatted the chapter heading style is because Calibre can auto-generate a table of contents for your book based on the Heading 1 style. There are other ways of creating a table of contents, but this is the simplest. We also recommend that you name your chapters with the word "Chapter"; this seems to make the auto-generation process easier.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Next, save your file as an HTML document — Calibre cannot convert from a .doc file, and HTML is the best way to keep your formatting intact. Select "Web Page" from the "Save As" drop-down menu in Word.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Make sure you have saved your image as a .jpg, .png,. gif or .svg. If you're going to be reading your file on an E Ink reader, a black-and-white image works best; you can use colour, but it will come out as greyscale on the e-reader.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Open Calibre and add the file. Click on "Add book" in the upper left, and locate your file; click "Open", and, depending on the file size, Calibre will take a minute or two to process and add it.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Make sure you have your file selected, and click on "Convert books".

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

This is where you edit the metadata for your book — that is, the information about the file. This will help your e-reader to catalogue the ebook correctly.

Firstly, make sure that the option selected in the top right drop-down menu is "ePub".

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Next, enter the author's name and the publisher. "Author sort" fills in automatically, so if you prefer to sort your authors by first name, you can enter that in manually.

Click on the icon next to the entry field below the cover image to find and add your cover.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

It looks pretty good already.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

The "Look & Feel" pane lets you edit the formatting of your ebook, eg, font size, spacing and so forth. We were pretty happy with our formatting, so we left this pane alone. Feel free to play with it, though; if you don't like the results, you can just remove your ebook from Calibre and start again with your HTML file.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

We were also pretty happy with our document structure, so we left Heuristic Processing alone, too. This is why we edited the HTML document to our satisfaction first.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

If you have a particular e-reader you're formatting for, the "Page Setup" pane allows you to maximise compatibility by selecting your e-reader in the "Output profile" selection box.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Here's where you can automate your table of contents. We ticked the box that forces auto-generation and boosted the chapter threshold to 50, since Jane Eyre has 38 chapters. The default number is six, so make sure to alter that if you want all of your chapters included.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

We're guessing that this is where War and Peace went wrong ... we didn't need to replace anything (and, if we had, we'd have done it in Word), so this remained empty.

We didn't need to worry about the other two panes, either, so we clicked the "OK" button in the bottom right-hand corner. Calibre will then spend a few minutes converting your file.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

And there she is! Click on "Click to open" on the right to open the folder containing your ebook.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

From here, you can drag and drop the file into your e-reader connected as an external drive, or to your iPhone or iPad via iTunes. We opened it in Adobe Digital Editions to make sure that our conversion worked.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Brilliant. Chapter links and all.

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

And here it is on the Kobo Touch. As you can see, it formatted well...

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

...and it even kept the illustrations embedded in the HTML file.

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

And there's our table of contents.

As mentioned at the beginning, this is just a very basic walkthrough; if you're looking for more in-depth help, head on over to the Calibre help page for resources on where to find it.

If you're converting from a PDF file, or have a Kindle and want to convert it to the compatible MOBI file format, you can use this same process to create a file that your e-reader can parse.

Happy e-reading!