Then you can format it to suit a print book.īecause you will be exporting to pdf for a print book interior, your can format your text any way you wish.īut the one element you need to add is your Table of Contents with page numbers. When you finish formatting your ebook, just duplicate your Pages document and save it as a new file. If you include the cover in your epub file, it will be ignored by KDP, and it can possibly lead to duplication problems.Īnother advantage is that you can prepare your print book in Apple Pages too. The only issue to be aware of is that you need to upload a separate file for your ebook cover. It’s the best ebook file format because you can see exactly how your ebook will look before it’s published. Publishing your epub fileĪmazon KDP, Smashwords, and Draft2Digital all accept epub files for publishing. You can see your automatic table of contents in the left pane.Īgain, if you see any formatting problems with your ebook, you can go back to your Pages document to correct any issues. If you plan to publish with Amazon KDP, you can open your epub file in the Kindle Previewer app to check your formatting for Kindle. If there are extra or missing items, you can go back to your Pages document and correct the issues by changing the heading settings for the extra or missing items. You can scroll through your ebook to check that all your formatting is correct.Īlso, click the Table of Contents icon to ensure that all your chapter headings appear. Now open the epub file with the Apple Books app. Then click next to choose your file location, such as your desktop or downloads folder. Make sure you select no book cover and Reflowable layout. One advantage you have when you format an ebook in Apple Pages is that you can quickly export in epub and check with the Apple Books app. Once you have formatted all your text and headings, you need to check that all is fine. Then you can set some space After Paragraph to add space between the title and first line of text. You can select any heading such as Heading, Heading 2, or Heading 3. Without this, your chapter headings will appear in the middle of the ebook pages.įrom the Insert menu, select Page Break and insert after the last line of each chapter.įor your chapter titles, you need to ensure that all of them are formatted the same. The last task is to add a page break at the end of each chapter. If you wish, you can add a little space between paragraphs.īut you will need to check if the space is retained when you export your epub file. You can see that I have set zero line space between paragraphs. Select the Style tab, and then you can set your line spacing. The second step is to set your line spacing. Select the layout tab, and then set a first-line indent. You can select all, but it will include your headings and special formatting, so you will need to reformat these later. The easiest way to do this is to select a few paragraphs or a whole chapter at a time. For reflowable text, you need a first-line indent and single-line spacing. The first part of your manuscript to format is the body text. The table of contents is created automatically from these headings in an ebook, so they must be correct. The other area that always needs your attention is that the headings settings for chapter titles are uniform. It means that the text reflows when an ebook’s text settings are changed in an ebook reader, tablet, phone, or app.
When preparing an ebook for publishing, the most important factor is understanding that it needs to be in reflowable text. Once you have your manuscript in Pages, you can start formatting your ebook. Apple does not state it, but I have even imported old Word doc files successfully.
You can import Word docx, RTF, or txt files. You can select a template, and you’re ready to write.īut if you wrote your book in another program, all you need to do is import it. Pages is an excellent app for writing your book. But all of the versions can help you get your ebook ready for publishing. There are different versions of Apple Pages, depending on your Mac’s operating system.
Summary How to format an ebook in Apple Pages