#convert wordpress

  September 27, 2010

By Nancy Messieh

  If

You’ve been thinking about creating an eBook but aren’t sure where to start, why not take a look at your blog? You probably already have a ton of carefully written content, that could make for an interesting eBook. And there are a few free online services that make it as simple as possible to take all of that online content and convert your blog to an eBook.

Whether you’re catering to Kindle or iPad users, whether you’re doing it for fun or want to sell your eBook online, each of these services has something for you.

  Anthologize

If you have a WordPress blog and want to turn your blog posts into a book, the easiest, no-hassle way to do this is to use the WordPress plugin, Anthologize. Download the plugin and upload the zip file to your plugins folder through your WordPress dashboard.

Once you’ve activated the plugin in, you’ll find two new tabs in your menu ““ the Anthologize tab, and the imported content tab. With Anthologize, not only can you use content from your own blog, you can also import content from other sites with an RSS feed.

Anthologize makes the process as easy as you could possibly imagine. If you’re using content from your own blog, you can filter your posts by tags or by category.

Once you’ve decided what content you want to use, you can start creating “˜Parts’ or chapters. Create a new part, and drag and drop the posts that you want to include. Any images in your posts will be included as they appeared in the post.

Once you have all your chapters and content ready, you can export it in one of several formats including PDF and ePub. You can also include a dedication or acknowledgement, choose between A4 or letter size, and select the font.

The final file includes a copyright page, where it states that the ebook was generated by Anthologize, while the table of contents consists of click through links leading you the content at the click of a button.

Zinepal

If you don’t use wordpress, Zinepal an easy-to-use alternative that will help you achieve similar results. Simply enter the URL to your blog or feed, and it will pull up a list of the latest posts.

Select the posts you want to use and add them to your ebook. Of course, the list is limited to the most recent stories from any given site. If you want to include older posts, you can use the handy bookmarklet and clicking on it on any given webpage you want to add to your eBook. You can also use this method to create an entire eBook without using an RSS feed at all.

Once you’ve added all your content, you can choose the fonts and preview the ebook in PDF format. The ebook itself can be created as a PDF, in ePub format or in Kindle format.

Zinepal uses a magazine-like layout, but you do have a certain amount of control over the appearance as far as fonts and the number of columns used. When previewing your eBook, click on ‘Customize eBook’ to change the orientation, page size, number of columns and more.

You can also add your own logo and advertising to your eBook using Zinepal, and although it would appear that you can choose to keep your ebook private on their site, there seems to be a glitch with that feature at the moment.

ePub Bud

Although ePub Bud doesn’t provide an easy way to convert your blog to an eBook, it has a great feature that earns it a spot on this list. Catering primarily to a children’s books audience, you can create any kind of book on their site, share it with the community and download the .epub file ePub Bud’s best feature by far is that it gives you the ability to sell your book through their site, and they don’t take a percentage of your profits. The only payment method accepted through the site is Paypal.

Creating the ebook itself is a cinch. If you already have your book in PDF or .doc format, you can upload it to the site and convert it to the .epub format. If you want to use content from your site, use Zinepal to conver the RSS feed into a PDF file and upload that to ePub Bud.

And if you’d rather start from scratch, use their intuitive, easy-to-use interface to get all your text and pictures into your ebook, and format the text exactly the way you want it to appear.

Also be sure to check out Saikat’s in-depth review of another similar service, eBook Hood.

Which of these free eBooks services is right for you? Let us know in the comments.

Image credit: Lichtmeister