Writing Tips

Turn Your Word Document Into an Ebook with Calibre

Over the past few years, e-publishing has grown tremendously as numerous authors have discovered the ease of releasing their titles on Amazon, iBooks, and other ebook retailers. Not only do ebooks give you the ability to share your work with readers easily and efficiently but can also save you a tremendous amount of capital versus a print run. In fact, in some cases, creating an ebook is as simple as typing out your manuscript and converting your document.

One super easy way to create a basic ebook in this manner is to utilize a free application called Calibre. With this program, you can convert Word documents and other file types into an ebook format with just a few click. Additionally, Calibre offers a number of tools and options to enhance your ebook . This includes the ability to add metadata, assign cover art, and auto-generate table of contents data, allowing your readers to navigate your title effortlessly.

A few months back, I actually created a short video giving you an overview of Calibre. Follow along as I turn a Microsoft Word document into an .epub file ready to for upload to Kindle, iBooks, or other platforms:

Once you complete the conversion, you can also head to your bookshelf in Calibre, right click, and select “Edit Book.” This will allow you to tweak your book using HTML code. If you’re not very well versed in HTML, don’t worry — the program does offer you some guidance and useful tools to improve your book regardless of your HTML skills. Here you can insert links, images, and even generate a clickable on-page table of contents using the formatting you set up for the digital version. Hopefully this will help you get your book looking exactly the way you want it to.

If you’re looking to take your manuscript and easily turn it into an ebook you can sell on Amazon, Calibre is a pretty amazing tool —especially for a free program! While you may need to explore the program a bit to get started, once you do, I think you’ll be impressed with what it can do. And for more on writing and selling ebooks or even self-publishing your own print run, be sure to check out my ebook, Write, Print, Publish, Promote: The Complete Guide to Writing and Publishing a Book. 

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