If you’re writing non-fiction, you’ll probably want to include references and possibly links to other parts of your eBook.
Fortunately, both these features are supported and, as you’re probably aware, work on the basis of hyperlinks.
The good news is that it’s much easier to do references and links in Word or Open/Libre Office, rather than having to go into the code.
Adding a reference
This method will work whether you’re doing your HTML conversion via cKEditor or via Open/Libre Office.
To add a reference in MS Word, you put the cursor where you want the citation to appear and go to Insert > Reference > Footnote. Word gives you the choice of footnotes (which appear at the bottom of the page) and endnotes (which appear at the end of the document), but it’s not important here, as they’ll all appear at the end of the book anyway.
In Open/Libre Office, it’s almost identical – go to Insert > Footnote in the main menu.
You many want to go into the code and insert a heading for your references.
Links
You can add internal links to eBooks that behave in the same way as hyperlinks on the web. (It goes without saying that your links should be internal and should not link to the internet.)
Again, it is easier to do this using a word processor. In MS Word, you need to use the Bookmarks function, outlined here. If you convert this later using cKeditor, the links should remain when you convert it to HTML. (Using MS Word’s Insert > Hyperlink and linking to a heading does not appear to work.)
If you want to go into the HTML code (or have to fix it), the syntax is below. It is necessary to give your link a unique name (‘foo’ in this example). The hyperlink will appear on the word ‘text’. Use the following code to create the link:
text
For the link destination, place the following markup just before it:
Geoffrey Lindop
on Oct 11th, 2011
@ 3:32 pm:
I am converting a HTML document into Kindle and am having trouble with internal hyperlinks. The links work fine in the HTML document but when I convert to Kindle the link goes to the wrong page. Have you any experience in links going wrong? Is there a maximum length to the link name as I have a number of similarly named links?
Diane
on Mar 7th, 2012
@ 11:38 pm:
I’m having the same problem with a Kindle file as Geoffrey. Hyperlinks work perfectly in Calibre but when I open the Mobi file in a Kindle viewer (any Kindle viewer), the hyperlinks go to the line after, sometimes even a page after the destination. I’ve been looking for help on this matter but can’t find any documentation of it as a bug.
Paul
on Jun 29th, 2012
@ 10:21 am:
Sorry, I’ve only just got around to having a play with this. As far as internal links go, I’ve got it working editing the HTML in Notepad++. The markup I used was:
<a href=”#link”>book text</a>
for the link; and
<a name=”link” id=”link”></a>
for the anchor (i.e. the target for the link).
This works okay in Kindle Previewer and in the web browser.
To create internal links in MS Word — that can be exported to HTML — it appears you have to use the Insert > Bookmark function.
Michael
on Dec 6th, 2012
@ 3:27 pm:
Hi there,
I use Apple Pages on a Mac and have linked words in the text body of my book to an explanation section at the end. The hyperlinks work perfectly in Calibre. However, when I reverse the process so that the reader can click on the word in the explanation section and return to reading where he left off, the links don’t always work, sometimes taking me back to the contents section. Might there be a reason that is not obvious to me, a novice? Or is there a better way of achieving my aim? I’d be grateful for any tips.
Michael.