How to Create an ePub Book – The Structure

Part I is here!

So you’ve really done it!

Tried Sigil, typed some few words, then save. Check with reader… success!

Then, you tried adding a new page, typed some few words again. Save. Check with reader…. and i cannot see the 2nd page. What gives?

It would seem that something is missing before the second page shows up properly in the ePub.

Part II: The Table of Contents (ToC)

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When you have multiple html pages in your ePub, you won’t be able to see the succeeding pages when you try to view your ePub in your favorite reader.

Technically, though, you could just use ONE page for your ePub. I mean, no one’s really stopping you to do that, and it works. But i’m not here to encourage you to do that.

It works, but it’s just not proper. You’re better off using Microsoft Word if you’re gonna do that.

Okay! You convinced me. What do i need?

You need to learn Table of Contents, and headers. These two work hand in hand. You need to learn and apply headers on your contents, and use these headers to PROPERLY CREATE a ToC (i’ll be abbreviating Table of Contents from now on).

Nice! Table of Contents and Headers. How do i do that?

First, learn about headers.

Headers, are… well, i think it is much better to show you, than explain it to you.

and now that i have defined some headers, i can now create a ToC.

Visually, headers just have different formatting. With header 1 with the highest font size, and header 6 with the smallest font size. What is more important is that headers are used in ToC. Header 1 are the 1st-level in ToC, down to Header 6.

Hold Up! Just what did you do?!

In Sigil, headers are located here:

Select a line, click on any of the headers, and the header is applied. Once applied, then you can generate ToC. To generate ToC, just press CTRL+T. Or you can refer to the pic below.

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Sweet! So this is how to use headers, and how to generate ToC! But what does that have to do with multiple pages?

Well, having said all these things at these point should warrant the usefulness for multiple pages, and you don’t need me to explain that.

You can pretty much create a decent epub with many chapters, with proper ToC by following these guides.

But, i’ll explain the rest in the next part.

Laters!

How to Create an ePub Book – The Basics

Firstly, this will be a multi-part series detailing on literally how to create ePubs. If you want to learn the thought process of how it usually goes, then you can do that on my previous post.

Part I: The Basics

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First: What is an ePub?

ePub is just a bunch of html files zipped into one file.

Really?!

Try it!

Find an ePub, then unzip it. It will contain the contents of the ePub. On the text folder, it contains the main files of it.

So i can just download and save webpages by myself, then zip it up into one file?

Well, no. You need a software for that. Do a quick google search and you’ll find plenty of tools for creating ePubs. In this case, i will be choosing Sigil as my tool for creating ePubs.

Great! I’ve downloaded and installed it, and now ready to go! Now what?

1. Run Sigil
2. Type some text (or copy paste that story you want)
3. ???
4. Profit!?

(Btw, step 3 is save that file (CTRL+S))

If you encountered no errors so far, then sweet! You’ve just made your first ePub!

Congratulations!

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So there you have it.

A simple copy n paste, then save will most definitely work when creating ePubs.

However, for multiple pages, a certain component is required, and will be introduced on the next part.

Stay tuned!