A quick and dirty guide to making an EPUB book from a set of Markdown files using pandoc.

In this example I have strarted a book with chapters and a cover image.

Prequisites 🔗

• some markdown files
• pandoc

Markdown File Structure 🔗

I have given the chapters numbered prefixes and added a cover image:

-rw-rw-r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu   160 May 28 15:15 01-title.md
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu   123 May 28 14:53 02-introduction.md
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu 45307 May 28 15:17 cover.jpg

NB one can create subdirectories for specific sections if you want to include an images folder for use in that chapter - users of Hugo will be familiar with this.

The file 01-title.md contains important header information:

---
title: "My New Book"
author: "Author Name"
date: "2024-05-28"
lang: "en"
cover-image: "cover.jpg"
---

# Title Page

This is the title page of the book.

Note the cover-image reference.

Pandoc 🔗

Simple via apt-get:

sudo apt-get install pandoc

Find more info here.

Conversion 🔗

This command line will turn all markdown files in the current directory, include a table of contents, and output an EPUB file:

pandoc *.md –toc -o my-book.epub

Validation 🔗

One way to check the resulting EPUB file before deployment is to use this validator.

Deployment 🔗

Use any of the regular ways of sending files to your Kindle, eg email.

If you want to publish it as a book on the Amazon Store you’d need to proceed to [Kindle Direct Publishing].