Maybe you’re a budding author who wants to self publish. Or maybe you’re a software developer who wants to distribute documentation in a slightly different way. You could be a blogger who wants to collect a bunch of their best posts into an ebook.

There are several ways to do that. You could fire up your favorite word processor, start typing, and then create a PDF file. Or you could go straight to a format that just about every electronic device can handle. The easiest way to do that is to write an publish using Sigil

Sigil is an Open Source WYSIWYG ebook editor that produces ebooks in the popular epub format. You can read books in epub format using just about any dedicated ebook reader, on most smartphones and tablets, and even on desktop or laptop computers.

Let’s take a look at how to use Sigil to write and publish an ebook.

Installing the Software

Sigil can run on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. You can download installers for each operating system from Sigil project’s website. If you’re in the mood to embrace your inner geek, you can also download the source code.

Once you’ve downloaded the installer, just run it. Sigil installs on your computer, and adds an icon to your Start or application menu. For example, you can launch Sigil under Ubuntu by selecting Applications -> Sigil -> Sigil.

Time to Get Writing

Sigil is WYSIWYG, which means working in it is a lot like working in a word processor. To get going, just start typing.

The main difference between Sigil and a word processor is that you don’t get all that much formatting. You can add:

• Headings
• Bold, italics, underline, and strikethrough
• Bullets and numbers
• Images

You can also justify and indent text. All of that is literally a click away on the toolbar. To apply formatting, just highlight the text and click one of the buttons on the toolbar.

Chances are that you’ll have more than just a bit of text. And chances are that you’ll want to break that text up into chapters. To do that, click to the left of the heading that you want to make a chapter title and the select Insert -> Chapter Break.

You’ll notice that something interesting happens in the left portion of the Sigil window. The new chapter is added to the Book Browser.

The Book Browser lists the chapters in your ebook. Out of the box, the chapters are named Section000x.xhtml, where x is a number starting at 1. You can change the name of the chapters by right clicking on them, selecting Rename from the menu that appears, and then typing a new name for the chapter.

You can also click and drag chapters in the Book Browser to rearrange them.

Once you’re finished, save the book. You can open the epub file whenever you want to edit it.

What If I Already Have Content?

A book in epub format is essentially a collection of XHTML files. So if you have content that’s already written in HTML or XHTML format, you can copy and paste that content into Sigil. To do that, open the HTML file in a text editor and copy it. Then, in Sigil, select View -> Code View.

Paste your HTML code into editing window then select View -> Book View to return to WYSIWYG mode. You’ll probably have to add chapter breaks, which was explained a few paragraphs ago.

Viewing Your ebook

Once you’ve got a draft completed, you’ll probably want to see what the product looks like. Obviously, the best way to do that is to view the epub on as many ebook readers (and other devices) as you can. Unfortunately, that’s not always possible. The next best thing to do is use the Calibre ebook management software.

After downloading and installing Calibre, use it to open your epub file. Then, click View on the Calibre toolbar. In the viewer window that opens, you can navigate through your ebook, change the size of the fonts, and see any formatting problems.

Conclusion

If you need a quick and easy way to write and publish an ebook, then you should give Sigil a look. It can actually do a bit more than what was described in this article, and once you get the hang of the software you’ll be able to create some very nice looking ebooks.

Photo credit: super

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Generally speaking, a Kindle book is just HTML and CSS. The part that can be difficult is figuring out which tags the Kindle actually supports. There are also a couple of unique tags that are not standard HTML but that you can use to add formatting to your Kindle book.

Getting Started

If you are using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) service, it is quick and easy to publish your book. This guide assumes you already have the book finished, know how to use Amazon’s KDP website, and have a basic knowledge of HTML.

The first thing you should do is sign up for KDP, and after you have an account, click “Add a new title”. Enter in all of the information you have about your book and add a cover image if you want. The last thing you will do on this page will be to upload the actual book. For now, do nothing else or save the book as a draft and come back later.

Formatting

Since the Kindle is formatted in HTML, you could export your current document from OpenOffice.org or other software directly to HTML using the KDP upload interface. The important thing to note is that some formatting may not work correctly. I found the best method to be using plain text and reformatting the entire book. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Use your HTML editor of choice to create a new document. You can use standard XHTML in the DOCTYPE. Save the new document in a new folder.

2. In the title tag, put the title of your book:

<head>
<title>My New Book</title>
</head>

3. To create a title page, you can use the header tag (<h1></h1>) or use an image. To center-align any text, use an inline css style (or simple stylesheet), for example:

<h1 style=”text-align: center”>My Centered Text</h1>

4. The Kindle does not recognize whitespace, so artificially inserted breaks will not show up. If you want to skip a page or simply start a new page at the end of a chapter, you must use a special tag:

<mbp:pagebreak />

Any place you insert that tag will automatically start a new page.

5. For every new paragraph, use the <p> tag, and the Kindle will automatically indent it.

6. For any images, save them in the same folder with your document and link to them with the normal tag:

<img src=”name.jpg” alt=”My Name”>

7. If you absolutely need to add white space, you can use formatting like this:

<p height="40">&nbsp;</p>

8. For italics, use <em> and for bold use <strong>

Finishing and Publishing

There is really not much else to it. If you add too many styles and try to get fancy, you may find that they do not work or do not show up correctly. Remember, Kindle readers are accustomed to reading a black and white screen with plain pages and text. Adding too many spaces or strange formatting will probably just annoy them. You should leave it up to them and their configuration options to make any subtle formatting changes. They just want your readable content, not your visual artistic creation.

Once you have the book formatted, compress the entire folder with your HTML, optional CSS file and images to a zip file and upload it into Amazon’s KDP interface. Once uploaded, click “Preview book” to make sure it looks the way you intended. Generally speaking, the preview will show you how it will look on the Kindle. If it all looks good, go ahead and publish. If something is out of place, edit your HTML again and re-upload it until it is right.

Once the work is published, you may find that something is not quite right on the actual Kindle. In that case, you can still edit it and resubmit it to Amazon, without losing any of your other settings. E-book formatting is different for every reader, so you will still need to learn how to format your book for the Barnes and Noble Nook and others. Enjoy your new publishing audience and be sure to share your books with us.

Image credits: Wikipedia and Flickr

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Copying Books to your Android Device

After installing Aldiko Book Reader, copy a few eBooks onto your SD Card (files must be ePub or PDF). Next, launch Aldiko.

Once the app launches you will see a wooden bookshelf with all your eBooks.

To add eBooks from your SD card into your Library, first select the home icon and then select SD card.

Scroll through your SD card and select the checkbox next to the eBook you would like to add. Then select “Import to Aldiko (1)”.

Reading Books

After you have copied the books you want to read onto Aldiko, go back to your Library. To view your newly added books you may have to change the view mode (in this case I have changed it to view “Books by title”).

To read a book, simply click on it. You can scroll through the pages by swiping your finger left to go to the next page and swiping right to go to the previous page. You can also simply tap on the right side of the page to move forward and the left side to move back. Alternatively, you can use the volume keys on your device to scroll through the pages.

If you select and highlight a word or passage, you can lookup the definition of the word (“Dictionary“), search your phone for the word or passage (“Search”), copy the word or passage (Copy), or share the word or passage over your social network (Share).

If you lookup the definition of a word, you will be presented with options to search the word on Google and Wikipedia.

Tapping on the centre of the screen will load the options panels.

Home: Clicking on the “home” icon will take you back to your main bookshelf.

Search: The search icon (magnifying glass) allows you to search for words or phrases in the book you are currently reading.

Location Bar: The location bar shows you how many pages into the book you have read. You can move the bar to scroll through the book you are reading.

Go To: If you want to jump to a particular point in the book you can select “Go to…” If you select “Go to…” again from the popup menu, you will be able to select the particular location to jump to in the book.

Additionally, the “Table of content” is an automatically generated list of chapters in the book you are reading. You can also add and scroll through bookmarks from this list.

Day/Night: Day/Night alternates the colour of the text and the colour of the background depending on your preference.

Settings: The settings menu allows you to change the size of the text and margins, the brightness of the screen, the orientation of the book (portrait or landscape), and a number of other options to fine-tune how the text is displayed on your screen.

Buying Books

One of the Aldiko’s best features is the ability to buy eBooks directly from within the app. To browse the eBook store, select “Store” from the home screen.

Here you can browse through a variety of eBooks in the Aldiko Online Catalog. The selection is not the best, but if you just want to pick up something to read, I am confident you will find something to your liking.

You will need to create an Aldiko account before you are able to purchase a book. You will also presumably have to provide credit card details.

Conclusion

Aldiko is a robust eBook reading app for the Android platform. It has a plethora of features, even though some of the best ones (such as the option to look through the contents of a book) are buried deep within menus. The Aldiko Online Catalog is also a nice touch. Considering the app is completely free, it is highly recommended if you like to read on the move.

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Document Types

Out of the box, Okular can view a plethora of document types, including:

PDF – used for a variety of documents
PS – Postscript print documents
TIFF – often used for faxes
CHM – help files, ebooks, and online documentation
DjVu – scanned documents
Images – JPEG, PNG, and many more
DVI – device independent file format
XPS – windows printing specification
ODT – Open Document Text (for reading, not editing)
Fb2 – fiction book file format for eBooks
CBZ, CBR – comic book archive
Plucker – eBook format
Epub – free and open eBook standard
Fax – file format for faxes

Features

Okular has many of the standard PDF viewer features like page navigation, table of contents, browsing, zooming, text selection, and bookmarking. In addition, it also offers users the ability to annotate documents, highlight important information, have the computer read the entire document using text-to-speech technology, save annotated documents, view embedded files, listen to sounds and movies, fill out forms, search documents, and read DRM encrypted files.

Usage

Okular has four modes for viewing and manipulating documents:

1. Browse (Ctrl+1) – Clicking on the document allows you to drag the page up, down, left, or right.

2. Zoom (Ctrl+2) – Click and highlight an area to zoom in on it.

3. Selection Tool (Ctrl+3) – It uses a selection box to highlight any area and can copy images or text.

4. Text Selection Tool (Ctrl+4) – This functions more like a text editor’s selection tool, highlighting text, row-by-row.

To search a document, press “Ctrl+F” and enter the text you wish to find. The search tool will begin searching from the moment you start typing. It will highlight each occurrence of the text and give you the ability to navigate through them.

To start making annotations, press F6. A small vertical toolbar with each type of annotation will appear. They can take any of nine forms: note, inline note, green freehand line, yellow highlighter, straight yellow line, blue polygon, stamp, black underlining, and cyan eclipse.

There are four view modes for Okular, found in the View menu:

1. Single page - scrolls one page at a time
2. Facing pages – displays two pages, side-by-side
3. Facing pages (center first page) – like normal facing pages, but displays the first page by itself, which is useful if the first page is a book cover.
4. Overview – which shows three zoomed-out pages at a time.

Also included in the view menu is the ability to rotate the document, trim the margins, and use the document as a presentation. By clicking presentation, the document becomes fullscreen, and the user can navigate through the pages just like a PowerPoint slideshow. When in presentation mode, a dial in the top right with a number in the center keeps track of the number of pages viewed.

Universal Viewer

Because of Okular’s versatility, you can use it to view any document, eBook, fax, or image quickly, easily, and safely. Okular is light enough to be portable and work well even on tablets and small devices, but it is also powerful enough to view very large, complex documents as well. Okular is part of KDE and is free and open source software, available to everyone.

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But modern technology also brings changes to the book world. Aside from the words printed on dead tree, now we also have digital version of books or better known as ebooks which can (and supposed to) be read on any digital devices with ebook reader applications installed.

If you are constantly on the move, love reading and want to bring a “library” inside your pocket, here are several free ebook readers that you can install in your mobile devices.

1. Adobe PDF Reader

One of the oldest and most popular format of ebook is PDF. So going with PDF is a sure way to get almost unlimited supply of books for the road.

The advantage of this format is that you can “print” any document to PDF and the documents will look the same wherever you open them. But you’ll need to continuously re-sizing the page on small screen. If your device is based on Pocket PC, Palm, or Symbian; you are good to go. Just grab the free reader from Adobe site. There’s also an Android version in the market and the unofficial iPhone version that you can grab from iTunes Store.

2. Ibis Reader

Another format that has been increasing in its popularty is ePub – thanks to the adaptation of the format by Apple for its iBooks publications. And one of the most popular ePub reader out there is Ibis Reader.

One of the advantages of this format is the ebook will adjust the page layout according to the screen size while keeping the content intact. So one same ebook file will have different page number on different screen size. This will keep the book readable even on small screen.

3. MobiPocket

Aside from common ebook formats, this one reader is able to open other readable document formats such as: office documents and RSS eNews.

This application is available for most digital devices including Windows Mobile and Blackberry.

4. Kindle

The first popular consumer ebook reader in the world is called Kindle. It’s produced and distributed by the biggest bookstore in the world: Amazon. Being the biggest bookstore, Amazon provide Kindle users with tons of Kindle-friendly ebooks supply.

But you can also read those ebooks using your own mobile gadgets because there are Kindle softwares available for iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Android devices – aside from the Mac and PC versions.

5. Kobo

Another worthy alternatives for ebook readers for mobile devices is Kobo. The free software is available for iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android and Palm. Kobo also has its own bookstore where you can get your ebooks. They have thousands of free classic books along with tons of new titles.

So if you are an avid reader and you’d love to fill in those idle times with good reading – wherever you are; you could pick one of these free mobile ebook readers and start flipping those ePages.

Which one is your favorite ebook reader?

Image credit: Ed Yourdon

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Certainly not all Linux books are free (just ask Tim O’Reilly) but the nature of Linux means that the “spirit of freeness” tends to surround more than just the operating system. Some of the websites listed below offer full length dead-tree versions of the same books, the purchasing of which could be a great way to support these organizations. Without further delay, here are a few of the sites I’d recommend for anyone wanting to hone their Lin-jitsu.

1. OnlineComputerBooks.com

This site doesn’t so much host ebooks as link to them. There’s a VAST collection linked from here on all computer related topics from web design to hardware repair to systems administration. This is one of the first places I go when looking for good Linux books.

2. Scribd.com

Scribd describes itself as a “social publishing company”. The idea here is that any aspiring author can upload their book and have it accessible to everyone. I’ve found several high-quality Linux related ebooks here. Another interesting note about Scribd is that they use their own custom made book viewing system called iPaper. It resembles a PDF reader or presentation program built into a web browser. I’ve had both good and bad experiences with iPaper but it does give the site and the books a distinctive feel.

Here’s a shot of Scribd’s iPaper in action:

3. The Linux Documentation Project

We’ve touched on LDP a bit in the past but it certainly deserves a mention here. If there’s one place online to go when it comes to Linux documentation, this is it. According to the website,

LDP is a loosely knit team of volunteers who provide documentation for many aspects of Linux. There are several forms of documentation: Guides, HOWTOs, man pages, and FAQs.

4. Textbook Revolution

Textbook Revolution has a wide range of textbooks available on many topics, including Linux programming and other IT subjects. The interesting thing about Textbook Revolution is that it’s created by students.

Textbook Revolution is a student-run site dedicated to increasing the use of free educational materials by teachers and professors. We want to get these materials into classrooms. Our approach is to bring all of the free textbooks we can find together in one place, review them, and let the best rise to the top and find their way into the hands of students in classrooms around the world.

Courseware

Compared to ebooks, there’s not as much out there for Linux courseware. There are, however, several places that have related courseware available. Some of the places I’ll list here have Linux specific courses, while others are more general UNIX or other IT.

5. MIT

As can be expected, MIT has some great courseware available for free online. It includes assignments, syllabus, textbooks, the works.

6. Cornell University/arXiv.org

Links to a resonable collection of course related materials, books, and papers. From arXiv you can find info on subjects like cryptography or Asymptotically Optimal Assignments In Ordinal Evaluations of Proposals, whatever that may be.

7. Open University

The Open University refers to itself as “the United Kingdom’s only university dedicated to distance learning.” They’ve got a pretty good collection of materials available on the website on a variety of topics. The courseware includes exercises and course summaries. There’s not much here specifically Linux related, but what is there is well organized and easy to sort through.

Have you come across any other useful sites for Linux ebooks and courseware? Let us know in the comments.

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There is a long list of reasons why you might need to prepare an OpenOffice.org document in book form, and once you have learned how to do it, you will have a useful skill that you or people you know may need in the future. You can use this method for both print publications and e-books.

1. Start OpenOffice.org Writer with a regular blank document template.

The first thing you will need to do is set the size of your book. In my personal experience, it helped me tremendously with writing to be able to see each page at a normal book size rather than the 8.5″x11″ college essay size.  Suddenly, writing one hundred or two hundred pages will not take so long or seem so daunting.

2. Click “Format” in the menu and then click “Page…”

3. Enter in your custom width and height.

The current format will be “Letter”.  Many non-fiction paperbacks will be 6″x9″, while fiction paperbacks are often smaller sizes, such as 5.25″x7.5″. If you are doing this purely for effect, then it is entirely up to you. If you have to meet certain printing press specifications, follow them precisely.

There are lead  pages that always proceed the actual text of a book. If you are preparing a book for printing, they will be crucial. Bookstores rely on that information for stocking, and libraries rely on it for cataloging.

4. Create a title page.

There is no particular format set in stone, but a title page should include at least the title of the book and statement of responsibility (author’s name). If available, it should also include the publisher and place of publication. This is the place to be creative. You can use whatever font style and size you want. Create a manual page break at the end of the title page.

5. Create the title page verso.

This is the page directly on the other side of the title page and usually contains more detailed publication information, including copyright, ISBN, and CIP (cataloging in publication) data.

6. Click “Format” and “Paragraph”.

Click on the “Alignment” tab, and change it to “Justified”. From this point on, you will want your text to be justified.

7. Insert another page break, and you can enter any number of optional pages such as a dedication.

This can include a half title page with just the title or title and author’s name on the second to last page before the text. The final page before the text will be blank, and the text should begin on the recto or right-hand side.

8. Insert a page break and begin your text.

Most books will begin with a chapter number, chapter name, or both.

In part 2, you will learn how to properly align page numbers and format paragraphs. You are now well on your way to preparing your book for publication. Writing a book can be a very rewarding experience, even if you have no intentions of publishing. With OpenOffice.org, free and open source software, you have all the tools you need to make it happen. Happy writing!

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Calibre is a “one stop solution to all your ebook needs”. The site wasn’t lying. This handy application is a free, open-source, cross-platform (Windows, Linux, OS X) ebook library that offers incredible value and useful features.

In this walkthrough, we’ll look at installing Calibre in Windows and check out some of the basic features.

As I mentioned, Calibre comes in many flavours including Windows, Linux, and OS X.  With that kind of selection, it’s appealing to a broad range of users.  Visit their download site to get your copy and get started.

As with many installations on Windows Vista, the UAC will prompt you to make sure you actually want to install the software that has started installing.  Click Run and continue to the installation wizard.

The wizard for Calibre is very straight-forward and much like many of the other applications I’ve shown you, I chose to use mainly the default settings. The only thing that I changed is the install location. I have a second drive in my main system that I install all of the applications to. This makes it easier for recovery if I have to reinstall the operating system. Simply follow the prompts to navigate through the wizard.

Once you click Finish on the final screen, Calibre will prompt you for a location for your ebook library.  This is not the location where the books are, but rather the location for the database of information that Calibre will store. Your Documents folder (or My Documents) will suffice.

Once the storage directory is selected, Calibre opens up to the main window.  At this point there is nothing in the library, so you’ll need to go ahead and add some ebooks.  Click the little arrow next to the Add books icon on the toolbar.  In the dropdown, select the most appriate option.  I chose to add books from directories, including sub-directories.

After selecting the way you want to add ebooks, you will br prompted so select the location where the ebooks that you wish to add are located.  After selecting the folder, Calibre will begin sifting through the files in the directory (and sub-directories) searching for ebooks.

Just a small note, I did have one ebook that Calibre could not read.  Every time it attempted to read it, the whole app would hang.  Eventually I removed the offending publication, but I have no idea why it wouldn’t process. If this happens to you, simply open the task manager and terminate the application, then start it up again.

For this example, I only added a small handful of my ebooks.  All of them were in .PDF format and all of them were missing some meta data.  In the image below you can see that all of the authors are Unknown.  That’s ok though, you can add the meta data to the ebook if you have that sort of ambition.

Clicking on an ebook and clicking the View toolbar icon will open the ebook in it’s native viewer.  In my case it was Adobe Reader.

There are no shortage of features in this ebook library management application. For example, you can click on the arrow icon in the lower right corner of the window and your library will switch to a graphical selection window. Sadly, none of my ebooks had a cover graphic with them, however I did notice that you could attach one to it in the meta data editor.

There is an option to fetch the title image from the Internet, however the ISBN appears to be needed to make that work. I didn’t have much luck with it. Even though I had the ISBN, I was prompted for a username and password for a site called LibraryThing.com and I don’t happen to have an account. Registration is apparently free though, so go ahead and give it a try.

Maybe a future release will be improved so that it automatically pulls the image from a web service much like iTunes or Windows Media Player does for album art.

I mentioned the ability to edit the meta data for an ebook and it couldn’t be easier. Check out the screenshot below. Here you can see all of the fields that you can edit. Things like Title, Author, Publisher, and ISBN are all fields that you can update.

You can also give the book a rating out of 5 stars and add tags to it. The tags can be quite handy if you use the tag searcher to locate certain types of books. Best of all, you can fetch the information from the Internet based on the ISBN or the title/author.

There is also an option to bulk edit the data on multiple books. This saves valuable time when updating collections with similar attributes.

Another one of the features that I really liked about Calibre is the extensibility that the program offers. From the Preferences window, you can select Plugins and you’ll be given the option of viewing your current set of plugins, customizing them, or adding new ones.

As you can see, Calibre is an action-packed, open-source freeware application that is a must have for anyone with an ebook collection. It doesn’t matter if you have 5 books, or 500 books, Calibre can simplify the management of that library and free up some valuable time.

If you use a different free ebook manager, let us know in the comments.  We’d love to compare!

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