I recently returned from a Law School Technology conference, and while there I learned how easy it is to create ebooks from documents in Microsoft Word or HTML formats.  Elmer Masters lead a session called, Creating eBook Version of Your School’s Law Reviews Using Open Source and Free Tools (see the video here).

The ebook creation process was so easy that during the session I download, installed the tools, and created an ebook of my conference notes before Elmer had finished his talk.  For anyone interest here is the process:

1. Download Sigil, the free and open source ebook editor for your operating system.
2. Install Sigil on your computer.
3. Open the word document that you’d like to turn into an Ebook.
4. Save the document as an html file by going to “File” -> “Save As” and then selecting “Web Page (htm)” in the drop down box. Then press the “Save” button.
5. Launch Sigil, and right mouse click on “Text” folder in the left hand column, and select “Add Existing Items…” Add the html file you just “Saved As” from word.
6. Now press the “Save” button on the Sigil tool bar, and you are done!

You might want to go to the Sigil “Tool” -> “Meta Data” menu to add a title and author to the book to make it look a little more professional looking, but other than that, you’ve created your first Ebook!  Congratulations! If your document is long enough, you can insert chapter breaks to make it easier to navigate.

You might be wondering how you get this ebook on to your iPad or iPhone.  All you need to do is either email the ebook to your self and then open it on your mobile device, or if you use Dropbox, move the ebook into Dropbox and then open it from Dropbox on your iPad or iPhone.  If you’re a kindle user, you should have an email address than you can send file to in order to add them to your Kindle device.

For your reading pleasure, here are my CALI 2011 Conference Notes in ePub, PDF and Google Doc formats. Happy reading!