Creating Kindle e-books on the Mac

Before you start: Download this sample e-book and install it on your Kindle. It will show you what you can expect from e-books created by Universalis.

If you are happy with the result, carry on reading this page to see how to do it for yourself.

Creating the e-book

Download and install Universalis for the Mac, if you have not already done so.
Download and install the separate Calibre e-book system, if you have not already done so. This is needed for converting and transferring Universalis e-books to the Kindle.

Open Universalis. (The Universalis program on your Mac, not the Universalis web site).
Choose the settings you want: local calendar, and psalm/bible translations.
Go to the date you want. If you're going to make an e-book for a week, a month or a year, you can pick any date in the period in question.
Open the File menu and select the command "Save as ePub".
Next, choose how many days you want your e-book to contain: today, this week, this month, or this year.
Choose the pages you want to include in your e-book. The About Today page must always be included.
Finally, navigate to the folder into which you want to store the e-book (we suggest your desktop, because it's easy to find afterwards) and then click on "Save".

Getting the e-book onto your Kindle

Open Calibre, and press the "Add" button to load the e-book into your Calibre library. Then plug in your Kindle, select the e-book from Calibre's list, and say "Send to device".

You can find more help about this process in the Calibre documentation. In addition, a separate web site has detailed step-by-step instructions, with many illustrations.

If you want more than one month at a time

Universalis creates e-books for a day, a week, a month or a year. If you need more than a month but don't want to create an e-book for a whole year, you can easily create multiple e-books for multiple months. For example, to get January, February and March, get Universalis to view a date in January, create a one-month e-book, get it to view a date in February, create a one-month e-book, and so on. All the e-books have a different filename, so there won't be any confusion.

About About Today

If you are looking at (say) 11 September, "11 September" will appear as a chapter. It will contain the About Today text followed by separate sections for each Hour that you have chosen to include.

Some e-book readers do not allow you access to the text of a chapter if the chapter has sections. This is incorrect, and we can't work round the defect by putting in a separate About Today section because that would cause problems for e-book readers that work correctly. You will have to go to the first visible section in your chapter (for example, "Invitatory Psalm") and step backwards from there.

About Greek

If you are displaying Greek on the screen then it will be included in the e-book. Whether it is readable there depends on the e-book reader. Some, such as Adobe Reader, display an unreadable mess; others, such as Stanza and iBooks, work perfectly.

Please note that the e-books you create are for your private use only and must not be given or distributed to other people.

Downloading and installing Calibre

Calibre is a free and open-source e-book library management application. It has many other features apart from file conversion and transfer. It may be freely downloaded from the Calibre web site.

Download

To download Calibre directly, click on this link.
If the Calibre site has been rearranged, and the link doesn't work, visit the Calibre home page and look for a link marked "Download".

Installation

Follow the instructions on the Calibre download page.