How to Make an Ebook Using OpenOffice

“Ebooks” is the short term for electronic book. EBook or e-book are alternate spellings. “Ebooks” are considered digital counterparts of a printed book and are protected by “digital rights.” “Ebooks” are usually read in computers, mobile phones or e-book readers, devices dedicated for opening e-books.

The PDF which stands for Portable Document Format is the standard configuration for encoding ebooks. Only simple technical knowledge is needed to generate ebooks. The only skill involved is converting text files into the PDF format. Text-to-PDF file conversion tools are available but the easiest way to convert text files into PDF is using OpenOffice. The procedure can be found below:

First, download Open Office from OpenOffice.org. Open Office is an office suite that serves as a good alternative to Microsoft office. The software is not a bother to learn and use. It’s now the leading open-source office suite for presentations, databases, spreadsheets, graphics and word processing Since Open Office is open-source, downloading the software is totally free. The software does not have licensing fees you can use it for all purposes and give copies to family, associates and friends. Install the OpenOffice suite in as many computers as you want. Plus, OpenOffice contains many great features and the PDF conversion function is one of its strongest.

Next, just install the programs included in the software and start “Writer.” Open up your text file, even Word documents are supported. Format the pages to make it into a standard ebook. The ebook’s dimensions should be 5 by 7 inches. The document’s margins should be set to zero in all corners. The document’s header and footer should be 0.5 inches. The background colour of the document should preferably be set to black. The font style and colour of the text should also be changed into something eye-pleasing.

Export the ebook text into PDF. An icon with a PDF image is there somewhere in the software which you have to press. Click the option for “full-screen mode.” You have now finished completing your own e-book using OpenOffice.org.
Nifty options can also be added. Put paging controls to make your ebook easier to browse through. If desired, you can choose to change the “remember last position” preference in Adobe Reader, too. Change it to “For any PDF document” so that the reader can go back to the page he last read in case, he takes several sittings to complete reading.

If your location is in the United States or in European Union countries, copyrighting won’t pose as a problem. In the countries mentioned, your work automatically becomes copyrighted.

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