How to Make an ebook in PalmReader / eReader format

eReader format is a great ebook solution for several reasons. There is an excellent free reader program for both the Palm and Windows CE platforms as well as a free reader for Windows.

The eReader/Palmreader format can also be used to generate ebooks of excellent quality. The format supports special character formatting, pictures and tables, chapter indexing, links, etc. Everything you need for a nice ebook. Palm used to provide all the tools you need to generate ebooks in this format right on their website for free. You may need expensive software to use their free tools though. There also appear to be restrictions as to what you can do with the books you create with the free converter.

To make PalmReader / eReader format ebooks, you really need a copy of Microsoft Word for Windows to do the conversion.

Step 1
Download the software from the eReader Website.
Click here to download dropbook
They also used to offer a free macro called word2pml. This macro would convert a Word document into a pml document so it could be used with dropbook to create a free high quality ebook. I don't see it on their site anywhere, probably because it kind of eliminates the need to buy their publishing software. Not to fear though, because it is around. A quick search of the internet with any search engine for word2pml.zip should turn up several versions.

The word2pml macro is a Microsoft word macro that will automate the process of converting a document into a format you can use to make an ebook for your handheld device. It basically takes any document that can be loaded into Microsoft word and changes it to a text file format with special pml codes that the dropbook/makebook utility can use. The dropbook/makebook utility will convert a text file with special pml codes into a pdb file that you can use on your handheld device.

Step 2
Copy the word2pml macro to your Microsoft word Macros folder. The macro that you downloaded is a zipped archive file. You need to unzip it and stick the file word2pml.dot in your templates folder. This folder will be named something like this c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\Other Documents.

Step 3
Extract the dropbook/makebook utility to a working folder.
The dropbook utility is just an executable file and you need to extract it somewhere convenient so you can find it and use it. Where isn't really important as long as you can remember where it is. I find it easy just to keep it in a folder called ebooks and I put all of my books in that folder.

Step 4
To use the converter you need to have a document that can be opened in Microsoft Word. I am assuming you already have this waiting patiently somewhere. If you don't have one, you can get lots of them at the Gutenberg Project. Make sure you have something that you want to convert before going to the next step.

Step 5
Open Microsoft Word.

Step 6
In Microsoft Word, select file->New. A dialog window will come up with a list of New Documents you can create. I am using word 97 here as a reference so I apologize if your screen is a little different. Select the Other Documents Tab. There will be an option there of word2pml.dot. Select it and click ok, or double click on it to open it.

Step 7
Select Insert->File and then select the document that you want to convert from wherever you had it stored. Any document that you can open in Word (HTML, DOC, TXT, RTF, etc.) will do.

Step 8
Select Tools->Macro->Macros and a dialog box will appear with a list of items. The last item in the list will be Word2PML. You may have to scroll down the list to see it. select it and click Run or double click it to run this macro. The macro will now go through the document and make all the changes neccesary to make this file compatible with the dropbook conversion utility. Depending on the document, this can be very fast or it can take quite awhile. Once it is finished go to the next step.

Step 9
Save your converted document to a text file. Select file->save as and a dialog window will appear. Change the folder at the top of the dialog box to the folder location where you stored the dropbook.exe file. If you followed my advice earlier, it should be in C:\ebooks. Change the save as type at the bottom of the dialog Window to be type text only. Next enter a filename that you will remember as the name of the book and give it an extension of pml so you will remember that this text file has special formatting in it specific to pml. For example filename.pml. After doing all this click save. Word may warn you that by saving it to a txt file you may lose some of Word's special formatting. Click yes to indicate this is ok. Close Word, or at least close the file. If you don't close the file the next step won't work.

Step 10
Making the Ebook
Open Windows Explorer and go to the folder where you have the dropbook utility and where you stored your converted file. Using your mouse, click on the converted file and while holding the mouse button down drag it over the file called dropbook.exe and let go of the mouse button. A dialog window will pop up asking you for a title. Type in the name of the book. This is what it will be called on your handheld device. There are other fields where you can enter the author's name and other things. You can fill them out if you want, but it is optional. Click ok when you are finished. Another window will open showing the conversion status. If you did everything right it should do the conversion and your ebook is made. You may get some errors though. If you see something saying the conversion couldn't be done because the file couldn't be opened, you probably forgot to close it in Word. If you see something about non-ascii characters being found. Don't worry about it, it happens all the time. I guess that little Word macro isn't perfect.

Step 11
Moving your new ebook to your handheld device
If you look in your folder now in Windows explorer you will see a new file. It will have the same name as your pml file but it will have a pdb extension filename.pdb. This is your ebook. If you are using a palm device and you have the pdb extension already associated with the hotsync installer, all you need to do is double click on the file and it will be ready to be sent to your device the next time you do a hotsync. If you don't have that all configured already, (but most people do), you may need to do whatever you would normally do to send a file to your device by loading it into the Palm Install tool.

Step 12
Synchronize
Hotsync your device to move your ebook from your PC over to your palm.

Step 13
Read your new HANDebook!
Open the free ebook reader from Palm. I hope you already have it installed. If not, I haven't written a help page for that yet, but I will. Let me know if you need it sooner. Tap your menu button in the grafiti pad and you will see a menu at the top of the screen. Select Book->Open and you will see a list of books you have available. Tap on the name of your book, then tap on open, and you will be reading your book.

Was this helpful to you? Could it have been made clearer? Did you find any errors? Please let me know in the HANDebooks forum