Simple and Easy Creation of Digital Books Using Pages

http://www.pdlindgren.us/pages2epub/

I. Introduction

A. There are many use-cases for creating documents in digital book format:

1. You may want to keep it as a reference on your mobile device or computer
2. You may want to share it with a colleague.
3. You may want to create a resource to share with your students.
4. You may want to have students create digital books of their work to share with a wider audience.

B. There are three main options (that I like) for digital book format:

1. PDF. Use when formatting is most important such you want a page to always look the same with the same amount of content.
2. Apple iBooks. Use when you need to incorporate sophisticated multimedia components and interactivity.
3. EPUB. Use when formatting is not as important and you need to be able to view the same document on devices with different size screens. EPUB will divide up the content in chucks appropriate for the size of screen being used.

II. Our Focus Today: Quickly Creating EPUB files using both OS X and iOS Pages

A. File Preparation(applicable to both platforms).

1. Open the Pages file with the content you want...or type/paste in your content.
2. Make sure any images or other multimedia are set to inline.
3. Insert a page break at the beginning of the document and create an easily-readable title page( graphics or large font ) on this new first page. This will show up as the icon in your ebook library.
4. If you haven't already saved your changes, make sure you do so.

B. OS X.

5. Pull down the FILE menu to EXPORT and then to ePuB.
6. Fill in a title and an author name.
7. Check the box for Use first page as book cover image.
8. Click Next
9. Give the file a name with no spaces and choose a destination(like your desktop). The EPUB extension should be added automatically.
10. Click Export
11. Drag file into iBooks (currently only for 10.9 Mavericks) for viewing.

C. iOS (new version of Pages only).

5. Touch the export icon (box with an arrow pointing up).
6. Touch Open in Another App.
7. Touch ePub.
8. Fill in a title and an author name.
9. Slide the toggle for Use first page as book cover image.
10. Click Send.
11. Touch Choose App.
12. Touch Open in iBooks.

III. Going Beyond....

A. Apple has a special stylesheet that can be used in Pages for EPUB formatting.

B. The process of stylesheet formatting for EPUB does NOT qualify for simple and easy.

C. Contact me if you are interested in learning more.

D. Also, if you don't have access to an iOS device or Mavericks in order to view EPUBS, there is a Chrome extension called Readium that will display them.

D. Questions?