by C.K. MacLeod
Updated, December 12, 2015
Jutoh is an inexpensive ebook editor that allows you to convert Word docx files to mobi or epub formats. Below are resources and a cheat sheet to help you find your way around Jutoh.
Jutoh Resources
Dec 12, 2015 Jutoh is an inexpensive ebook editor that allows you to convert Word docx files to mobi or epub formats. Below are resources and a cheat sheet to help you find your way around Jutoh. Jutoh is an easy-to-use ebook creation tool for Epub, Kindle and more.
Jutoh Vs Vellum
Manual
Jutoh is a multi-purpose eBook publishing software which allows to create an eBook from scratch. It will help you to easily create eBooks in different formats like Epub, kindle etc. And can publish it to Amazon’s Kindle, Apple’s iBooks, Google Play, Kobo, and more. Jutoh is similar to Adobe’s InDesign program with the way it treats paragraph and character styles. You can create unlimited styles for different books and series. Jutoh also has even more advanced settings, and if you’re into technology, you might have fun investigating these options. Jutoh - digital publishing for everyone From brainwave to best-seller, Jutoh is your digital publishing assistant. Create top-quality fiction and non-fiction e-books - novels, self-help guides, poetry, children's books, autobiographies, and more.
Julian Smart, the creator of Jutoh has written a detailed manual titled, Creating Great Ebooks Using Jutoh. It’s available as a free download in a variety of formats on his website. I prefer to access the online HTML version because I can find answers to questions fastest if call up the manual with search terms in Google.
For example, if I key in the terms “Jutoh” and “pictures,” Google will call up Chapter 11: Working With Pictures in a matter of seconds. If you prefer to scroll through a PDFor view the manual as an epub on your tablet, those options are available, too.
Video Tutorials
There are a few detailed video tutorials that demonstrate how to Jutoh:
How to Format .epub and .mobi (Kindle) Ebook Files, by India Drummond is about twenty minutes long and will give you the fastest way in to setting up a fiction book with limited styling in Jutoh.
Geoff Shaw has a short seven-video Jutoh training series that walks you through creating an ebook in Jutoh, and John Griffin shows you how to use a template in Jutoh. Templates are useful if you’ll be creating a lot of ebooks in Jutoh.
Dr. Julian Smart
If you’ve combed the available resources for an answer to a conundrum, but you’ve come up with nothing, don’t worry. I was delighted to discover that the Doctor was indeed in. Dr. Julian Smart, that is. If you have a question that the manual and videos don’t answer, you can email Julian Smart for help.
Jutoh Cheat Sheet
After viewing the videos, searching through the manual, mucking about in Jutoh, and contacting Julian Smart, I compiled a cheat sheet—a list of how-do-I questionsthat I can return to the next time I use Jutoh to create an ebook.
While this is not a comprehensive list, I do believe that it contains some of the tasks you’ll want to accomplish in Jutoh. Feel free to let me know if I’ve missed anything.
The items in this list are alphabetical. I’d recommend reading through the left column quickly so you know what’s there, and later, when you have a question, you’ll be able to find that item quickly.
You’ll understand the items in the table better if you know what Jutoh looks like when you’re working in it. Here’s a screenshot of the various panes:
| Jutoh panes |
One final thought: the first time I converted an ebook using Jutoh, I did everything in Word—applied styles, inserted hyperlinks, and so forth—and then exported the file to Jutoh.
The second time, I created a document in Word, stripped out all of the formatting, exported it to Jutoh, and then applied all of my styling in Jutoh.
I found the first method more efficient, probably due to my familiarity with Word. Both methods created a nicely styled ebook.
1I love the formatting software Jutoh. I have not made a secret of this. I have been using it for many years as a professional formatter. I teach a class on how to use it. I’ve even got a free video up on YouTube on how to get started formatting with Jutoh. And just when I thought it was all that was wonderful for formatting beautiful books—the developer went and made it BETTER!
Jutoh 3.0 has a whole host of fantastic new features for not only for formatters but for writers. It’s clear the developer, Julian Smart, is trying to make Jutoh a program geared toward authors—something they can use instead of Microsoft Word or even Scrivener.
Already Jutoh was a great program at creating well-designed, professional ebooks. With capabilities including drop caps at the press of a button, easily embedding fonts into a book, and—one of my favorite—conditional formatting so in one document you can create retailer-specific versions of an ebook with links that go back to the retailer where the book was purchased. Jutoh makes doing all these things super-easy and, on top of that, has a pretty low learning curve.
Anyone can install Jutoh and have a great-looking ebook within minutes.
But now, with the newest update there are all sorts of great added features like spell-check, author tips and writing prompts, but best of all is the new storyboard feature. Just like in Scrivener, you can now create virtual index cards to storyboard your book. I can’t tell you how much I love this new feature.
You can create different types of cards and even have pre-set text that simply appears on a card when you double-click to create it. This saves me so much time—when I click to create a new card automatically is listed “Goal, Conflict, Turning Point” and other important points I want to be able to fill in and have at my fingertips while I’m writing. I have a different card type for each of my protagonists, each one having a different color background so I can easily see whose POV a scene is in.
If I want I can easily write the scene in Jutoh—all the regular functions of a word processor are there. I have to admit, I still write my scenes in Word, but then I copy and paste it into the card in Jutoh. Once my story is done, with a click of a button, the contents of the cards are transferred into the individual documents which will become the chapters of my book. Another press of a button and the book is compiled into an ePub or mobi document.
Also like Scrivener, you can have it keep track of your daily word count with a daily goal as well as an overall book goal. For those of us who like to keep track of how many words you’ve written in a day, this is a great tool. It really keeps me moving ahead knowing that I’ve got a goal to reach and something—if not someone—watching to make sure I reach it.
I haven’t toyed with it too much, nor would I expect very much of it, but you can now even do a simple cover design in Jutoh. Truly, there doesn’t seem to be one aspect of putting a book together that Jutoh doesn’t include.
And finally for authors, I don’t know if this is a new feature or just one which I never noticed before but Jutoh can actually read your book aloud to you! Yes, it has a speech feature. There is only one thing better for catching typos and mistakes than having your book read to you and that, of course, is reading it out loud yourself. Having that feature right at my fingertips is so very nice. Granted, the voice is very computer-sounding, but even with the amazing advances in current voice technology, it’s still hard to find a good text to speech that doesn’t sound like a computer (the best I’ve found online is https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/ where you can choose the male or female voice you like –American or British—and even change the language (French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, or Swedish) in which your work is written).
The new Jutoh 3.0 has a number of amazing updates for the average user and others for those who are more computer savvy (formatting inspector and so on). It’s been made even easier to use and I just love all the new features for authors. This is absolutely a program that will perpetually be open on my computer—no longer simply being used to format but for so much more!
Jutoh Review
If you are interested in learning how to use Jutoh, I am going to be teaching a live, online class on how to format with Jutoh on October 12th at 7 pm Eastern U.S. Time. Just click here to register.
Jutoh Reviews
If you don’t have a copy of the software, but want one and also help out a struggling author (me) here’s a link where you can purchase the software (it’s an affiliate link).
Jutoh Tutorial
And as always, I am available to assist you with your writing, plotting, and editing. Check out my book coaching services.