So, you have a Word document or a text file, and you want to convert it into various ebook formats. There are formats for Kindles, Apple, the Nook and several others, so where do you start?

I found a very useful online converter: Online ebook converter. It works very well. You just decide which format of ebook you want, upload your file, and click a button.

The online ebook converter

There are various options, but I found that just leaving them set at “Default” seems to work fine. At least, I can easily read the converted files on my Kindle, Nook and in iBooks.

The only two (mild) criticisms I have is that you can only convert one file at a time, so I suppose if you have quite a few it could become somewhat tedious.

The other is that you do need to change the title of the book for each new title you upload. I assumed it would pick up the title from the text of the document, but it doesn’t. I ended up with a perfectly converted book – but with the wrong title!

Still, given that this is free, these quibbles are hardly worth worrying about.

I haven’t tested every format. My advice would be to convert one ebook and then test it to see if it looks as it should in the intended device or app, before converting lots of them. If you need to make any changes to the text or the settings, it isn’t a big deal because the conversion process takes just a few seconds.

To see the whole range of ebook formats, I’d recommend the article on Wikipedia entitled Comparison of e-book formats.

Incidentally, if you need to convert other types of files then go to the e-book converter’s home page, which is Free online file converter. There are options to convert text, image and other types of file. I haven’t tested any of these, but looks like a useful resource to bookmark for future reference!

Convert just about anything into anything