What is an ePub file and why you are going to love it

What’s an ePub?

That is a fact: teachers love books. But for whatever reason it is, when they have to deliver content to their students, their first choice is a Word document, a PDF or maybe a website such as Google site, not a book. To be honest, I have not the faintest idea why.

Why ePubs?

Think about it. When you do, students get great rich content.

  1. Highlights what they find important.
  2. They will be able to take notes and even export them.
  3. They can change the font or increase the font size if they want (handy for those who are dyslexic).
  4. Disable students will be able to take advantage of Speak Selection which can read the text to you.
Highlight, annotate, change the font, use the built-in dictionary…

Create an ePub with a word processor

Go to File > Download > EPUB Publication (.epub)

Create an ePub with a dedicated app

Create an ePub online

Create an ePub on an iPad

Create an ePub on an Android tablet

Export into ePub format

You can convert any webpage into an ePub.

Edit an ePub on your computer

Know how to code? Want to change something? Sigil is the answer.

Useful sites about ePubs

Avoid Grammar & Spelling mistakes

Pick a licence

Where to publish?

Where can you download ePubs?

Download an ePub reader

Read ePubs right into your web browser

Still there?

If you reached these lines, it means that you are genuinely interested in the ePub format and that you are ready to start creating your first book. So let me give you one or two pieces of advice.

Where to start?

The first tip I’d like to give, for this very first book, is to keep things as simple as you can: no fancy font, no exotic colour, reduce a little bit your images so they fit the page format. This advice will be helpful if you plan to create an ePub with a lot of text. And for your first book, don’t bother. Just use a word processor. It’s a great way to start and to be honest, it’s more than enough. I’m not using anything else.

Creating a table of contents

To create a table of contents, just use styles. It will automatically be added to your ePub.

Use styles to create a table of contents

Design your cover

With Pages, you can do pretty much everything. Just have a look.

I agree. This cover is appalling.

Complicated formatting?

If you have a pretty complex layout with graphics, tables, columns, large image, then you need to learn something more: the difference between reflowable and fixed-layout ePubs.

  • Fixed layout: if you want the layout of each page in your document to stay the same, regardless of the device or orientation, choose Fixed layout. In a Fixed layout EPUB, users can zoom in and out, but text and content positions are fixed and don’t reflow. Fixed layout is best for image-heavy or multi-column documents.

What if I am a math teacher?

If you are a math teacher, you’ll probably want to insert mathematical expressions using LaTeX. Actually, this is very easy. In Pages, just press Insert then Equation.

Insert a LaTeX equation in Pages
I love HackMD. There’s nothing you can do with it.

--

--

Teacher and Director of Academic Research & Innovation @ Lycée International de Londres Winston Churchill

Get the Medium app

A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store
A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store
Yann Houry

Teacher and Director of Academic Research & Innovation @ Lycée International de Londres Winston Churchill