I have three ways to convert a Word file to EPUB. Microsoft EPUB converter Libre Office Writer SoftMaker TextMaker They all create an EPUB file. They all create EPUB files that fail (in various, different ways) to correctly translate certain features from the .DOCX file. Of the three, the Microsoft converter is hands-down the worst. It's terrible. I knew that, but I decided to give it one more chance. It failed. How do people create good EPUB files? I'm not starting with a massively complicated document -- it's basically text, with a few illustrations. I saved a copy of the input file and stripped out all the extraneous stuff like headers, footers, and page numbers. These converters can't even agree on how to handle a section break -- which is the recoomended way to end a chapter and transition to the next chapter. AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
Personally i use vellum... but you might want to look at a cheaper option like atticus or jutoh... your problem is that you're trying to use a word processor instead of a dedicated formatter aside from the MS one which is just a steaming pile
First, Vellum only runs on the Mac platform, and I'm on Windoze. Second, even if Vellum were available for Windoze, it's out of my price range.
You can run it on a mac emulator like mac in the cloud... however you asked what people use, that's what I use... if you want good epubs you need to use a good converter that said jutoh is $49 - i can't remember how much atticus is but it less than vellum, Sigil and Calibre are both free
Have you tried converting it to an .rtf and then converting the .rtf to an epub? There seems to be various rtf to epub converters online but don't know if they have desktop versions. I use scrivener, but that may be too expensive and the results can be unpredictable at times so it may not solve your issues.
Scrivener isn't totally out of the ballpark, but if the results are unpredictable I'm not sure I'm prepared to gamble on it. Calibre may do the job. I already had that installed, but I forgot it could be used for the conversion. It seems to do better than the other three options I've tried.
WHOA! I just looked at a couple of Scrivener videos. It's too much for what I need. I remember discussing Scrivener with a friend, who uses it, and I knew from his description and demo that it doesn't suit the way I work. All I'm looking for is a way to turn a Word file into a coherent, presentable EPUB file. With a bit of practice and tweaking, I think Calibre might be up to the task. @Bruce Johnson: No, I have not tried doing anything with RTF. It doesn't make any sense to me to convert to an intermediate file format just to convert again to the destination file format. If anything, I would expect that to just introduce more errors.
Just ... Wow! I am gobsmacked at the idiocy. Affinity Publisher does not export to EPUB. I had Serif's older, predecessor program, PagePlus, but it stopped working after a Windows update. I just uninstalled it and reinstalled it. It now runs again ... and it exports to EPUB. It's pretty sad when you have to abandon a company's newest, latest, greatest product and revert to a ten-year old predecessor to get functionality that should be industry standard by now.
I use Calibre - have used it more to convert to .mobi than ePub, but ePub is an option, and it has been pretty good for my purposes (which is mainly converting my own work to distribute to beta readers in kindle format...)
Course the reason it doesnt is that epub is ebook format and affinity is meant for creating print books... i'm not absolutely sure whether indesign does epubs either its not a good idea to simply export your paperback to ebook or vice versa... and 'industry standard' would be to get a professional formatter to make both you're trying to do it on the cheap - and that's why you're having problems
Sapre, please keep the world updated on your hunt for the elusive ideal epub generator. I was initially disappointed with Affinity's epub blind spot as well, but I understand why Affinity would stay out of epub formatting. Affinity allows very complex layout, epub offers almost none. I like the idea of creating epub files and I want that capability, but that's kind of quirky of me. I've never written a book and I have a Kindle. Kindle's can't read epub files without conversion. With apologies for Mac-fixation, I've heard that Pages does a good job with epub output. Mellel seems to create reasonable epub output with one minor oopsie. If the book has inline images other than the cover, there's a quick edit required in the epub's manifest file. Mellel's developer says that's fixed in the next release. Other than that, my light testing hasn't shown any other problems. Mellel allows control over the cover art and the "spine," which is part of the epub navigation. With more Mac fan-boy apologies, BBEdit is a quick way to fix epub files. An epub is just a zip file with text components plus images. BBEdit will work with text files in-place in zip files, so BBEdit can open an epub file and mess around with its internals as individual files. When you close BBEdit there's no need to update the epub file, it's already updated. Yeah, yeah, I know. Calibre. Sigil. Vellum...
I entered a short excerpt from the recent book project into the old Serif PagePlus last night and exported it to EPUB. It did better than the Microsoft converter, better than LibreOffice, and better than SoftMaker Office. But -- it was a short excerpt. What I need to do for a better test is to actually set up a template for a book and import the entire manuscript, then see how well that exports. But that will take more time than I have available at the moment. Short term, for the current project, I may have to just upload the manuscript file to Draft2Digital and let them convert it. A potential drawback to PagePlus is that it doesn't import Word files, so to get a book-length manuscript into PagePlus you have to save it as a .TXT file before importing it. That, of course, loses all formatting, so you then have to wade through the entire document in PagePlus to apply appropriate styles, and then add graphics frames and import any figures or illustrations you had in the book. But the publisher has been promising for more than three years to add EPUB export -- but they don't do it. If they don't get with the program, their customers are going to be forced to migrate to InDesign.
For all your conversion needs... Try Pandoc. It is the most strict on converting over important metadata, though you might want to work on the ePub afterwards for formatting and so on. If you are not entirely comfortable with the command line then I'd suggest pairing it with a GUI front end. Quick search suggests PanWriter, but I've never tried it.
I have tried Sigil. I didn't like it, but it was some time ago and I don't remember why I didn't take to it.
May I suggest you look into Papyrus Author? The free version has an ePub option under the File menu and it creates the ePub file but I don't have anything to look at the result to see if was done properly. And you cant beat the price, if it works for you.
