Creating an eBook from an OpenOffice Document

I was having one of those computer adventures in which I kind of wanted to drive a letter opener through my eye.  A serrated letter opener.  Rusty.  Coated with acid.  Don’t “tsk” — you know you’ve been there!

 

I was trying to reformat my How to Succeed at Textbroker book.  When I first put it out, I had no idea what I was doing with Kindle Direct Publishing and so the formatting was horrible.  After a scathing 1-star review caught my attention, I fixed that problem and republished.  However, there were still some formatting issues I wasn’t pleased with, such as:

  • Bullet points — these don’t translate over into a MOBI file
  • Table of contents — I wanted a clickable table of contents
  • Other random things

 

Once I figured out what I needed to do with my OpenOffice document to make it work, I realized it was INCREDIBLY EASY.  And I put the letter opener down.  If you’re struggling, too, here’s what you do:

 

Don’t Download a Template

The first thing I did was to download a free template for OpenOffice that claimed it would format my book to perfection.  Yeah, no.  It turns out that you really don’t need to do that.

 

Get Rid of Anything Fancy

As aforementioned, things like bullets don’t convert over into your MOBI file properly, so leave them out.

 

How to Make a Clickable Table of Contents with OpenOffice

This was how I felt before I found my new favorite YouTube video:

OpenOffice Frustration

 

Then I found the video.  And I felt like this:

 

OpenOffice made easy

 

It turns out that creating a clickable table of contents in OpenOffice is actually SO easy.  Watch this video.  I love this dude’s accent; I live in the South so he makes me feel right at home:

Getting Rid of the Page Numbers

The one thing this video did not show me how to do was to get rid of the dot leading and the page numbers.  Turns out that this is very easy.  Go back to the menu with the E and the LS and the LE and all that stuff and find the box that says “#.”  Click it.  Hit delete.  Find anything else that has anything to do with Page or Page #.  Click them.  Hit delete.  Done.

 

Take It Into Calibre

Once you’ve gotten rid of any formatting that might make your Kindle ebook messy and you’ve used the video above to create your clickable table of contents, you’re ready to convert your document into a MOBI file.  (Or any other ebook file you like, actually.)  Start by downloading the free program Calibre.

 

It took me a minute to figure out how to use Calibre.  Here’s how you use it to convert an OpenOffice document to an ebook, step-by-step:

1.  Click “Add books,” choosing the “Add books from a single directory” option.

2.  With the document you just added selected, click “Convert books.”

3.  Fill out the meta info on the right.  It’s important to fill this out completely because the Kindle will use what you put in to do things like fill in the author and title at the top of the Kindle screen, so type everything in exactly as you want it to appear on a Kindle.

4.  Add your cover image.

5.  Choose your output format from the drop-down menu.  Kindle uses MOBI; Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, and a bunch of other e-readers use EPUB.

6.  Click “Ok.”

 

BAM.  Achievement unlocked.

 

Test Before You Publish

The last thing you need to do is test your document to make sure it’s going to look ok.  For Kindle, start by downloading the Kindle Previewer directly from Amazon.  Open up your new MOBI file in the preview tool and scroll through, checking things like:

  • Does your table of contents work?
  • Are your images the right size?
  • Does it look good on various Kindle readers?
  • Etc.

Once you’re satisfied that everything’s ok, you’re done!

 

Photo Credits:

Frustrated girl: greg westfall. via photopin cc

Jumping for joy: Anirudh Koul via photopin cc

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