Create your own ebook

A step-by-step guide to creating an ebook in ePub and mobi formats, complete with ebook template, and a useful style guide for authors.

What’s included?

Files

A template to get you started, and all the files you need to create your ebook.

Documentation

A step-by-step guide to creating an ebook in ePub and mobi formats. View documentation

Style guide

Advice on how to approach writing a book, as well as a glossary of grammar, punctuation, style and spelling. View the style guide

The technical bit

This guide was put together by Five Simple Steps, an independent publisher of web design books that closed in 2014, as a way of giving back to the web community.

The process described in the documentation reflects the way the team at Five Simple Steps worked, so it's best suited to people working on Macs, and references tools they used.

Bear in mind that you'll need access to a variety of devices (at least an iPad and Kindle) to test and view your ebook.

Resources

Espresso

This guide explains the process of working in Espresso to create an ebook and refers to it throughout, but you can use any text editor. Espresso is free to try for 15 days.

Calibre

You can use Calibre to convert your ePub file to a mobi version for Kindles and other devices. Calibre is free, but donations are welcome.

ePub zip

To create the final .epub file, ePub Zip is a handy script that will save you time.