Introducing Matthew's Ebook Creator (Preview)!

[Matthew]

I decided to make my own tool for ebook creation. I designed it first and foremost for myself, and I am releasing it with a minimum feature set I want for my own novels. It is aimed more toward the power user (at least, for the moment) -- it has a lot of customization options exposed, and doesn't include any sort of "theme" system yet; you have to change everything yourself. It also has much of the raw XHTML and CSS located on disk that can be manually edited.

As noted in the title, this is sort of a preview or early-access release. It's not quite ready for prime time, but it's got all the bones there and needs beta testing to help polish it up.

I would like to emphasize that I make no promises I will implement any feature requests or do it within any specific timeline. The reality is I'm just one guy working in his spare time, and that time is split between everything else in my life (including my own writing).

This program is geared towards primarily text-based manuscripts (e.g. novels). The simpler your manuscript formatting, the more likely it is to be compatible.





Features:

• Cross-platform friendly codebase
• Dark mode
• Import an existing manuscript (.docx)
• Specify section type (for using different templates)
• Basic text formatting (bold, italics, underline, small caps)
• Table of contents
• Selecting which sections to include in the TOC or export
• Book cover
• Ebook metadata (Book title, author, language, uuid, last modified)
• Ability to modify XHTML and CSS templates directly for power users
• Exporting as an ebook (.epub version 3)
• Book designer

Book Designer Features:

• First paragraph customization (indentation, leading words, first line, dropped caps, raised caps)
• First paragraph after scene break customization (with same settings as above)
• Chapter heading customization (alignment, size)
• Chapter heading image (and size and spacing)
• Scene break customization (text or ornamental image)
• 10 included ornamental images to use

What's missing:
This is the first release of a brand new project. It's missing a lot of functionality of other tools, though I plan to continue to work on this project over time. I've got my own TODO list with a lot more ideas, these are just the biggest omissions.

• Saving / loading projects
• A built-in text editor. I'm not sure I want to add one.
• Some kind of global "theme" system to quickly switch the entire book's design.
• Doesn't have any sort of installer or automatic updates

Feedback needed:

• Does the program import your manuscript as you would expect? (Also did it get the category right? [Right click on an item])
• Is it easy to use?
• What features are missing that you would like in order of priority?

After creating an ebook, I recommend previewing it in dedicated ebook viewer, such as Kindle Previewer 3 or Apple Books. Some software such as Sigil or Calibre may not provide any additional styling such as line height that an ereader would. (Also note, Kindle is quite heavy-handed with modifying ebook styles to fit their own format, so best practice is to see how a book would look through different publishing software / platforms.)

Cost:
Matthew's Ebook Creator is free and open source software licensed under the GPLv3. You are free to do whatever you like with the output created by the program.

Why? There are some free tools on the market, but none of them really impressed me. I'm releasing this the way I am for a few reasons. First, the principle of the thing. Free (as in freedom) Software gives you the freedom to use it how you wish, and to take the code and make it yours. Free (as in cost) software should help out the community. I see people requesting no-cost options for creating ebooks, and I hope my software is easier to use than trying to format in LibreOffice Writer, Calibre, or Sigil, and hopefully produces better results than just running a document through Kindle Create. It's also not an online service that can just disappear. Some of the decision is also selfish. I've tried to run a software company in the past. It is absolutely not for me, and releasing this way means I don't have to deal with any of the legal or business side. It also gives me the flexibility to not worry about customers and their demands. I still have a full-time job, so money is not really a concern.

Download:
Windows: https://github.com/dazappa/matthews-ebook-creator/releases
Source code: https://github.com/dazappa/matthews-ebook-creator

I will look to add support for MacOS in the future. The code should be compatible, but I would need to go through the process of becoming an Apple developer and setting up a build process.

[TimothyEllis]

Is this doing the formatting for paperbacks?

If so, can it export in pdf for a specific specified book size?

Just thinking, D2D doesn't handle colour books. It just converts them to black and white. So I have several I've never been able to do properly.

If this could format them and output the pdf with the colour intact, so I can upload to Amazon, that would be really useful.

[Matthew]

Is this doing the formatting for paperbacks?

This tool is only for ebooks (.epub). I won't necessarily say never to print, but it would be quite a bear of a project. I would like to really solidify the application and get ebooks excellent first, so even considering print, if I'm honest, may be a full year out.

[TimothyEllis]

I'm not sure what the point is then.

Everywhere accepts docx, and that's all you need to upload good eBooks.

Why convert to ePub first? Just curious.

[Bill Hiatt]

In general, converting to epub first lets you check and make sure the format turned out all right. It's been a while since I've heard any stories about a .docx file not loading correctly, but there used to be glitches sometimes.

[Matthew]

I'm not sure what the point is then.

Everywhere accepts docx, and that's all you need to upload good eBooks.

Why convert to ePub first? Just curious.

I'd be curious about your workflow. First, everywhere may accept DocX, but do they convert it in a way that is acceptable?

Kindle Create does not allow you to customize the scene break separator. It also does not auto-detect common scene breaks and replace them with separators, meaning you have to do that process by hand (or just leave it as asterisks). It also basically converts your document to use Kindle Create themes. So if you, for instance, try to customize chapter headings, that is not respected once imported into Kindle Create, making you have to do additional changes there anyway.

If you're doing formatting in Microsoft Word, it is tedious.

First paragraphs - you have to make sure you manually set the style for each first paragraph after a Chapter or Scene Break. As far as I can tell, some customization is limited, e.g. you cannot do first line formatting or automatic first # of words formatting. Raised caps are impossible to get right, since you cannot set the line height of the raised letter. The work around is to use Word Art which creates an image of the letter, and use image formatting to get it to behave right. But this is not a great experience for a reflowable ebook.

Scene breaks - insert your own images and get them centered. If you want to change the image, you have to go through and modify every single one. I've also never gotten Kindle Create to correctly format anything I tried for using images as scene breaks.

Also using some platform tools is restrictive. E.g. you cannot use Kindle Create's output on any other platform. So are you formatting your book multiple times for multiple platforms? Do you just upload a Word Doc and whatever it looks like is what it looks like on each platform? Also this tool means you can create files to distribute outside of platforms. Reader magnets, selling direct, etc.

[TimothyEllis]

I'm exclusive to Amazon.

I don't do any of that stuff for the eBook. I have inserted small images into a few books with chapter changes, but it wasn't a chore.

The paperbacks I do using a standard D2D template. I tried a lot of them, and rejected them all. The plain works just fine for me.

I don't see the point in doing fancy things, either in the eBook or the paperback. In fact, I dislike things like giant first letter on the first paragraph. It bounces me as a disconnect.

I use styles in Word. That's it.

[Post-Crisis D]

Nifty.  You beat me to it.  Actually, maybe I'll still do mine at some point.  I have a series of Perl scripts I use that shouldn't be too difficult to make into an actual application when I actually sit down and commit to getting it done.  I sort of started but then put it on the backburner.

Do you mind sharing what IDE you used?  I'm probably going to do mine in Xojo.

[Matthew]

I don't do any of that stuff for the eBook.
I use styles in Word. That's it.

If your workflow works for you, no need to complicate it! I like putting a personal flair on ebooks, so I liked the flexibility dedicated tools like Atticus and Vellum provided.

Nifty.  You beat me to it.  Actually, maybe I'll still do mine at some point.  I have a series of Perl scripts I use that shouldn't be too difficult to make into an actual application when I actually sit down and commit to getting it done.  I sort of started but then put it on the backburner.

Do you mind sharing what IDE you used?  I'm probably going to do mine in Xojo.

Command-line tools still have their place. I actually started years ago with that, with the thought that I might make it some online service. But for sure, the average person wants some kind of GUI. In any case, building your own tool lets you customize it to your specific needs and workflow.

The software is written in Java with JavaFX as the UI toolkit, using the IntelliJ Idea Community IDE. The UI is created using a mix of code and XML created in the WYSIWYG editor "SceneBuilder."

Oh, trust me, I've been all over on researching options for making cross-platform applications. To put it mildly, everything is a matter of compromises. Nothing will be as good as a platform-specific codebase, and all cross-platform tools have their quirks and limitations.

[Post-Crisis D]

Oh, trust me, I've been all over on researching options for making cross-platform applications. To put it mildly, everything is a matter of compromises. Nothing will be as good as a platform-specific codebase, and all cross-platform tools have their quirks and limitations.

Definitely lots of compromises for cross-platform tools.

I mostly settled on Xojo because I thought it would be the easiest for me to get in to, especially since I'd used its predecessor in the past.  I still keep an eye out for alternatives though.  One of my problems is there isn't as much training and examples for Xojo as I would like.  If I search for something like "how do I program an app to do x," I will get a fair number of examples/lessons/code/etc. whereas if I search for "how do I program an app to do x in Xojo," sometimes the result is crickets.

[Lynn]

Looking forward to giving this a try! I currently use Jutoh.

[Lynn]

A good start! The TOC of the resulting book is weird (my chapters are numbers only so it's 1. 1, 2. 2, 3. 3, ... 20. 20) and the chapter title I have under the heading, which I don't want as prominent as the chapter number, acts like the first paragraph instead of the styled paragraph I have centered and spaced as in my doc's styles.

But really, a simple and easy option for a plain ebook without anything but chapter headings, paragraphs of text, and scene breaks.

And of course, a big warning from Windows when I ran it, lol.

[Matthew]

A good start! The TOC of the resulting book is weird (my chapters are numbers only so it's 1. 1, 2. 2, 3. 3, ... 20. 20) and the chapter title I have under the heading, which I don't want as prominent as the chapter number, acts like the first paragraph instead of the styled paragraph I have centered and spaced as in my doc's styles.

But really, a simple and easy option for a plain ebook without anything but chapter headings, paragraphs of text, and scene breaks.

And of course, a big warning from Windows when I ran it, lol.

Thanks for checking it out. What I have seen some ebooks do is that even if the headings are only numbers, the table of contents still lists them as "Chapter #." Though I'm not necessarily opposed to allowing the removal of chapter numbers in the TOC anyway, they're not strictly necessary.

At the moment the program doesn't load in text alignment from the Word document, so I'll add that to my list. Though what I really need to do is add proper support for subheadings.

[She-la-te-da]

I'll just keep using Scrivener. I ignore most of the stuff in it, I like plain, simple ebooks, and the same with print. I see no need to have fancy separators, drop caps or any of that. Having too many images in ebooks increases delivery fees.

The older I get, and the more Covid seems to affect my brain, anything distracting makes me stop reading. And since a lot of people read on phones, even with the bigger screens, too much stuff turns into unreadable text.

[Bill Hiatt]

I'm less concerned about ebook formatting, though I do use one of the Vellum templates. The fact that readers can control the text size--which they should be able to do--limits the usefulness of a lot of other features.

I can see more of an argument for fancy stuff in print editions. Even then, I doubt that's why most readers buy a book. The exception would be Kickstarters where the whole point is to have something fancy than normal, something limited edition and special.

[Post-Crisis D]

I can see more of an argument for fancy stuff in print editions. Even then, I doubt that's why most readers buy a book. The exception would be Kickstarters where the whole point is to have something fancy than normal, something limited edition and special.

What do you consider "fancy stuff"?

[Bill Hiatt]

I can see more of an argument for fancy stuff in print editions. Even then, I doubt that's why most readers buy a book. The exception would be Kickstarters where the whole point is to have something fancy than normal, something limited edition and special.

What do you consider "fancy stuff"?

Anything much beyond, clear, easily readable text that follows the normal publishing conventions. I'm not that much of an enthusiast for things like images at the beginning of each chapter, ornate scene breaks, that sort of thing. Even drop caps look odd to me (and don't work well on some ereaders, anyway).

Don't get me wrong. I have no quarrel with authors who like a more decorative interior, especially for print. But for the most part, with the exception I already noted, I don't think that's really what sells books. As long as they look professional, that's enough for me.

[She-la-te-da]

I don't like books with "fancy stuff" either. Especially ebooks. When I used to read on a Kindle Keyboard, drop caps were especially horrible. Three or even four lines, all starting with a giant first letter, which didn't fit the other lines. Sentences looked mashed together. I can't imagine people who read on their phones making any sense of it. I first started reading digital books on a Palm TX. Now there was some simple formatting!

For print, I can see using a scene separator, maybe, but I see no use in having an image for every chapter, or lots of stuff other than "Chapter 1/One". The story is what matters. I feel like people are trying to distract me from story issues if they go this far in formatting.