There's a particular kind of satisfaction in turning a folder of chapters into a real, finished ebook. When your book is ready for the world, Author's Forge creates professional ePub files suitable for publishing platforms—no separate formatting software, no wrestling with a complicated "compile" process, and no extra cost. Export is included free.
What is ePub?
ePub is the standard ebook format accepted by most retailers and libraries:
- Apple Books
- Kobo
- Barnes & Noble
- Google Play Books
- Most indie publishing platforms
(Amazon Kindle uses a different format, but Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing accepts ePub uploads and converts them for you, and many free tools can convert ePub to Kindle format as well.)
An ePub is really a reflowable, structured package: the reader's device decides how text flows on screen, which is why ebooks adapt gracefully to phones, tablets, and dedicated e-readers. Author's Forge handles the technical structure—the table of contents, the chapter boundaries, the metadata—so you don't have to.
How to Export
- Right-click on your Book in the sidebar
- Select "Export to ePub..."
- Choose where to save the file
- Done!
That's genuinely the whole process. The file you get is ready to upload to a retailer.
What Gets Included
Your ePub will contain:
- All front matter in order
- All chapters in order
- All back matter in order
- Book metadata (title, author, description, etc.)
- An automatically generated table of contents
- Your cover image, if you've added one
Everything appears in the same order you see in the sidebar, so arranging your book is the same as arranging your export.
Before You Export
A few minutes of preparation makes the difference between an ebook that looks amateur and one that looks like it came from a publisher. Make sure your book settings are complete. Right-click the book and select "Open Book Settings" to fill in:
- Title and subtitle
- Author name
- Description
- ISBN (if you have one)
- Publisher information
- Language
The more metadata you provide, the more professional your ePub will appear in bookstores—this information populates the book's detail page and helps readers find it. It's also worth adding a proper copyright page and a title page in your front matter before you publish; see the Front Matter guide for the full list of pages you can include.
Test Before You Publish
Before uploading anywhere, open your exported ePub in a reader app—Apple Books, Calibre, or any e-reader—and page through it. Check that chapters break where you expect, that the table of contents links work, and that your cover looks right. Catching a stray formatting issue now is far easier than fixing it after readers have downloaded the book.