How to make your own e-book
There are many e-books available in a variety of formats — but suppose the text you want is not available in an e-text format? What if you wanted to create your own e-book for personal use or to convert it from a common format such as Portable Document Format (PDF)? Two software applications may be useful. Sigil, is a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) open-source, XML-based, ePub editor that is free and available in versions that will run under Windows, the Mac OS and Linux. Sigil allows you to produce an e-book in the ePub format (which is an open standard) by either importing text in HyperText Markup Language (HTML) format or by copying-and-pasting text from a document in a .txt format (other format import options will also soon be available). With the exception of the Kindle, the ePub format is accepted by all of the major e-book reading devices. In the case of the Kindle, processing the Sigil-produced text using Calibre will convert it to the format used by Kindle: .mobi — which is an abbreviation for “Mobipocket” — try http://www.ehow.com/facts_5563134_file-extension-mobi.html for further information. If you wish to read more about these possibilities, an article by Mark Sample, “Create your own e-book with open-source Sigil” (Chronicle of higher education, 12 October 2011), is a good place to start.