In approaching this difficult topic, I will make a statement at once: it is impossible to convert any book to EPUB well using ‘one button’.
Now we can talk about the quality of conversion acceptable for readers and publishers, as well as about formats and the programmes themselves.
For the readers
If you, as a reader, only care about the text of the work, and formatting is a tenth matter, you can convert to EPUB with anything you want. Literally any service you find on the Internet, or any program that offers to save a file to EPUB.
Fantasy, love novels, detectives, thrillers — books of such genres, in which there is no formatting except for titles, are converted everywhere without any problems. Non-fiction, modern literature (especially those in which the author is trying to experiment with the text) — it could be more difficult, it all depends on the quality of the source.
Text in DOCX format can be saved in EPUB via Google Docs or Pages. However, any reader will not open these files well, you need to look for the most modern readers.
The FB2 format has almost no nice formatting, but it is not badly structured. In EPUB formatting itself will not appear, but the result of conversion from FB2 can be opened in any reader, and the text will be readable....
... unlike the results of converting from PDF. There are so many things that can go wrong when exporting from this format that I would estimate the probability of a successful conversion from a book with uncomplicated text at 50%. And complex books will have footnotes, tables, and charts, and free converters are unlikely to handle them.
MOBI ebook format has already gone to a well-deserved rest, but if you suddenly have files in this format, they can easily convert to EPUB, because these formats are not particularly different from each other.
Probably, readers still have a question, what program can convert books to EPUB. Or even a number of questions.
Can I convert using Calibre? You can, convert using Calibre.
Can I use online converters? You can, use them, most of them run on the Calibre engine anyway.
What if I am not satisfied with the conversion quality? See the beginning of this article. For beautiful books in EPUB format come to book services.
For advanced readers
If you are not intimidated by things on your computer like the terminal and the command line, you can use the Pandoc utility. Pandoc converts many text formats into each other at a very good level, especially when the source document is good quality. The utility runs through the command line without any settings and instantly converts to EPUB or other specified format.
For publishers
The worst thing you can do to your book is convert it with free converters or Calibre. There is no magic program, exporting from InDesign to EPUB using one button does not work. Agree that it would be disrespectful to readers to sell or add to book services files that don't work or books with nightmarish formatting. Let's take a look at what options are available.
For initial immersion in the topic of EPUB preparation, you or your layout designer cannot do without studying the resources which collects theoretical and practical articles on working with EPUB files of any complexity. For example, Laura Brady's videos and articles. No matter how you convert your book, the file will have to be finalized, and you need to understand what to do and how to do it.
Another must-have is the free Sigil editor, where you can both view and edit EPUBs of any complexity. Sigil has a lot of powerful built-in features that help speed up the EPUB preparation process and improve quality. And if suddenly the book service returned the file to you for revision, with the help of epubcheck utility you can find out about all technical errors in the file.
DOCX sources can be converted to EPUB in several ways, but you will have to finalize the file in Sigil in any case. The quick way: DOCX — Pandoc — EPUB. The more usual way for publishers: DOCX — InDesign — EPUB. If your books have very little formatting, the converters of book services can also help.
If you have FB2 book files from a long time ago, after conversion to EPUB they will retain the basic XHTML markup, and you will only need to add beauty to EPUB by customizing CSS styles. The same Pandoc or another program can help with the conversion itself, just make sure that it does not spoil EPUB (Calibre does).
There are many articles devoted to the art of exporting layout from InDesign to EPUB. The most important thing here is to understand that you will need to prepare the layout before exporting, and bring EPUB itself to mind. You will make this work much easier if you work out the rules of layout with an eye on the future electronic version, at least for novelties, to spend less time on the whole process.
About high-quality conversion from PDF, I'll make it short: forget it for now. ‘Free’ solutions will turn out to be very expensive when you calculate how much time it will take to clean the text, and sometimes to create the layout again after this operation. And maybe the text will be so bad that you'll have to call a proofreader for help.
I still believe that no one can prepare a book in EPUB format better than a publisher. However, if the above seems too complicated for you, there are many companies that will take on the job of preparing EPUBs from any source. This will cost some money, but you probably don't plan on giving away your ebooks for free either.
I hope this review of the different ways to convert books to EPUB has been useful to you. For conversion at the amateur and professional levels, the set of programs and services are very different. And although I have repeated many times in this article that there is no magic program, this direction is slowly developing. I will tell you about new services and features and keep you informed!
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