EVER FANCIED YOURSELF AS AN AUTHOR?

These days, you don’t need a publishing deal to distribute your magnum opus, and you don’t even need to commit to the upfront cost of printing copies without any guaranteed sales in place. Thanks to the rise of eReaders like the Kobo and Kindle, you can publish digitally for zero cost and then look to promote your work online.

The hardest part of the job is taking your finished draft—typically in a Microsoft Word document—and converting it into a format that opens on an eReader flows properly on any screen and is easy to read. The solution lies in an open-source program called Sigil, which takes your text (and any images you may have) and transforms it into a standard ePub file, which can be read on a variety of mobile devices, from Kobo eReaders to tablets and even phones.

At first glance, Sigil can appear impenetrable, but this tutorial will help you get to grips with the basics, allowing you to create and export your book in a format you can also easily convert to the AZW3 format used by Kindles for maximum exposure.

–NICK PEERS

1SET UP SIGIL

Start by heading over to https://sigil-ebook.com/sigil/ download, where you’ll find download links for Windows (64-bit only, requires Windows 10 1809 or later), Mac (macOS 11 Big Sur or later), and Linux (available via your distro’s repository, or install via flatpak for the latest build). After installing—click ‘More Info > Run anyway’ when prompted by the Smartscreen Filter—launch the app to reveal a three-paned window, as outlined in [Image A].

» In the left-hand pane is the Book Browser. This reveals the structure of an .epub file, which is in fact a zip file with an .epub file extension. Inside the file is everything required for your eBook, organized into various self-explanatory folders: Text contains your book text (formatted in XHTML format), while various resources from CSS stylesheets to physical images, fonts, and even embedded audio and video clips reside in their own folders.

» This emphasizes how Sigil isn’t really suited as a tool for creating your book from scratch—its own editor requires you to work with the underlying XHTML code and rely on the Preview pane to check your edits as you go. Most people prefer working with a WYSIWYG editor, but before we get to that, let’s look at some basic concepts about formatting books for reading on Kindles and other devices.