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You’re ready to take your work to the presses, but can’t find a free ebook creator? Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered. Companies and individuals have produced free software that’s yours for the downloading.
Perfect if you want to produce your own content for reading on the go, or if you want to see your novel in its publishable form. You can go from HTML/XHTML to ebook in no time. Many ebook creators use a form of these markup languages as their raw input. Most applications now produce HTML, so you don’t need to understand HTML to get results.
Okay... you may have to give up some features. Expect to see some project size limits, or the software’s standard cover art instead of your own. Otherwise, you can download free ebook creator software for just about every format available.
Microsoft’s Reader program is a big hit with ebook fans on PCs and PocketPCs because it looks like a printed page. Creating “. LIT” ebooks can be as simple as hitting “Save as HTML” for your Word documents. This free eBook creator provides a plug-in that allows you to “Save as LIT”. This is a great option because many ebooks begin life as manuscripts written in Word.
If you use a different word processor you still have an option. ReaderWorks
Standard is a standalone program to compile “. LIT” files. Input
separate HTML files for each chapter, and any necessary graphic files. Then
compile. A sample project and tutorial is provided.
Here, you’ll run up against the “free software” limitations
I mentioned earlier. But for $119 you can trade up to ReaderWorks
Publisher. This allows you to create ebooks for sale complete with
Digital Rights Management (DRM) and your own copyright information.
The best application for creating .PDF files is still Adobe’s Acrobat (not to be confused with the Acrobat Reader). However, Acrobat is not a free ebook creator. Same for other .PDF compilers.
Thankfully, there is a way to get some of the functionality for free. Check out download sites for programs like GhostScript and others. Mixing and matching these should allow you to create .PDF ebooks for PCs, Macintoshes, various UNIX machines, and PDAs. They require more effort than the turn-key solutions for other formats, but if you don’t have the funds for Acrobat it could be worth it.
The Open eBook (OeB) standard was created amidst fears the “winner” of the eBook wars would be a closed format (owned by a single company). It was also meant to provide relief to publishers who were being forced to completely redo their works for each new format introduced.
OeB was created to be an “eBook HTML”: an open standard where content had to be written only once without having to know what hardware or software was going to display it. Certain web browsers, such as Opera7 support it. Even the ReaderWorks products use OeB as an intermediate format when compiling their .LIT files. This is an encouraging sign. If future formats follow these trends—using OeB directly or as an intermediate format—then supporting new formats could become easier.
The use of a free ebook creator may not provide you with all of the features present in professional ebook creators, but that should not keep you from using these tools. Just the opposite; these tools allow you to try before you buy. If you find that you need the professional versions of the software, you’ll already know how to use the best tool available.