Making an eBook — Part 1

Part 2: Text Markup

By Roger Sperberg
September 27, 2001

From eBookWeb.org. Reprinted with permission.

On my PocketPC, I don't have to read texts in Microsoft Reader. I could read them using Pocket Word. I could read HTML pages that I've pulled off the web in Pocket IE. But I don't. I translate anything I have to .LIT format and read it using Microsoft Reader.

Why? Because it's a tool for reading, not writing or editing or linking, and the library listing available texts is easier to navigate than a file directory. The annotation features are helpful, but I'm not usually marking these texts. I'm reading them.

Maybe ClearType figures into this, though that ought to find its way into other Microsoft applications soon enough.

Or maybe I just like things that feel like books, instead of having an office or web feel.

I use ReaderWorks from Overdrive to make my .LIT files. The $69 Publisher version lets me insert a copyright page and an "about this title" page as well as control the cover and library images. The free Standard version lacks those niceties. Since I also release some titles commercially (for example, Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley), I have both versions. Even for one-time reading though, I put in my own cover and library images, as though I were making electronic chapbooks.

Making a book is a three-step process for me. Here's what I do:

I drop the text — usually already in HTML — into HTML-Kit, a free HTML editor from Chami that the inestimable Dorothea Salo steered me towards. In HTML-Kit I make changes to the text that make it more readable.

First, I open one of my other texts and copy a stylesheet section that formats the book the way I like it, and stick that into this text. Then I do the same with the a title page — just copy an old one and substitute the new title and author. And then I make the chapter headings all use the same level heading, usually <h2>; or adjust the stylesheet so that it accounts for how the chapters are already marked.

I also do global changes and substitute what some people call "true" quotes and others quotes (and others, "sexed" quotes) for the typewriter inch-mark quotes, and ditto for apostrophes. I follow that by replacing two hyphens with a true em dash; since I'm working in HTML, the dash is coded with an entity, &mdash;

Actually, these typographical niceties are not luxuries for me, but necessities and are one more reason why I use Reader to look at these texts.

Reader uses five standard graphics for .LIT files — two cover images, one each sized for the desktop and PocketPC versions of Reader; two library images for the same schism, and a tall narrow image intended to evoke the spine, I think, that appears on the title page on the desktop. So my next step is to gather generic images for these five instances into a single folder on my computer, where I also put the newly bookified HTML text.

In my own case, I often go one step farther, and make a cover specific to this book — I place the actual title onto a background. Sometimes I use a color prism background, and other times images from my wife's paintings. I think the world of Overdrive's free tools but I prefer a painting to advertising anyday.

The last step is to launch Readerworks and create a new project. The controls allow me to identify the document(s) I am including, the publishing metadata — author, title, publisher and so on — and the cover and library graphics. From this, Readerworks will generate a temporary OEB publication, then dissect it and feed information into the same LIT-generator that Microsoft makes available in its SDK kit to anyone who wants to build their own .LIT-making machine. Voilá, a .LIT file, opened immediately in Reader for your perusal.

Of course, steps one and three are now repeated as errors in the HTML are identified and have to be fixed, and as appearance glitches are rectified, and new versions of the .LIT file generated, until a satisfactory version is achieved.

As a description, this perhaps satisfies the minimal need for understanding how to make your own .LIT files to read on your PocketPC. But it glosses over all the essential details.

So, as a tutorial in making your own .LIT files, I propose to go through, step-by-step, each individual action necessary to make a .LIT file. I'll use a real-world example, Robert Parks' S.A.T. Dictionary from Wordsmyth, which defines and provides sample sentences for the 2,000 most frequently appearing vocabulary terms in the S.A.T.

See also Part 2: Text Markup


About Roger Sperberg
Roger Sperberg is an eBook columnist for Fictionforest.com and eBookWeb.org. He is the author of Real Soon, Raccoon, a children's illustrated eBook available in Adobe Acrobat eBook and Microsoft Reader formats.