15 | Create The EPUB Version

Meet Sigil, your new best friend. Anyone familiar with EPUB anatomy will be impressed by the simple, straightforward brilliance of this program. It does all the really sucky busy work so that we don’t have to.

Early warning: During this process, two EPUBs are produced. The first one — the one we'll use to create the MOBI file — will NOT have justified text. We make a second justified-text version at the very end.

ACTION: Open Sigil

Boot up Sigil, please.

Open A File

The first task in Sigil is to open projectx.html in Sigil.

Click the Open icon, shown below.

The 'Open' pane opens up and guess what appears in the desktop production folder?

Yeah, not a gol-dang thing. Click the setting circled above and change the setting to show HTML files.

Once that’s fixed, select the projectx.html file and click Open.

Save The New EPUB

Right away, click the Save icon.

ACTION: Save projectx.epub

In the Save pane, Sigil will automatically change the file extension to .EPUB. This is fine.

• 1. Navigate to ensure this file will land in the desktop production folder.

  2. Name this file fresh_projectx.epub

  3. Click Save.

Create A Working Copy

ACTION: Save it again! (I know, right?)

• 1. Click into the file menu and select SaveAs.

  2. Name the copy work_projectx.epub

  3. Throughout the rest of the EPUB section, work only in work_projectx.epub

We create this copy so that when (not if) trouble happens, plain old fresh_projectx.epub remains un-messed-up as a safety net.

Edit the Metadata

Click into the Tools menu and select Metadata Editor. Enter the title and author name. File-as is optional.

If you skip this step, KindleGen will sell you to aliens for medical experiments. (Kidding. But your EPUB file won’t convert.)

Add the CSS File

In the Book Browser pane, right-click on Styles and select Add Existing Files…

When the browse pane opens, navigate to the production folder and select the ebookstyle.css file. Sigil adds the stylesheet for us.

Click the styles folder, double-click the ebookstyle.css file, and your window should now look like this:

##Revise: Redo screenshot to account for CSS changes

Make sure the ebookstyle.css content shows in the pane when it’s selected. Every once in a while, something will go haywire and the CSS file will load empty. The CSS file content will also sometimes disappear when re-opening an EPUB. I have no idea why. (I'm sure there's a logical reason; I haven't figured it out yet, though.) Just be advised that if all formatting disappears for no apparent reason, check to make sure the CSS file is populated. If not, either delete and re-add ebookstyle.css, or copy and paste it in from the source file.

ACTION: Save Again

Before moving on, plain-old Save the work_projectx.epub file.

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