An EPUB with navigation, a cover, and a colophon is easier to maintain when those parts are treated as separate book components from the start. The manuscript supplies the reading content, navigation supplies routes into it, the cover identifies the book, and the colophon closes it with publication details. Keeping those roles distinct is what makes a later correction repeatable.
Lay out the parts before opening the export wizard
Consider a five-chapter essay. Keep each chapter in its own source file and give every chapter the heading that should appear in navigation. Store the cover as a dedicated image rather than an illustration pasted into chapter one. Write the author and publication date for the colophon before export. This small amount of preparation prevents the end matter from becoming an accidental paragraph in the last chapter.
EPUB 3 also separates these concerns internally. The W3C EPUB 3.3 Recommendation describes the manifest as the publication's resource inventory, the spine as its default reading order, and the EPUB Navigation Document as global navigation. A visible contents page alone therefore does not prove that the packaged reading order is correct.
Walk through Rune Studio's six EPUB pages
Open the project folder as a Rune Studio workspace and start the EPUB wizard. On Series Information, enter the book title, author, publisher, language, writing direction, and output name. The next page selects a single volume or a numbered volume. On File Selection, choose the five chapter sources. Chapter Order then lets you drag them into reading order and decide which chapters appear in navigation.
The Metadata page is where you choose the publication date and cover. The final Review and Export page brings together page order, navigation choices, cover, and file name. Read that summary rather than relying on memory. Rune Studio writes the result to the workspace's EPUB folder, so the source and the export remain easy to distinguish.
Test navigation as a route, not a headcount
Five navigation labels are not enough. Select the third entry and confirm that it points to chapter three; check that chapters one and two have not traded places. Then inspect the broader reading path: cover, title page, navigation, five chapters, and colophon. The question is whether a reader can move through the intended sequence, not whether a tool displayed a reassuring number.
In a controlled five-chapter run, the exported package passed its local structural check and contained nine spine entries. After one sentence in the source was changed, a second export also retained nine entries and reflected the edit. That is useful evidence for a repeatable rebuild. It is not evidence that a retailer will accept the book or that every reading app will render it identically.
Return every correction to the source
If you spot a typo in the finished EPUB, resist the temptation to patch the unpacked XHTML and call it done. Correct the chapter in the workspace, reopen the wizard, and export again. The source then remains authoritative for the next edition. After the rebuild, recheck the edited sentence as well as order, navigation, cover, and colophon; a successful text correction should not hide a missing book component.
Cover design quality and device-specific typography belong to later visual checks. The finish line here is narrower: all five chapters are in order, each navigation entry reaches the intended chapter, the cover and colophon occupy their proper places, and a source edit survives a clean rebuild. A two-chapter copy is a sensible first trial before applying the same workflow to a real manuscript. Rune Studio's current Mac feature scope is listed on the product page.
