I just put my third eBook up on Amazon, and boy was it easy!

I’ve tried several routes to creating content and then putting it into EPUB (a number of eBook sellers use this) and MOBI (Amazon uses this) formats, with various levels of hassle.

This time, it was a cinch!

My story had original cover art, twelve original illustrations, 8,000 words, an acknowledgments section and an about the author section.

As usual, I created the graphics using Poser, Pose2Lux, Luxrender, GIMP, Preview, and, for the cover, Scribus.

I wrote the story using the FREE LibreOffice* suite, inserted the illustrations with ease, and saved it in ODT format.

Jutoh (all of $39) can import many different file formats, but is designed to most easily work with ODT. With (for me) a very short learning curve I was able to create both EPUB and MOBI files from the same ODT raw materials, check them for errors (didn’t find any) and preview them in both EPUB and Kindle readers – while still in Jutoh.

This makes tweaking layouts a snap!

Here’s a link to LibreOffice.

Here’s a link to Jutoh.

And, for what it’s worth, here’s a link to the story.

*LibreOffice is an offshoot of OpenOffice. OpenOffice also uses ODT as its native format. OpenOffice intellectual property is owned by Oracle, and has been donated to the Apache folks. Since OpenOffice is open source, the LibreOffice folks took off from there – many of them long-time volunteer developers of OpenOffiece. The two programs are quite compatible with each other. Right now LibreOffice seems a bit better, but we haven’t seen any new versions of OpenOffice from the Apache folks, so that could change at any time. Don’t we love competition!