The Quick and Dirty Guide to formatting ebooks with Scrivener (epub, mobi and createspace)

by Frank | Jul 24, 2013 | Writing

Scrivener can format to epub, Kindle Mobi files and Word docs ready for print-on-demand. Albeit in plain format, and for the bulk of writers that’s probably more than enough. So, let’s get you where you want to be in double-quick time. Step 1: Open Scrivener, enter your title (in this case Dark Market test) and you will see this: Step 2: Select ‘Draft’ in the left hand file menu: Step 3: Right click the brown corkboard screen select Add→New Text. You can also use ctrl+n. These will be your chapters. Add a bunch of them, say 10 or 12 to test how this is going to work. It should look like this: Step 4: Now title each of the text boxes, either by selecting each box on the corkboard or right-clicking each file in the left hand menu. These names will populate the Table of Contents (automatic), once you add your text. Now add some text (I’ll do a full text-import tutorial later on). For now simply copy a chapter from your Word/Open Office application. Then select the relevant section in the left hand menu and paste it onto the blank page. Include a chapter heading as we’ll be maintaining those by hand. It should look like this: Step 5: If you want section breaks, say your story is broken down into the days of the week, or you want to indicate a change of location or time as I do here, then simply add a new text to the corkboard and drag it on top of the section before your break (see the left hand file menu above, look for Three Years Later). It will then appear as a secondary item to that text file. If you don’t need section breaks just skip this step. Step 6: Hit the compile button:   and select or deselect all the items you want to appear in your book’s Table of Contents. In the example below I’ve kept all the headings from the text boxes except Three Years Later because it’s simply a section break and not a chapter heading: Step 7: Now, staying in the Compile section select Formatting and you’ll see this: If you check each box exactly as you see above the ToC will source from the titles of your text areas that you labelled in Step 4. You can then either type in your titles by hand (add images) at the top of each text area, or copy and paste them from your original – and style them as you wish. Step 8: Still in Compile select Separators and make as follows. Step 9: Add your metadata. Name your document and add your metadata – book title, author name, publisher, etc. in the pop-up window pictured below: Step 10: Make sure you’ve selected your file format (bottom right of the Compile screen), that’s the “Kindle(Mobi) Book (.mobi)” selection above, for epubs you’ll need to add a cover in the Compile section as well. For Kindle you upload the cover with your book, make sure it’s 2500 pixels on it’s longest side. Hit compile. You’re done, proof your final document in the reader of your choice and it’s time to upload to your publishing platform in either epub, mobi or Word doc. If you want to format in more detail, or add CSS stylesheets to format your book in something other than Scrivener’s plain old vanilla, then save it as an epub and edit in the free Sigil program. That’s it, any questions add a comment below, or if this speeds up your workflow then show some love and buy a book! One of mine obviously.

by