Content
Before I continue this experiment, my future ePub file needs some content. I'm not ready yet to publish a story or a volume so I will just have some fun with personalized popular lifestyle content. One of my guilty pleasures in life are 'quotes'. In stressy times I live by quotes 💘. So I made a compilation of my favorite ones. You can find the flat text Google Doc here. I have a title ('Repeat after them'), a subtitle ('A guilty pleasurely quote collection'), a foreword, different chapters, quotes and (if known by me or the internet) the one responsible for the quote. So I guess this will be enough content to use as an example.
Let's Sigil this flat text up
In Sigil you have the possibility to use the wysiwyg editor or to write/edit the html code. I have basic knowledge of html but I prefer to work in the convenient wysiwyg interface. I did choose to see the html code just because I think it's cool (🤓) to see what you're doing in code and possibly just change a few things.Text & structure
I couldn't find a way to import a flat text (I'm used to working in Indesign) so I just copied the text in the interface. I checked and this is indeed the way to do it. If you already have an ePub file you want to edit, you can import the file.
So there was my flat text. And I was already confused. I wanted to make a title page, preface-page and chapters... So I looked for help on jedisaber.com. Apparantly, when you make different sections (File -> New -> Empty section) and add a code they will automatically start on a new page in an e-reader. Another option was to insert page breaks manually. So after some hassle I decided to make four sections: title page, preface, content, bibliography. Within the 'content' I made page breaks manually between my chapters.Table of contents
I used Tomely's instructions for this part. I changed my title to 'heading 1', my subtitle to 'heading 2' and my name and all my chapter titles to 'heading 3'.Intermezzo: frustraaaaahtions
Changing <select heading> stuff was a pretty annoying experience, it just didn't work. I don't like it when things don't work when they should 😒. It reminds me of previous versions of Word in high school... After some deep breaths and a cup of 'no stress' tea I could move on.
Back to the table of contents
So, after getting all the headings and 'normal text' right, I selected (at the bottom right) 'Generate TOC from headings'. And after doing some patch work (as in checking out some empty 'heading 3's' I didn't even knew I made), it worked!
I was really curious to see the result on my e-reader so I uploaded the file via Calibre and ...
I already saw in the Calibre preview it didn't work out how it should have. Apparently all the 'sections' ended up being separate pages automatically (without code) so I devided my chapters again in sections. Also, the 'title page' became a title page and an author page, so I tried to fix that just by deleting some blank space. And so ...
Result & tips
Woohoow, there was my first ePub file on my e-reader.
I realised afterwards I forgot to add metadata, but that's pretty easy, just go to Tools -> Meta editor and add the metadata, just the title and author or more.
Tips
I did it! But I didn't really like it. Not that it was particularly difficult but it certainly wasn't much fun. Or I'm spoiled by Adobe Indesign, possibly.- Don't copy and paste too much, it confuses the wysiwyg interface.
- Have patience and faith when Sigil is confused.
- Don't forget your metadata
Coming up
In my next post I'll try to make an ePub file with word processors. I have a love-hate relationship with these classic word processors so I'm a bit scared but since I know the programs I think it will be more intuitive than using Sigil.
Sources:
- https://sigil.nl.softonic.com/
- https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigil
- http://tomely.com/guides/using-sigil
- http://www.jedisaber.com/eBooks/Sigil01.shtml
