When a novel is already finished, EPUB preparation is less about writing and more about freezing the identity, order, and navigation label of every chapter. Give the seven chapter sources stable IDs, keep the cover and colophon outside the prose, and compare the generated navigation and spine with the same seven-row sheet.
This workflow is for a completed seven-chapter novel. It does not describe how to draft the book from an empty workspace.
Freeze chapter identities before export
Chapter titles can still receive small editorial changes. If filenames are identical to those titles, revisions often produce ambiguous files such as rainy-night.md and rainy-night-final.md. Duplicate the finished manuscript and assign stable IDs, C01.md through C07.md.
Keep a reconciliation sheet with four fields: ID, reader-facing title, include in navigation, and order. For example, C01 can be Prologue, C02 Rainy Night, C03 The Letter, and C07 Epilogue. The exact titles are yours; the important part is that the IDs and seven positions do not drift.
If the exported order disagrees with the sheet, return to chapter selection or ordering. Do not fix the generated package and leave the source plan wrong.
Prepare the seven source files in the text editor
Put one reader-facing chapter heading at the beginning of each file. Search for temporary labels and editorial notes that should not enter the book. A finished manuscript usually needs scope control here, not another wholesale rewrite.
Rune Studio’s published documentation covers Japanese long-form editing, manuscript organization, search, preview, and EPUB output in one workspace. In the observed run, seven finished source files were selected from that workspace for export.
Choose order and navigation entries in the EPUB Wizard
The controlled EPUB sample selected C01.md through C07.md in numerical order, with every chapter included in navigation. At this point, count seven files, reject duplicates, and compare the order with the reconciliation sheet.
Enter book title and author information separately from chapter prose. The cover assignment used images/studio-037-01.png. Treat the colophon as its own output component rather than pasting a second copy into the final chapter. This separation lets you replace the cover without changing the novel text.
Reverse-check navigation and spine
A navigation list with seven labels is not sufficient proof of reading order. EPUB 3 assigns different roles to navigation and the spine. The EPUB 3.3 specification also separates metadata, the manifest, the spine, and navigation.
The sample spine contained cover, title, navigation, p001 through p007, and colophon. Compare those seven content documents with the seven source IDs. If p004 represents the wrong chapter, return to the source order rather than editing only the visible table of contents.
What the seven-chapter sample established
The horizontal EPUB used seven source chapters and no inline images. Inspection found navigation and NCX, one packaged image, no missing images, and valid=true. The single packaged image was the cover, whose configured path was images/studio-037-01.png.
These are local structural observations from a controlled sample. valid=true does not establish retailer acceptance or identical rendering across reading systems.
When this approach fits
Stable IDs and a seven-row reconciliation sheet work well when each finished chapter already has its own source file. If your novel remains one long document, decide how chapter boundaries will be represented before attempting this export workflow.
If you need to hand-edit XHTML and CSS after every build, a package-level editor may fit better. If Rune Studio remains the source, route text and setting corrections back to the chapter files and rebuild.
Conclusion: make the seven-row sheet authoritative
To turn a finished novel manuscript into EPUB, freeze seven chapter IDs, titles, navigation choices, and positions before export. Keep cover and colophon separate, then reconcile both navigation and spine with the same source sheet.
Start with a duplicate of the finished novel. Current Mac features and download options are available on the Rune Studio website.