Nick Peers reveals how to turn any creative writing endeavour into a digital book that you can share with friends, family and your adoring public.

Nick Peers

OUR EXPERT

Nick Peers dreams of republishing his best work in book (or eBook) format. If only he wasn’t so lazy…

Ever wanted to become a self-published author? Looking for a simple way to create a digital publication - whether book or magazine - that can be read on a variety of devices? The solution lies in creating your book in EPUB format, which formats your book using familiar web languages (XHTML and CSS). The resulting content is dynamic and responsive, meaning it can be viewed on screens both large and small without needing adjustment.

The process of putting an EPUB document together from scratch might be daunting, were it not for the likes of Sigil (https://sigil-ebook.com), a powerful but user-friendly eBook editing tool. Even then, its array of features and options might be a little intimidating, which is why we’ve done all the hard work for you, uncovering the key tips and techniques you need to create a book that can be easily shared or published digitally.

Take the Sigil tour

Sigil can be installed through the Ubuntu Software Store, but the ubuntu-focal-universe version is outdated. Instead, be brave and install the latest version from source, which is simpler than you might think. If you’re running Ubuntu 18.04 or later, open a Terminal window and install the following dependencies:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential git

$ sudo apt-get install cmake

$ sudo apt-get install qtbase5-dev qttools5-dev qttools5dev-tools qtwebengine5-dev

$ sudo apt-get install python3-dev python3-pip python3-lxml python3-six python3-css-parser python3- dulwich

$ sudo apt-get install python3-tk python3-pyqt5 python3-html5lib python3-regex python3-pillow python3-cssselect python3-chardet

You’re ready to download the program’s source code: $ git clone https://github.com/Sigil-Ebook/Sigil.git

This will unzip the contents into a folder called Sigil in your home directory. Time to build Sigil:

$ mkdir ~/sigil-build

$ cd ~/sigil-build $ cmake -G “Unix Makefiles” -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ../Sigil

$ sudo make

$ sudo make install

Once installed, Sigil is accessible from the Application Launcher. It’ll open to display a three-paned window: on the left is the Book Browser, which contains all the elements that make up your eBook. You’ll see a series of folders, plus two documents: toc.ncx, which contains your book’s table of contents, and content.opf, which is where your book’s structure is defined (and which can be left untouched). More on all of this later.

You’ll also see a series of folders, inside which you’ll find the individual files that make up your content - text (XHTML), styles (CSS), images, fonts and so on - are stored. You’ll see the Text folder contains one pre-created element, Section0001.xhtml. This is currently displayed in the middle pane - the editing window - while the right-hand pane displays a real-time preview of your book’s page as you edit it.