In your Automator workflow, replace the first action with a Sort Finder Items action. If we want to divide up the ebook into separate chapters and include a table of contents, we have to do things slightly differently. The above method creates an ebook with only one chapter. When you are finished it should look something like this: Simply change the Service receives selected drop-down menu to rich text, and do the same for the File Format drop-down menu in the New Text File action. If your text contains a lot of formatting like different text colours and bullet point lists, you can modify the workflow slightly to retain this in the EPUB. When you next sync your iPhone or iPad, it will be copied across and will appear in the iBooks app on your device. Once saved, simply drag the EPUB file into iTunes to add it to your Library. The following dialog should appear, allowing you to specify the title, author, filename, and cover image for the book. Under the Services menu, choose Create ePub book with selected text. The main things to note are changing the file name to temp, ticking the Replace existing files checkbox, and ticking Show this action when the workflow runs on the Text to EPUB action.Ĭhoose Save from the File workflow and name it “Create ePub book with selected text.” To test it out, select some text (this article for example) and right-click on it. To create the workflow, drag the following two actions from the Library onto the workflow area on the right:Ĭhange the settings to match the following screenshot. If you haven’t used Automator before, don’t worry, it’s just a really simple app that allows you to automate repetitive tasks by building “workflows” using building blocks called “actions.” The type of workflow we are going to build is called a Service, which means it will be accessible via the Services menu when right-clicking on selected text. Start by opening Automator, which is located in the Applications folder. Once this is done, creating EPUB files will be as simple as selecting some text, right-clicking on it and choosing “Create ePub book with selected text.”

To do this, we need to set up an Automator workflow that does the conversion for us. Using a simple Automator action, it’s possible to take text from anywhere, for example from a web page or a PDF file, and convert it into EPUB format that displays beautifully on whatever device you use to read ebooks. A handy new addition in Mac OS X Lion makes it a piece of cake to create your own EPUBs that can be viewed in iBooks on an iPhone or iPad, or on any other eBook reader.

Convert pdf to epub osx