Most people think they know how to create epub files because they found a "Save As" button in Microsoft Word or jumped into a free online converter. Honestly? That is exactly why so many ebooks look like absolute disasters when you open them on a Paperwhite or an iPad. You get weird line breaks. The fonts are microscopic. Images just... vanish. It is frustrating for the reader and, frankly, it makes the author look like an amateur.
The e-book world is built on XHTML and CSS. If you don't respect the code, the code won't respect your content.
Why your current EPUB workflow is probably broken
You've probably tried Calibre. It is the Swiss Army knife of ebook management, and it’s brilliant for personal libraries. But using its "convert" function to generate a professional file is a gamble. Calibre tends to inject a massive amount of "inline styling." This means it hard-codes every single paragraph with specific margins and font sizes. When a reader tries to change the font size on their device—which is the whole point of an e-reader—the hard-coded CSS fights back. The result is a mess.
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Then there’s Google Docs. It has an export option for EPUB. It’s "okay." It works for a quick handout or a personal recipe book. But if you want to rank on Google or get picked up by the Google Discover feed, you need metadata that actually works and a file structure that isn't bloated with Google's proprietary junk code.
Discover is picky. It likes high-quality imagery and clean headers. If your file is a tangled web of nested `