Adapting a Book on Your Own

Outside of working with the DEU, there are a number of ways you can adapt a book on your own. Follow the instructions for finding an open textbook earlier in this guide to get started.

Using the PDF

If you want to rearrange the chapters, you can download the PDF and divide it up however you like with a PDF splitter or PDF editor. If you do this, the table of contents will need to be reordered according to how chapters are reorganized, removed or if new chapters are added.

Other formats

Another option, if you wish to have a bit more granularity in your editing, is to download one of the other more editable file format types available. This might involve working with someone with some technical knowledge, depending on your level of comfort working with technology.

For example, in Blackboard you can upload the raw HTML file and then use Blackboard as the “book” platform. Another option is to edit the raw HTML file yourself using a tool like Dreamweaver.

If available you can download the WordPress backup file of your chosen textbook and import that into a WordPress site at words.usask.ca. There may be some technical work that you need to fix formatting on the import, but that is another way to go.

There are often ePub files available which can be edited with an ePub editor, like Sigil, although the learning curve is a bit steep for using this tool.

Pressbooks

Finally, the best option is to take the backup file labelled Pressbooks and sign up for a free Pressbooks account at Pressbooks.com. We use Pressbooks as the authoring platform (we have the open source plugin running here), and the free version does add a Pressbooks watermark to the PDF and ePub outputs (which can be removed for the nominal fee of $20). But that will give you the best editing environment that is closest to the environment the textbook was created in.