Best Epub Editor For Mac

• Epub Editor Windows

Anthony Levings April 7, 2014,. Editor’s Note: Today’s guest post comes from Anthony Levings, who runs the SketchyTech blog. Today he has a look at the bumpy post-Sigil environment for EPUB creators. The Sigil editor was not used by everyone in the #eprdctn world and there are those who wouldn’t admit to doing so in public even if behind the scenes they used it to fix things up once in a while. The truth is, however, that with its it marks yet another #eprdctn tool that has failed to move from EPUB 2 to EPUB 3.

As commonly happens with small open source projects, the weight of development ended up falling on the shoulders of one person, and no doubt the overwhelming task of deciding how to handle the many facets of EPUB 3 forced the development to a standstill. The past When EPUB was first on the scene, tools popped up in gold-rush fashion and it seemed that before long reliable EPUB creation would make our technical skills irrelevant.

But over the years we’ve seen left without an update for over 2 years we’ve seen projects like left in obscurity, and promises of go unfulfilled. Meanwhile, the once celebrated has befallen a similar fate to all the rest, and was posted to GitHub in 2011 with the hope that but this simply didn’t happen. The code has languished for two years without being forked and instead of being updated sits like a museum piece in a glass cabinet. Sigil: The Golden Years Sigil provided convenience to the user when InDesign let them down. For instance they no longer were required to unzip and rezip for every revision of the file, and by using Apple’s Book Proofer every save in Sigil would send the book to a connected iPad for re-checking.

It also took away the necessity of changing the OPF and TOC code manually. But with support gone, annoying bugs in OS X Mavericks unfixed, and EPUB3 support not scheduled to arrive it is time to move our workflows forward. Note: Those who didn’t use Sigil must be warned that the subtitle to this section is a little tongue-in-cheek. It was, in my view, an ambitious project that is to be respected and congratulated. At the same time, it was the cause of frustration to people who were not in favour of its tidying of files and code creation. The present So we’ve exported our EPUB 3 from InDesign or Pages, or some other app, and there’s some errors that have arisen in epubcheck. Or perhaps there aren’t errors, but we want to change the way that the app has arranged something for us, something which we weren’t afforded enough control over.

I used Sigil when I was learning to construct EPUBs, but it was too buggy to use in a professional e-production workflow—and I already did have that BBEdit license and am used to working directly with code. Mostly I liked Sigil because it created the NCX and OPF for me, and I’m lazy. So lazy that seeing your “we unzip with StuffIt Expander, open in a text editor like TextWrangler and get to work on the markup, then rezip in the Terminal” makes me shudder. Unless you get your thrills from using the command line, I’d recommend that you invest all of $0 (that’s £0, to you) in pagina EPUB-Checker which validates and zips (assuming your file.passes. validation) in a single step. Also worth noting is the equally free EPUB Zip/Unzip Applescript (People really still use Stuffit?!). Thanks for the response.

Sigil did evolve and wasn’t a source of errors so much in later releases, especially if you did the coding and weren’t tempted by the WYSIWYG editing. I’ve never really thought about StuffIt Expander, I started using it when Apple’s inbuilt unzip started not working very well and continued when I discovered it could open EPUBs without renaming. Thanks also for the links. These are things I’ve seen before but just have never got around to trying. There’s always such an investment of time and energy if things don’t work perfectly at the end of the process.

And in truth I’d rather use the command line than an Apple Script. (Despite having learnt how to program Objective-C, I’ve never got to grips with Automator or Apple Script!). I own a copy of BlueGriffon EPUB Edition.

It isn’t a plug in. It’s a standalone app. It’s also highly intended for WYSIWYG use.

Which means it does what it think should be done under the hood and woe be to the person who thinks they know better than the software (which, BTW, is designed and developed by one of the CSS working group members – a co-chair if I remember correctly). There’s another scenario completely for EPUB construction in the future: No Indesign and No print to EPUB. Most of the large conversion houses do not use Indesign to create EPUBs now. They use in house, purpose built conversion tools that either extract text directly from Indesign, or existing print ready PDFs. Indesign EPUB doesn’t scale well when you do a few hundred books a month over 5-10, and there’s very little value in going through all the steps to get a “we have to hack it anyway” EPUB out the other end. Adobe is working to add features and tromp less on people’s under the hood efforts, but when it comes to economies of scale, I highly doubt that conversion houses will do away with their custom built scripts and purpose built tools to the Indesign route. This is my experience.

I can recommend Jutoh for ease of use, an informative manual, timely and thoughtful tech support by the collegial developer, Julian Smart, of Edinburgh, Scotland, along with regular updates to tweak and improve the program at no additional cost. After editing my clients’ books, which is the real work, I lay them out in InDesign and send them to the various printers. Then I import the same Word file previously placed in InDesign to Jutoh. What’s especially nice about Jutoh is that the program asks for the meta or descriptive data along with the eBook cover before the import. In a pinch, you can even fashion the cover in Jutoh. After importing carefully formatted text, I place figures, graphics, and tables in Jutoh, and then generate a simple or complex ToC from within the program. Then I test output after generating an ePub and then a Mobi edition from within Jutoh.

When first setting up the program, the user is prompted to download Kindle Gen, which ties in perfectly with Jutoh. There’s no zipping or unzipping. I can tweak any element, including text, HTML, or CSS from within the mostly intuitive Jutoh interface.

If there’s an issue, I go back to the source doc in Jutoh and fix it there, then regenerate the ePub and Mobi files. I love InDesign for print. I read Elizabeth Castro’s books and upgraded to InDesign 5.5 and then to 6 for the purpose of exporting eBooks. I find Jutoh easier to use and upgrades are frequent, substantive, and free. The developer is making a real effort to make Jutoh adaptable to ePub3, which leads me to believe this stable program is the one to beat.

Jutoh gives me complete control over what each eBook looks like. I upload Jutoh-generated ebooks to the Apple store, to Kobo, Amazon, bn.com, and so on, and they look stylish on the different devices. Currently there is a disconnect among what the various reading devices can handle. For example, only the iPad can interact with Jim Dwyer’s stunning new eBook3 and so, it is available only at iTunes. Here’s an interactive sample.

When consumer device capability improves, the software displaying interactive elements will improve along with it. At the moment, Apple has the clear lead.

In February, the Book Industry Study Group opened an ePub3 support grid at to summarize e-book app, device, and reading system performance evaluations for features. While that site appears to be down at the moment, when it was properly operational, it contained a handy grid displaying the capabilities of the various devices. (I hope the performance evaluations are being updated during this downtime.).

I had the ‘brilliant’ idea that I could just make an e-pub picture book. After falling down numerous tech rabbit holes, I found that the only way I could do fixed format on my budget was to work in a combination of Dreamweaver, Notepad and a Firefox browser.

Pagina was absolutely the most useful tool I ran across. I could not have been prouder when I finally got my e-pub to validate. And then I could not have been more disappointed when why lovely validated e-pub crashed and burned in the Kindle Previewer. As an illustrator, I’m already heavily invested in Adobe products whether I like them or not because they are “industry standard” for handing off art files to certain clients. I am grateful for opensource, but I absolutely expect that most programmers will move on and I don’t think any business model can rely on using it long-term. I won’t be surprised that when I am ready to publish my next picture book in six months, the whole tech landscape will have changed.

I expect that I’ll be out shopping again for some odd variety of tools to get the job done. Arlene, many of us are heavily invested in Adobe products.

At this time, only ePubs on iBooks support fixed layout. I also thought Dreamweaver might logically be the right tool to produce an eBook but I have found it is not. In my experience, conversion from HTML to ePub (or Mobi) lead to least desirable results. Here are three free (or nearly free) resources that might aid in your quest: Aaron Shepard’s Pictures on Kindle; Charles Spender’s Formatting of Children’s Books and Comics for Kindle; and finally, surprisingly, Amazon’s free Kindle Comic Creator.

Anthony, This is a great article! The quest to make high-quality eBook files that are not just valid but will work well across all of the different reading systems is no small matter.

It’s great to see so many people talking about these issues and trying to come up with solid workflows. I think one of the best points you made was: “The other question is whether we are willing to trust developers to write the tools we need in the EPUB editing space. After all, a bad tool can create more work than it saves”.

This is a problem my team and I have been talking about for a long time. Like most professional eBook developers, we have created a proprietary workflow that we can use for almost any project that comes our way, so we have a lot of control over our final output. Most WYSIWYG tools do not give developers that kind of control, though, and relying on the output of Sigil, calibre, InDesign, or any other tool can be problematic. We decided to tackle the problem by giving eBook developers a tool that will allow them to validate their files against all of the industry standards, to see how their files match up to best practices, and to make necessary edits without completely overriding their own code. The tool is in early alpha testing, and should be released for a closed beta next month. We’re starting off with some of the more foundational functionality, but will be adding lots of powerful features in the future.

I don’t envision it necessarily becoming a conversion tool that makes your EPUB files for you, but I do envision it becoming the best tool to use when doing QA and updating EPUB files created anywhere else. It is designed to help developers and publishers polish their EPUB files to a shine. If anyone wants to be included in the beta test group, please email me (joshua@firebrandtech.com). Thank you for these tips. I have to say that this is yet another good example of different tools working for different workflows.

There is no one toolset that is going to work for everyone and I encourage everyone to keep an open mind when exploring the different options. For instance, I know many developers (myself included) who use Dreamweaver and do not depend on it for WYSIWYG or “handholding.” In fact, AnneMarie Concepcion has a section in her lynda.com EPUB course regarding Dreamweaver and how it can be a useful tool for ebook developers. Thanks Collen. I agree that Dreamweaver is the (current) logical choice for Adobe to extend into an official EPUB editing tool, but I’m not sure whether it would still be better to have a new app (with cross compatibility) that is both a creation and editing tool for EPUB rather than adding functionality on to other already large and complex apps. For those already using Adobe apps, it’s good for familiarity but for new users I imagine the learning curve to arrive at an EPUB must be a bit bewildering. Ha, that’s okay! Plenty of people spell my name like that.

I 100% agree with what you’re saying, thanks for sharing your thoughts. “both a creation and editing tool” – so many of us jump from tool to app to script to tool that the thought of one tool “to rule them all” seems too good to be true “learning curve” – absolutely true that those of us with Adobe experience might feel at home with Dreamweaver but it is probably too much of a learning curve (and an investment of $) for anybody else. I’ve heard talk from Adobe developers who are thinking of extending DW’s capabilities beyond web to EPUB but that remains to be seen. Sometimes I have to remind myself that we are still in the beginning stages of creating ebooks and figuring out the best digital formats for “books”. And then I cringe at the thought of so many backlists (ours included!) already converted (hastily) into EPUB2!

Then I think about so many people who are reading–print or digital–and I think that as long as people are reading, as long as we ebook devs put our best efforts forward all is not lost. It’s a confusing and exciting time in book publishing! But I am so happy to see this EPUB Secrets revived and to see the conversation continuing. Thanks Anthony! Hi Anthony: I’m weeks late to this article, but thank you for taking on the Sigil project for as long as you did.

I’m very sorry to see it stop. I’ve found no other tool as useful/intuitive for creating TOC/NCX files, and the validators were nice. More generally, I love that there is (was) a program that served as a bridge between completely hand-coded books and WYSIWYG editors. My company used Dreamweaver, Calibre, and Kindle Previewer for our first E-book, and then switched to Dreamweaver, Sigil, and Kindle Previewer for our second and third once we saw that Amazon had grown increasingly picky about Calibre files. We’re literally days away from posting a how-to blog project so that other poetry publishers can see/adapt/adopt our workflow. We do our print books in InDesign and our E-books in Dreamweaver, but we expected many self-published authors would be able to follow along in Sigil for the split-code views.

Obviously, they still can do so, but now it feels as though we’re teaching them to embrace a dead-end. I’ve played around a bit with Jutoh, and my typesetter is experimenting with BlueGriffon. Chances are, we’ll still start our tutorials off with Sigil, as we’ve already written most of the copy and taken the screen shots. Thank you again, Anthony, for keeping it going in the face of what may have appeared to have been complete indifference.

My tiny publishing company could not have managed our spring titles without Sigil. Best, Artie Bicycle Comics & The Yellow Buick Review (coming in May). We’re not in a post-Sigil world after all! I know many of you who follow the #eprdctn hashtag on Twitter already know the news, but Sigil is back! Go check out the progress over at; as of this writing they have a new build and are looking for all the help/feedback/donations they can get. Then he decided to start working on a plugin framework for Sigil.

He’s been spearheading the effort to get this feature implemented. It’s not ready yet but it’s coming a long nicely. I know I don’t want to see it die but there is only so much one person can do alone.

So the moral of the story is, Sigil isn’t dead and as long as there are contributors it won’t die and it hasn’t yet. I am delighted that Sigil is back in the game.

Bicycle Comics has donated a tiny sum to help them out; those of you who work for well-heeled publishers might ask your art directors/ production managers if there is any money in the budget for more donations. Point out that a solid, robust, open-source EPUB editor for the #eprdctn community gives publishers large and small added leverage in their dealings with Amazon, which would prefer we all use proprietary editors and just make KF8/mobi7 books. Best, Artie Bicycle Comics & The Yellow Buick Review (coming in May). Hi, all; I’m joining the conversation late. I come at this problem from the content creation side, not publication, so my comments will reflect that perspective. I abandoned Word for writing long documents many years ago after it corrupted yet another book length document for the last time. For several years I used as a WYSIWYMean editor and was very satisfied with it.

The abundant number of document classes generate truly beautiful PDFs. The memoir class in particular is absolutely fantastic for books.

However, time marches on and EPUB is now by far the format that I care about. The support for the EPUB format in LyX is limited to generating XHTML, which in turn required additional tools such as Sigil in order to get to a good looking EPUB document. It’s a somewhat clumsy way to get to good looking documentation. I have been exploring the use of the text format as the place to do my initial writing. Using MultiMarkdown as the text file format allows me to use any editor that I want while I write and yet, still insert images, footnotes, what have you where I need to. That is handy when I am writing using several different devices and syncing back to a private git repository.

I use Kwrite at my Linux Desktop, vim, vim Touch, or JotterPad. After that, I am feeding that output into LyX for a print ready publication as a PDF and Sigil for EPUB. I pay some attention to document layout as I write but I certainly don’t obsess over it. So far, this solution is working for me with a minimal amount of tweaking.

I should note that all of the apps listed above are open source, or at least free for the download. There are ways to minimize the cost of your toolchain and not give up as much in the way of productivity as is implied in this post. I find it quite dangerous to rely on proprietary EPUB creation tools because everyone should be enabled to produce EPUBs, not only a few selected ones, especially as EPUB is an open standard and needs to be defended against proprietary “extensions” and proprietary dependencies.

Sigil demonstrated that it can’t really “die”, because its free licensing allows for a revival every time a developer gets interested in it. To produce such interest, it would be a good idea to save the money spent on proprietary tools and invest this very amount into Sigil, but this idea doesn’t occur in most people. Regarding EPUB3, it is relatively simple to convert an EPUB2 to EPUB3, so Sigil could have at least some basic EPUB3 support, the main problem is implementing all the multimedia and interactive features. Does anyone already need such features, especially in an application as Sigil, with full support? Just give it some time to gradually implement those features and maybe even advanced ones someone would like to see in an EPUB IDE (Integrated Development Environment).

To produce such interest, it would be a good idea to save the money spent on proprietary tools and invest this very amount into Sigil, but this idea doesn’t occur in most people. It does not occur to most people because it does not make sense to “invest” in a tool that has scant development happening, no apparent concrete plans for development releases, and lots of issues that make using it difficult. Publishers need workflows that do not rely on sub-standard tools, and that can integrate both their print and ebook creation processes. That’s why InDesign is so often the tool of choice, despite its own limitations.

The InDesign team is actively working on the EPUB export, and it is making progress where Sigil is not. Regarding EPUB3, it is relatively simple to convert an EPUB2 to EPUB3 This is a misleading statement.

While it is not hard to convert an EPUB 2 package into an EPUB 3 package, that does not mean that it is a good quality EPUB 3 file. There is a lot more built into the EPUB 3 spec than just “multimedia and interactive features”. Semantic markup is where most EPUB 3 creation falters, and that is not an easy task for Sigil to fix.

So, while Sigil can support the creation of an EPUB 3 file (and ), that does not mean that it will actually create a good quality EPUB 3 file, any more than it does with EPUB 2. Just give it some time Sigil has had three and a half years to support EPUB 3 basics. It has fallen well behind the times, and development is slow at best. We can give it all the time in the world, but the rest of the ebook world has moved on — including all the retailers, which now accept EPUB 3 files, and other tool makers like Adobe. If Sigil ever makes it to a 1.0 release, and fixes the problems and limitations that it currently has, then maybe it will have a place in professional workflows. Until then, I think it should be relegated to the back burner and ignored by serious ebook creation experts. Scant development happening, no apparent concrete plans for development releases, and lots of issues that make using it difficult Don’t you think that’s circular?

Epub Editor Windows

Sigil developers don’t work on it professionally, because – people rather spend their money on proprietary software instead. If money would be invested into Sigil, more effort would be put into it, there would be a concrete plan for sure, and more issues would get fixed. While the result would still be freely licensed. That can integrate both their print and ebook creation processes That’s true. As Sigil aims at manual editing, it doesn’t do well as part of an automated workflow, other tools are needed for cross media publishing.

That does not mean that it is a good quality EPUB 3 file If the Sigil output isn’t a good quality EPUB2 file, of course that’s not a good source to convert it into EPUB3. But wouldn’t you agree that a good EPUB2 could easily be converted into a good EPUB3 in general, and if not, why not? If this is the case, Sigil developers should at first fix the EPUB2 output instead of implementing native EPUB3 support, because then a good conversion could take place and at least basic EPUB3 support could be made available this way. We can give it all the time in the world, but the rest of the ebook world has moved on That may be true too, but for the free world it’s still valuable to have a solution late instead of never, because that will enable independent publishing in relevant formats, even if not all of the new fancy features are supported right away.

What's the best epub reader? If you are interested in reading epub files (and who isn't at this point), you can't escape hearing about epub reader app. But as there are a wide variety of reading devices, the epub reader apps we can choose for our eReaders are also different. Then our question as I stated at the beginning of this article arises. I have always insisted that 'there is nothing best but better', so I say maybe I couldn't give you a satisfactory answer immediately.

In this content all I can do is to introduce my own best epub reader review (in fact a lot of people love these what I've gathered). And if the files what you got are in PDF format, please read this article. EPUB Reader from Official eBook Store There are some reading apps released from official ebook stores support epub format. They are: -Kobo desktop app, Kobo for iPhone/iPad, Kobo for Android, Kobo for Blackberry 10, Kobo for Win8 and Win8 Phone.iBooks for iPad, Mac, iPhone, iPod. Only supported for Apple devices.Nook for iPad, iPhone, Web, Android, Windows 8.Only supported on Android OS, such as Nexus 7.

These official apps are only supported for dedicated stores. Nearly all the stores (I listed above) put their DRM limitation on their books. For example, if your epub books are purchased from Play Books, then you can only open and read them in Play Books, not available in kobo, or Nook. No way to read google epub books in Kobo unless.

The following parts I showed are about best epub readers that support common epub books, both DRMed and DRM free. And there is no limitation to the place where the book comes from. But for a better understanding and a convenient reading, I divide them into several kinds depend on your different reading devices.

EPUB Reader for PC/Mac/Android/IOS/Kindle fire Except for Kobo desktop, iBooks for Mac, Nook desktop, another best free epub reader apps you can also take into consideration. I highly recommend it for you if you want to read epub on your computer. Really a good epub viewer for computer. Digital Editions is a free epub reader developed by Adobe.

It supports not only epub books but also pdf format. What's more, it can read books no matter they are DRMed or DRM free, no matter they are purchased from Google or Kobo or Nook (a part of). In a word, as long as your epub are from Adobe associated stores, they will be readable in ADE.

Cost: Free Compatible: Windows; Mac DRM supported: DRMed or DRM free Main Features: Highlight text; add bookmarks and notes; well designed library management; available in 11 languages; full screen for better view; can transfer downloaded epub files to another computer or smartphone. A free and a multi-platform ebook reader. It also includes a downloader for network ebook stores. I love it very much because of its kindle fire supporting. Cost: Free Compatible: Windows; Mac; Linux; Blackberry 10; Android; Kindle Fire HD; Nook Simple Touch, etc.

DRM supported: Only DRM free Main Features: External TrueType/OpenType fonts and hyphenation patterns for 16 languages; high customizeable; open-source (GPL) and localized for 14 languages This is an epub reader for mac, or android, or IOS OS. Cost: $ 4.99 Compatible: Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android DRM supported: DRM protected or free. Main Features: A library organizer; an OPDS explorer (Open Publication Distribution System); share annotations and quotes with friends. Aldiko Book Reader is a best epub reader Android. Particularly suitable for Android users.

No matter you are using an Nexus 7 tablet or Samsung Smartphone, you can view your epub files with aldiko. Cost: Free or $ 2.99(premium) Compatible: Android DRM supported: DRM protected or free Main Features: Fully customizable; easily switch to night mode; highlight; creat bookmarks; manage collections This app supports epub ebooks from retailers, publishers and libraries. I prefer to regard it as Adobe Digital Editions alternative for iPad. Cost: Free Compatible: Apple IOS, Android mobile, and now Windows PCs DRM supported: DRM protected or free. Main Features: Buying books directly within app; Dropbox intergration. EPUB Reader for Win7 or Win8 I have expressed the compatible devices based on each reader I listed above.

But for a convenient reading, I will collect them together for you again: Kobo, Adobe Digital Editions, FBReader. They are all free epub reader at the moment.

When downloading option just choose your computer system. And for Win 8, Nook app is available. Have a try if you like. And here I also like to say my own opinions.

When reading short essays or comics, reading with computer large screen is a good adventure, but if you are reading a long novel, you'd better not read epub with computer. EPUB Reader for Mac You can use: iBooks, Kobo for Mac, desktop, Adobe Digital Editions, Mantano Reader. The same as reading on windows, enjoy your big screen reading please. And you may also want to ask me what's the best app to read ebook on mac, I will answer you 'iBooks'. It's the official reading app. Another epub files purchased from other stores, no matter they have drm or not, decrypt them!

EPUB Reader IOS These are epub reading app for iPad, iPod, iPhone. IBooks, Kobo, Nook, BlueFire, Mantana. Just wanted to let you konw that these 4 apps are my recommendations based on my own tests and experience. Of course you can get a detailed look at Best EPUB Reader Android I just list Google Play, Kobo, Nook, and Aldiko, Bluefire, Mantano, FBReader. I believe they could solve your epub reading problems more or less.

And in our guide page we also wrote a long article focus on android epub reader. Best EPUB Reader Online Have introduced you top-5 best ePub Readers. If you think installing third-party softwares is a little messy, this part will guide you online epub reader. This app can be added to Firefox, help us read epub files directly in Firefox browser. Please click on 'Add to Firefox'.

Then later when you click a link to epub file, you won't see the 'Save as' dialog. With this reader we can upload our epub books from our computer or from a URL. Books added, we can view them soon, and we can also adjust the settings. Note: These 2 online epub reader do not support DRMed or encrypted epub files.

Which one is the best? I have gathered best epub reader so that you can enjoy your epub files no matter where you are and what your device is. When asked me which one is the best, my answer is still 'no best only better'. And, here my better solution for you is epub drm removing.

Don't you think drm checking is so messy? After we purchased one book, we couldn't find out whether it has drm or not, yes? So how can we decide which reader is available? If you are an ebook super fan, like me, we will buy different kinds of books from different stores, yes? So need we install several separate reading apps on one device? Then when reading we should check where those books from, and exit to another reader?

Do you want to read epub books within one epub reader without drm worries? Do you wish to sync downloaded books on reading devices? Do you want to share purchased ePubs with friends and family? You can have all of them by keeping one simple piece of advice in mind:. Tool I have found, free download. Here I want to share my another tip. In most cases after we click on downloading an epub book, we will receive an.acsm file.

At this time we are sure that the acsm file has drm. We need to decrypt. All come to the end. Hope this article could give you a hand, with these best epub reader.