Dear Indie | Formatting eBooks in LibreOffice 101

Hello, all my fellow Indies!

I know, I mentioned throwing this thing together eons ago, so it’s way past due. I recently finished the paperback formatting guide because it was still the freshest in my mind. But not every author opts to have paperbacks, so I decided this guide should probably come first.

Allow me to start by saying that I am not an expert. This guide follows a process I’ve developed over the past six years, but if you’ve found a way to do things more efficiently, by all means, keep at it! (Also, please share in the comments below. I’m all for learning how to do things faster and easier). 🙂

Before I begin, I want to note that if you’re good with HTML, Amazon has an extensive guide for creating reflowable and fixed layout eBooks on their website right here.

This guide is for people who, like me, don’t know the first thing about HTML, CSS, or anything. I’m just trying to help others turn their eBooks into something other than ordinary without breaking their budget.

Since there’s so much information to cover, I’ll link all the pages here to this post. I’ll also be including images as visual aids because that’s how I learn the easiest when attempting something new.

If you’re already using LibreOffice, you’ll be familiar with a lot of the things I cover. If you’ve never heard of it, allow me to recap:

LibreOffice is a free downloadable word processing software that’s highly compatible with MS Word (for track and record changes). It also allows you to export your files directly as PDF or Epub. That comes particularly in handy when creating eBook files.

If you’d like to download the latest version of LibreOffice, you can do so here on their website.