For complete access to all the templates, tips, and tricks that BB eBooks uses for eBook production, please consider buying the eBook Design and Development Guide at Amazon for only $6.99. In it you will find comprehensive HTML, CSS, and Regular Expression tutorials, as well as a step-by-step workflow for turning a sloppy manuscript into a beautiful eBook that is only available in this guide. A PDF version is available upon request following purchase.
The EPUB is essentially a big zip file. Please note that you must compress the mimetype file first or the EPUB package will not pass the EPUB validator. These commands assume that you are in the directory that the mimetype file is in with two sub-directories: META-INF and OEBPS. These commands also assume that your zip.exe file is located in a folder called e:\zip, but please adjust as needed. You can get zip.exe for the command line here.
e:\bin\zip.exe temp.epub -DX0 mimetype e:\bin\zip.exe temp.epub -rDX9 META-INF OEBPS
This allows you to locally validate EPUB files without having to upload your file to the IDPF validator. EPUBCheck is open-source and can be downloaded here. To run EPUBCheck, you must have Java Runtime Environment installed (also free). These commands assume that you have copied the java.exe file that comes with the Java Runtime Environment into a directory called e:\bin. Also, the epubcheck-3.0b4.jar file from EPUBCheck is in the e:\bin directory as well. Please adjust as needed. To output the results of the error check to a file called errors.txt, run the following command in the same directory as your EPUB package:
e:\bin\java.exe -jar e:\bin\epubcheck-3.0b4.jar temp.epub > errors.txt 2>&1
The KindleGen program from Amazon allows you to create a MOBI/KF8 package from an EPUB package at the command line. It is recommended that you utilize KindleGen on an EPUB package, not an HTML or OPF file. This command assumes the kindlegen.exe file is in a directory called e:\bin. Please adjust as necessary. The output will be a file called tempmobi.mobi.
e:\bin\kindlegen.exe tempmobi.epub -c1 -verbose
A big thank you to Bill Dyer for providing a tutorial on how to do this in a Linux-type environment or at the command prompt for Mac.
==== SIMPLIFIED ===== To unzip and epub book: Rename example-book.epub to example-book.zip /usr/bin/unzip example-book.zip Note: '/usr/bin' is already in the system path so you can get away with just typing 'unzip' instead of '/usr/bin/unzip' -- To create an epub: /usr/bin/zip example-book.epub -DX0 mimetype /usr/bin/zip example-book.epub -rDX9 META-INF OEBPS Note: '/usr/bin' is already in the system path so you can get away with just typing 'zip' instead of '/usr/bin/zip' -- To install kindlegen, simply unzip it and then drag the kindlegen app into the Applications folder. You can run this from the command line like so: /Applications/kindlegen example-book.epub -c1 -verbose or, if you'd rather capture messages into a text file for future study: /Applications/kindlegen example-book.epub -c1 -verbose > errors.txt > 2&1 -- epubcheck takes a little more work to install, but not much... Simply unzip the epubcheck archive and then drag the entire folder into the Applications folder. In this case, the folder name was: epubcheck-3.0.1. On my machine I renamed it to epubcheck. The reason that you need to drag the entire folder is because of a lib directory within the epubcheck-3.0.1 folder. epubcheck.jar (also in this folder), needs it in order to run properly. To run this from the command line, using the new directory name (remember, I renamed mine to epubcheck): /usr/bin/java -jar /Applications/epubcheck/epubcheck-3.0.1.jar example-book.epub > errors.txt > 2&1 Naturally, java needs to be installed. Also, '/usr/bin' is already in the system path so you can get away with just typing 'java' instead of '/usr/bin/java' ===== COMPLETE ===== ===== Unzip an EPUB file ===== In your posted notes, you have instructions and switches needed to zip an EPUB file, but none on how to unzip it. On my Windows machine, I have to change the extension from .epub to .zip before I can unpack a book. On my Linux machine, I don't have to do that. What follows is the command used and the output. I copied both of your samples into a directory named, 'epub_test' and unzipped the mobi sample: ~/epub_test$ unzip EPUB201-Sample-forMOBIBuild-BBeBooks.epub Use the ls command to view the contents of the directory... ~/epub_test$ ls -l total 456 -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 143018 Mar 31 00:42 EPUB201-Sample-BBeBooks.epub -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 149522 Mar 31 00:43 EPUB201-Sample-forMOBIBuild-BBeBooks.epub drwxrwxr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 00:54 META-INF -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 20 Mar 31 00:49 mimetype drwxrwxr-x 6 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 00:54 OEBPS ~/epub_test$ ===== kindlegen install and test ===== I downloaded kindlegen from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765211">here</a>: It was downloaded into a directory called: Downloads (I used Firefox to download it and this is a default download area). I brought up a shell and made a directory called: kindlegen (note: normally, I'd do this in /opt rather than in my home directory, but for brevity, I'll use my home for now. Later, I'll install it in /opt)... $ mkdir kindlegen Copy the downloaded file from Downloads to the kindlegen directory (note that the filename is slightly different from the example on bbebooksthailand.com as kindlegen has since been updated since the post was made on bbebooksthailand.com)... $ cp Downloads/kindlegen_linux_2.6_i386_v2_8.tar.gz kindlegen Change directory to kindlegen... $ cd kindlegen Extract the contents of the file... ~/kindlegen$ tar xvfz kindlegen_linux_2.6_i386_v2_8.tar.gz Now run it to see if it works (the './' in front of the kindlegen command is there because the kindlegen directory isn't in my path yet)... ~/kindlegen$ ./kindlegen ************************************************************* Amazon kindlegen(Linux) V2.8 build 0208-797bf75 A command line e-book compiler Copyright Amazon.com and its Affiliates 2013 ************************************************************* Usage : kindlegen [filename.opf/.htm/.html/.epub/.zip or directory] [-c0 or -c1 or c2] [-verbose] [-western] [-o <file name>] Note: zip/directory formats are supported for XMDF sources Options: -c0: no compression -c1: standard DOC compression -c2: Kindle huffdic compression -o <file name>: Specifies the output file name. Output file will be created in the same directory as that of input file. <file name> should not contain directory path. -verbose: provides more information during ebook conversion -western: force build of Windows-1252 book -releasenotes: display release notes -gif: images are converted to GIF format (no JPEG in the book) -locale <locale option> : To display messages in selected language en: English de: German fr: French it: Italian es: Spanish zh: Chinese ja: Japanese pt: Portuguese ~/kindlegen$ Initial run was a success. With no work to do (none specified on the command line), a help page was displayed. ===== kindlegen test (creating a MOBI/KF8 ebook) ===== ~$ mkdir kindle_test ~$ cd kindle_test ~/kindle_test$ ls -l total 0 After copying the sample book into the kindle_test directory and unzipping it... ~/kindle_test$ ls -l total 148 -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 149589 Mar 30 21:02 EPUB201-Sample-forMOBIBuild-BBeBooks.epub ~/kindle_test$ unzip EPUB* Archive: EPUB201-Sample-forMOBIBuild-BBeBooks.epub extracting: mimetype inflating: META-INF/container.xml inflating: OEBPS/content/content001.html inflating: OEBPS/content/content002.html inflating: OEBPS/content/content003.html inflating: OEBPS/content/content004.html inflating: OEBPS/content/content005.html inflating: OEBPS/content/htmltoc.html inflating: OEBPS/content.opf inflating: OEBPS/cover.jpg inflating: OEBPS/css/bbstylesheet-kindle.css inflating: OEBPS/fonts/Chunkfive.otf inflating: OEBPS/images/BBeBooks.jpg inflating: OEBPS/images/someimage.jpg inflating: OEBPS/toc.ncx ~/kindle_test$ ls -l total 160 -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 149589 Mar 30 21:02 EPUB201-Sample-forMOBIBuild-BBeBooks.epub drwxrwxr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:29 META-INF -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 20 Jul 9 2012 mimetype drwxrwxr-x 6 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:29 OEBPS Now, remove the original EPUB201-Sample-forMOBIBuild-BBeBooks.epub file so it won't be in the way for the test... ~/kindle_test$ rm EPUB201-Sample-forMOBIBuild-BBeBooks.epub ~/kindle_test$ ls -l total 12 drwxrwxr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:29 META-INF -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 20 Jul 9 2012 mimetype drwxrwxr-x 6 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:29 OEBPS Create the EPUB book (I'll call it tempmobi.epub)... ~/kindle_test$ zip tempmobi.epub -DX0 mimetype adding: mimetype (stored 0%) ~/kindle_test$ zip tempmobi.epub -rDX9 META-INF OEBPS adding: META-INF/container.xml (deflated 32%) adding: OEBPS/content.opf (deflated 66%) adding: OEBPS/cover.jpg (deflated 1%) adding: OEBPS/fonts/Chunkfive.otf (deflated 18%) adding: OEBPS/toc.ncx (deflated 67%) adding: OEBPS/content/content001.html (deflated 41%) adding: OEBPS/content/htmltoc.html (deflated 53%) adding: OEBPS/content/content002.html (deflated 43%) adding: OEBPS/content/content003.html (deflated 42%) adding: OEBPS/content/content005.html (deflated 47%) adding: OEBPS/content/content004.html (deflated 44%) adding: OEBPS/css/bbstylesheet-kindle.css (deflated 63%) adding: OEBPS/images/someimage.jpg (deflated 2%) adding: OEBPS/images/BBeBooks.jpg (deflated 1%) Now, run kindlegen (note: here, kindlegen in in a directory called kindlegen, within my home directory. I'll move it to /opt later, but just did a quick install here so I could run the test more quickly)... ~/kindle_test$ ../kindlegen/kindlegen tempmobi.epub -c1 -verbose ************************************************************* Amazon kindlegen(Linux) V2.8 build 0208-797bf75 A command line e-book compiler Copyright Amazon.com and its Affiliates 2013 ************************************************************* Info:I9006:option: -c1: Standard DOC compression Info:I9014:option: -verbose: Verbose output Info(prcgen):I1048: Unpacking ePub file Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Title "Sample EPUB 2.0.1 File - MOBI/KF8 build for Developers" Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Date "2012-07-09" Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Creator "BB eBooks" Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Publisher "BB eBooks" Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Subject "eBook" Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Subject "Design" Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Subject "Formatting" Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Subject "Help" Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Subject "Kindle" Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Contributor "Paul Salvette" Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Rights "Public Domain" Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Type "Text" Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Source "http://bbebooksthailand.com" Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Description "This EPUB file is designed to teach eBook developers how the EPUB 2.0.1 standard works and how to build a MOBI/KF8 file from KindleGen. Feedback is welcome." Info(prcgen):I1002: Parsing files 0000006 Info(prcgen):I1003: Parsing file URL: content001.html Info(prcgen):I1003: Parsing file URL: htmltoc.html Info(prcgen):I1003: Parsing file URL: content002.html Info(prcgen):I1003: Parsing file URL: content003.html Info(prcgen):I1003: Parsing file URL: content004.html Info(prcgen):I1003: Parsing file URL: content005.html Info(prcgen):I1016: Building enhanced PRC file Info(prcgen):I1006: Resolving hyperlinks Info(prcgen):I1010: Writing hyperlinks Info(prcgen):I1007: Resolving mediaidlinks Info(prcgen):I1011: Writing mediaidlinks Info(prcgen):I1009: Resolving guide items Info(prcgen):I1008: Resolving start reading location Info(prcgen):I1049: Building table of content URL: /tmp/mobi-btFw3n/OEBPS/toc.ncx Info(prcgen):I1015: Building PRC file Info(prcgen):I1013: Converting and merging image file "/tmp/mobi-btFw3n/OEBPS/images/BBeBooks.jpg" Info(prcgen):I1014: Converting and merging media file "/tmp/mobi-btFw3n/OEBPS/fonts/Chunkfive.otf" Warning(prcfile):W14029: CFF/Type1 (Postscript) embedded font included in your source may not render clearly on all Kindle readers. Please refer to Kindle Publishing Guidelines on the recommended usage of embedded fonts. Font File : /tmp/mobi-btFw3n/OEBPS/fonts/Chunkfive.otf Info(prcgen):I1013: Converting and merging image file "/tmp/mobi-btFw3n/OEBPS/images/someimage.jpg" Info(prcgen):I1013: Converting and merging image file "/tmp/mobi-btFw3n/OEBPS/cover.jpg" Info(prcgen):I1014: Converting and merging media file "/tmp/mbt-Ly3Mij7DD_3_1F_D_21_2_205_2469_B335860_6" Info(pagemap):I8000: No Page map found in the book Info(prcgen/inflections):I1012: Compiling inflections Info(prcgen):I1019: Building index into record 0000000 Index name: $NCX Info(prcgen):I1026: Unicode index using utf-8 encoding Info(prcgen):I1045: Computing UNICODE ranges used in the book Info(prcgen):I1046: Found UNICODE range: Basic Latin [20..7E] Info(prcgen):I1046: Found UNICODE range: General Punctuation - Windows 1252 [2013..2014] Info(prcgen):I1017: Building PRC file, record count: 0000002 Info(prcgen):I1018: Building PRC file record 0000000 Info(prcgen):I1018: Building PRC file record 0000001 Info(prcgen):I1044: Uncompressed record size: 0004096 Info(prcgen):I2001: Final stats - TEXT: 000003639 bytes 000000002 records Info(prcgen):I2002: Final stats - PICTURES: 000000000 bytes 000000000 records Info(prcgen):I2003: Final stats - INDEXES: 000000636 bytes 000000003 records Info(prcgen):I2004: Final stats - TRAILING: 000000010 bytes 000000002 records Info(prcgen):I2005: Final stats - FRAMES: 000000088 bytes 000000002 records Info(prcgen):I2006: Final stats - OTHER: 000306276 bytes 000000012 records Info(prcgen):I2007: Final stats - TOTAL: 000310649 bytes 000000019 records Info(prcgen):I1039: Final stats - text compressed to (in % of original size): 49.52% Info(prcgen):I1040: The document identifier is: "Sample_EPUB_-for_Developers" Info(prcgen):I1041: The file format version is V6 Info(prcgen):I1031: Saving PRC file Info(prcgen):I1033: PRC built with WARNINGS! Info(prcgen):I1014: Converting and merging media file "/tmp/mobi-btFw3n/OEBPS/images/BBeBooks.jpg" Info(prcgen):I1014: Converting and merging media file "/tmp/mobi-btFw3n/OEBPS/images/someimage.jpg" Info(prcgen):I1014: Converting and merging media file "/tmp/mobi-btFw3n/OEBPS/cover.jpg" Info(prcgen):I1019: Building index into record 0000000 Index name: $FRAG Info(prcgen):I1019: Building index into record 0000003 Index name: $SKEL Info(prcgen):I1019: Building index into record 0000005 Index name: $GUIDE Info(prcgen):I1019: Building index into record 0000008 Index name: $NCX Info(prcgen):I1029: The default lookup index is: "$FRAG" Info(prcgen):I1017: Building PRC file, record count: 0000004 Info(prcgen):I1018: Building PRC file record 0000002 Info(prcgen):I1018: Building PRC file record 0000003 Info(prcgen):I2001: Final stats - TEXT: 000006173 bytes 000000004 records Info(prcgen):I2003: Final stats - INDEXES: 000002416 bytes 000000011 records Info(prcgen):I2004: Final stats - TRAILING: 000000016 bytes 000000004 records Info(prcgen):I2005: Final stats - FRAMES: 000000116 bytes 000000003 records Info(prcgen):I2006: Final stats - OTHER: 000009167 bytes 000000003 records Info(prcgen):I2007: Final stats - TOTAL: 000017888 bytes 000000021 records Info(prcgen):I1039: Final stats - text compressed to (in % of original size): 48.78% Info(prcgen):I1041: The file format version is V8 Info(prcgen):I1032: PRC built successfully Info(prcgen):I15000: Approximate Standard Mobi Deliverable file size : 0000143KB Info(prcgen):I15001: Approximate KF8 Deliverable file size : 0000156KB Info(prcgen):I1037: Mobi file built with WARNINGS! Here, looking at the directory listing, I can see both the .epub (from the earlier zip commands) and .mobi (from the kindlegen run) files. ~/kindle_test$ ls -l total 484 drwxrwxr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:29 META-INF -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 20 Jul 9 2012 mimetype drwxrwxr-x 6 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:29 OEBPS -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 149589 Mar 31 13:32 tempmobi.epub -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 329589 Mar 31 13:33 tempmobi.mobi ~/kindle_test$ I don't have the Kindle Previewer installed, but I have Calibre. It sees, and adds, the book as a mobi and even shows the cover. However, it won't display the book due to an invalid start bit error. Figuring it was a bad initial load, I deleted the book and then re-added/reopened it with success. ===== epub test (creating an EPUB ebook) ===== Starting with a clean directory, I copied the standard epub file into epub_test... ~/epub_test$ ls -l total 140 -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 143018 Mar 30 21:02 EPUB201-Sample-BBeBooks.epub Unzip the file... ~/epub_test$ unzip EPUB201-Sample-BBeBooks.epub Archive: EPUB201-Sample-BBeBooks.epub extracting: mimetype inflating: META-INF/container.xml inflating: OEBPS/content/content001.html inflating: OEBPS/content/content002.html inflating: OEBPS/content/content003.html inflating: OEBPS/content/content004.html inflating: OEBPS/content/content005.html inflating: OEBPS/content/htmltoc.html inflating: OEBPS/content.opf inflating: OEBPS/cover.jpg inflating: OEBPS/coverpage.html inflating: OEBPS/css/bbstylesheet-epub.css inflating: OEBPS/fonts/Chunkfive.otf inflating: OEBPS/images/BBeBooks.jpg inflating: OEBPS/images/someimage.jpg inflating: OEBPS/toc.ncx ~/epub_test$ ls -l total 152 -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 143018 Mar 30 21:02 EPUB201-Sample-BBeBooks.epub drwxrwxr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:15 META-INF -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 20 Jul 9 2012 mimetype drwxrwxr-x 6 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:15 OEBPS Remove the original EPUB201-Sample-BBeBooks.epub file so it won't be in the way of the test... ~/epub_test$ rm EPUB201-Sample-BBeBooks.epub ~/epub_test$ ls -l total 12 drwxrwxr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:15 META-INF -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 20 Jul 9 2012 mimetype drwxrwxr-x 6 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:15 OEBPS Now let's creat a new EPUB. I'll name it temp.epub... ~/epub_test$ zip temp.epub -DX0 mimetype adding: mimetype (stored 0%) ~/epub_test$ zip temp.epub -rDX9 META-INF OEBPS adding: META-INF/container.xml (deflated 32%) adding: OEBPS/content.opf (deflated 68%) adding: OEBPS/cover.jpg (deflated 1%) adding: OEBPS/coverpage.html (deflated 42%) adding: OEBPS/fonts/Chunkfive.otf (deflated 18%) adding: OEBPS/toc.ncx (deflated 68%) adding: OEBPS/content/content001.html (deflated 46%) adding: OEBPS/content/htmltoc.html (deflated 53%) adding: OEBPS/content/content002.html (deflated 44%) adding: OEBPS/content/content003.html (deflated 43%) adding: OEBPS/content/content005.html (deflated 40%) adding: OEBPS/content/content004.html (deflated 44%) adding: OEBPS/css/bbstylesheet-epub.css (deflated 61%) adding: OEBPS/images/someimage.jpg (deflated 2%) adding: OEBPS/images/BBeBooks.jpg (deflated 1%) ~/epub_test$ ls -l total 152 drwxrwxr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:15 META-INF -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 20 Jul 9 2012 mimetype drwxrwxr-x 6 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:15 OEBPS -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 143018 Mar 31 13:19 temp.epub Here, I ran various readers, such as FBReader, Okular, Calibre and Firefox's EPUBReader plugin on the generated EPUB file - all with success! ===== epubcheck ===== ~$ ./epubcheck epub_test/temp.epub > errors.txt 2>&1 [NOTE: On versions with csh shells (such as FreeBSD) change the command to the following]: ~$ ./epubcheck epub_test/temp.epub > errors.txt There is a bit of a lag time as the check is performed. Once done, the prompt will reappear... ~$ ls -l total 56 drwxrwxr-x 3 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:40 Calibre Library drwxr-xr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:01 Desktop drwxr-xr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:42 Documents drwxr-xr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:09 Downloads -rwxr-xr-x 1 bdyer bdyer 59 Mar 31 01:52 epubcheck drwxrwxr-x 4 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:19 epub_test -rw-rw-r-- 1 bdyer bdyer 91 Mar 31 13:56 errors.txt drwxrwxr-x 3 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 30 19:27 kindlegen drwxrwxr-x 4 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 31 13:33 kindle_test drwxr-xr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 29 14:48 Music drwxr-xr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 29 14:48 Pictures drwxr-xr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 29 14:48 Public drwxr-xr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 29 14:48 Templates drwxr-xr-x 2 bdyer bdyer 4096 Mar 29 14:48 Videos Looking at the contents of the error file (the cat command can be used to display output without using an editor)... ~$ cat errors.txt Epubcheck Version 3.0 Validating against EPUB version 2.0 No errors or warnings detected. To run this check, I used a script I named 'epubcheck' which is why the command line shows only that one word (no call to java is obvious). The contents of the script is as follows (note, I made it a point, earlier, to install epubcheck in /opt): ~$ cat epubcheck java -jar /opt/epubcheck/epubcheck-3.0/epubcheck-3.0.jar $1