When you build an EPUB yourself, the things you first decide and supply are the body, headings, metadata, and a cover image if you want one. Navigation, package files, and content pages can be assembled by hand or generated by a tool. A colophon is not a required EPUB page. This article separates that general responsibility from the Rune Studio workflow.
This article is for the point where you want to publish without outsourcing but are unsure how much of the book is hand-built. The full decision order and the internal anatomy of an EPUB are covered elsewhere.
Three elements to decide beyond the body
Beyond the body, three common production decisions are:
- The cover — the image on the shelf, the first thing a reader sees
- The contents — the chapter list readers jump from
- The colophon — an optional publication-information page: title, publication date, author, publisher, copyright
If you include a cover, you supply its image asset. Navigation is derived from headings and destinations. Whether to include a colophon, and what it says, is a publishing decision. The useful split is what you must decide versus what your chosen tool can generate.
Building all three by hand
Assembling by hand means creating a cover page, a contents page, and a colophon page as files. The contents lists chapter names and destinations; the colophon states the publication details as prose.
With a converter, check its documentation for which cover, navigation, metadata, and colophon inputs or outputs it supports. A body-only route leaves the rest as separate work.
The real cost of hand-building is the rebuild
Once is fine. It is the second time that hurts.
Add a chapter, add a contents line. Reorder chapters, fix the contents order. Change the publication date, edit the colophon prose. Swap the cover, touch both the cover page and the metadata.
If you re-release a self-published book after corrections or additions, each round means reviewing the related pages and settings. In a hand-built workflow, every changed value has to be kept in step with those outputs.
There is also boilerplate. A colophon carries a copyright line and, for fiction, a disclaimer. Written by hand each time, the wording drifts from book to book.
In rune Studio, manuscripts, cover, and settings are inputs
In the rune Studio workflow, you select manuscript files, supply a cover image if needed, and enter series and volume settings. Export generates navigation and the product's fixed-form colophon.
I verified this by driving the development build from the command line. With two chapters and a cover image, and with title, author, publisher, language, writing direction, output file name, volume version, and publication date set, the exported reading order was cover, title page, contents, chapter one, chapter two, colophon.
The contents listed both chapters. The colophon carried, automatically:
- the title
- the publication date with the version number
- the author line
- the publisher line
- a copyright notice
- a note that the work is fiction
Neither page was written by hand. Chapter names came from the manuscript headings; the colophon came from the metadata values.
Be careful how the cover path is written
One practical finding: specifying the cover image with a short relative path failed as not found. The full path worked, and the exported reading order gained a cover page at the front. If your cover is not appearing, suspect the path before anything else.
Chapters can be kept out of the contents
Title leaves and afterwords often do not belong in the contents. Inclusion is chosen per chapter, and excluding one does not remove it from the book. Excluding the third chapter removed it from the contents while its page remained in the reading order.
The cover may be listed as an "empty page"
Unpacking an export that includes a cover shows a cover page holding only the image, with no text at all.
A cover is an image-only page, so having no text is expected. Being listed is not the same as being wrong. When reading inspection results, check what the listed page is supposed to be before reacting. It is an alarming line the first time you see it, so it helps to know in advance.
Who this suits, and who is fine without it
It suits self-publishers who re-release. It reduces the need to keep related pages in step by hand after each change.
For a one-off with two chapters, hand-building is fine. A two-line contents page is hard to get wrong.
Scope note: what was verified is that the EPUB file is built. Store validation and per-device rendering are outside it. The colophon wording is a fixed form; replacing it with free prose was not tested.
Summary
- Decide the body, headings, metadata, and optional cover asset, then choose which files your tool will generate
- The cost of hand-building appears on the second release, not the first
- rune Studio builds the contents from your headings and the colophon from your metadata
- Watch how the cover path is written, and choose contents inclusion per chapter
For a first step, make two lists: what you must decide as the publisher, and what your tool can generate. With Rune Studio, the inputs are manuscripts, an optional cover image, and series and volume settings; navigation, package files, and its fixed-form colophon are outputs.
See the current product scope on the Rune Studio product page.
