There are many ways to make ebooks. You can use a graphical design tool like InDesign, code everything by hand, or style a Word document and hand off the actual conversion to an automated program. Or, as I do, you can use magick!1
Regardless of the process you use, it’s very important to understand what’s going on “behind the scenes.” At some point, you’re eventually going to run into something that isn’t working the way you expect, and you’ll have to learn the hard way by diving into a bunch of code that you probably won’t understand.
Alternatively, you can take Easy Street and learn how an ebook is built from the ground up. Understanding how an ebook is put together will help you tackle manual fixes, and the insight into what the design tool is doing under the hood may even save you from having to dig into the code in the first place.
Over the next few Adventures2, we’ll be taking a look at the six essential technologies that go into making an ebook.
So what are these technologies, and why do you need to know them?