TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics
September 1st, 2009

New EPUB converter from Book Glutton

By Paul Biba

Screen shot 2009-09-01 at 8.06.10 AM.pngI got the following email from Travis Alber. This could be a great service to the community and certainly is priced at a level that anyone can afford. Here’s what Travis has to say:

I wanted to drop you a quick note – as of today we’ve rewritten and
re-released BookGlutton’s EPUB converter as a paid service. Emphasis
now is on providing EPUBs that validate, for maximum compatibility,
and also on the EPUB authoring process – providing feedback along the
way so that EPUBs can be created with common tools used in web design.

People who know HTML can now, fairly easily, make a valid EPUB after
authoring some source HTML using simple web tools like Firefox and
Dreamweaver. Our graphic designer has been using it, so it’s not too
technical for those who follow the directions.

Short Explanation:
http://blog.bookglutton.com/?p=599

Youtube Walkthru:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us_bgqe-VeE

Converter Address:
http://www.bookglutton.com/api/convert.html
(also in the BookGlutton.com footer)

The Converter supports images, external stylesheets, nested tables of
contents, and Dublin Core metadata. The cost of downloading the
resulting EPUB is $5, but the tool itself and the feedback process can
be used for free.

This tool is now geared more toward publishers that want an affordable
way to generate production-ready EPUBs, but it’s also still a great
tool for anyone who distributes EPUBs and wants to make sure they’ll
work in different reading systems.

One Response to “New EPUB converter from Book Glutton”

  1. I’m not sure what this service offers over using Calibre (which is free) to build ePUBs. Anyone care to elaborate?

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