You’ve finished your book, and it’s ready for the world, or at least for a reviewer. With Shaxpir, you can export it to ePub.

What is ePub?

If you want to get technical, ePub is a single-file standard based on XML that can contain text, graphics, and other items. The standard is maintained by the International Digital Publishing Forum, and the entire publishing industry has adopted the standard for ebook distribution. Apple, Google, and Barnes & Noble all use ePub as the standard format in their iBook, Play, and Nook ebook stores.

While Amazon has their own specific format for Kindle books (called KF8), they automatically convert all ePub files into KF8 when you upload them to the Kindle Direct Publishing web portal. So ePub is truly a universal ebook standard.

What really matters to authors is that you can use ePub as a lot of different things; not just for the final delivery, but as part of your writing process or to share with reviewers.

ePub as a Publishing Platform

Jane Friedman has estimated that 70% of fiction is read as ebooks. The ePub format allows you access to self publishing outlets and other ways to share your work. Whether to monetize or to make freely available, ePub is probably the best way to make your content available. Its single file solution makes it easy to move your doc around. It will work with all phones, tablets, ebooks readers, and computers. As the standard, you know that it will work with just about any store or other outlet.

ePub as a Review Tool

I’ve actually been using ePub in a different way recently — since it’s so convenient and portable, I often export my work to ePub for a separate review. I’m still sometimes guilty of printing my content out on actual paper, so that I can review it on the page, but exporting to ePub offers the same benefits without so much waste. It’s a practice that makes the draft tactile and portable, but I think the real value is to read it in a different context.

By exporting to ePub, I can open the content more like I am a reader, less like I am the writer.

I load the ePub file onto Aldiko or Kindle and read from my phone or tablet. When I want a review from someone else, I have used ePub as well so that they can read more conveniently.

I didn’t use ePub for review until I started using Shaxpir. The export experience from Shaxpir is convenient, built into the application.

What is Shaxpir?

So glad you asked. Shaxpir is software for authors. It is a space to conceive of, write, revise, and finalize writing. I use it for most long-form personal writing. In particular, I like that Shaxpir keeps my notes and thoughts close to my drafts. Once I got comfortable with Shaxpir, I found myself loading existing projects for the workability, the comfort of having all my materials at hand.

Exporting to ePub From Shaxpir: A Walkthrough

You kick off all exports in Shaxpir from the workspace for the project. A project is the book or other piece that you are working on.

STEP 1: When you are in a project workspace, click Export.

The work pane of Shaxpir then gives you a single location to manage the export. I find it is best to work through the many options from top to bottom.

STEP 2: By default, Shaxpir saves to the desktop. Its not immediately apparent how to change the filename and location, but an instinctive click will get you there; clicking the filename will give you the familiar system dialog to choose the name and folder.

STEP 3: You can export as HTML or Microsoft Word .DOCX format as well, but for this walk through we will focus on ePub.

The synopsis is a section of a Shaxpir project, that you compose as a summation of your piece. Various ebook stores and viewers display the synopsis on their summary screens, so it’s import to include a concise description.

Walking through this export process, you can see that Shaxpir provides export options for the elements of a writing project. Not all are relevant to all projects, of course. When exporting, just don’t include the sections that you don’t need.

In the next section, you can select which sections will be included in your ebook, and how those sections will be named and numbered within the body of that ebook.

STEP 4: In the rest of the export process, you are specifying which items to include and how to label them in the table of contents. There are a lot of buttons, but I find that the process goes really quick. It helps me to think through the ePub as I go through them, as well.

`For instance, one piece I’m working on has descriptive titles for all the chapters that help me remember what’s happening, but I don’t want to include those chapter names in the final ePub. The label “Mary Appears (2011)” isn’t truly the title for that chapter; it’s just a note I made for myself as a reminder while I write. So when I export the ePub, I select “None” for Naming Style to prevent the chapter name from being included in the export.

By choosing either “Digits” or “Words” for Numbering Style, the resultant chapter will have a heading that reflects the chapter’s actual position in the order of the manuscript. If this chapter was the third chapter in my manuscript, it would be labeled as either “Chapter 3” or “Chapter Three”, respectively, based on the Numbering Style.

If you include the notebook (on the right side of the export panel), you can then specify what sections of that notebook you want to include, for instance all your characters or locations.

In Shaxpir, you can create notebook folders to track whatever is key to your story. I use these as workspaces. Its a great practice to force yourself to sketch a character out. Its an even more powerful practice to revisit that sketch as you write. I have discovered that I changed my feelings about a character through the course of creating the narrative, then changed the character description to match that.

For each section, you can of course manage the way that a section is numbered and how the ePub features are applied.

In the end, you get a standard ePub. Load this file into iBooks, Kindle, Aldiko, or any ebook reader, or upload it to your website for distribution. Cograts! All your work has turned into something to share.

Export complete… My ePub book is ready for readers!