How to Merge and Combine Ebooks

Whether you have a collection of ebooks or short stories that you wish to merge to create an anthology, or you want to mix and mash a collection of chapters from different ebooks for whatever reason, this is a quick and simple guide to help you do just that. As you may or may not know, the most popular format for ebooks is EPUB. If you want to learn more about the EPUB format check our post Understanding the EPUB Format.

There are two ways of doing this merging EPUB books, a very hands-on manual way, which you can find in our article How to Edit EPUB Books Manually. However, in this guide we will be showing you the much easier and faster way to merge EPUB books together.

Tools

Now, let’s talk about what we need in order to start chopping and combining ebooks together.

Kotobee Author Logo

Kotobee Author is the software we will be using as it already has all the required tools we need for this guide. You can download Kotobee Author and get your free license by going to the website at www.kotobee.com. Also check out our Beginner’s Guide to Kotobee Author for a quick step-by-step tutorial on how to get started with the software.

Guide

After successfully getting Kotobee Author up and running, we can now get started on the important bit and that is importing your different ebooks.

To guide you through the process in our example we will use a selection of some of Sherlock Holmes’ finest adventures. We will take three separate short stories and combine them into one book.

First thing’s first, you will need to start a new book in Kotobee Author which will be the default if you run the software for the first time.

Kotobee Author main edit page

You will be met with the standard ebook editing window where you can start adding the books you wish to merge. This can be done simply by clicking the Import EPUB button found at the top left section of the window.

Import EPUB

The Import EPUB window will open and in it will be the option to browse for an EPUB file on your computer.

Note: If you have a KPUB2 file instead of an EPUB, simply rename it and change .kpub2 to .epub to change it to an EPUB file.

Import EPUB window

Clicking on it will open your file explorer where you can go to the EPUB files you want to start adding to your book.

File explorer

Choosing the file you want to add and clicking open will load the book onto Kotobee Author and will show you the book’s information. You can now simply click on import to add the book or if you want to select only a certain chapter you can choose the single chapter option and select the chapter from the list available.

Selected EPUB

Now that we’ve imported the book we want, we will repeat the same process for the other two short stories we want to add. We will see that the individual short stories have been added as chapters to our book.

Combined ebooks

Now, all that’s left to edit our new collection’s information and maybe even add a cover image. This can be done by clicking on the Book Manager button, under the Book Title. And we will be met with the Book Manager window, where you can edit the book’s title, author, etc.

Book Manager Window

Now, for a final touch let’s add a cover image for our new ebook. This can be done by clicking on the edit button on the book’s cover image in the main edit window.

Edit Cover Image

After selecting the image from your files and clicking Open the image will now become the book’s cover image.

Cover Image

And that’s it all done! You’ve now successfully merged and different ebooks into one and learned how to select individual chapters to import.

Have an ebook tip, trick, or technique of your own to share? Maybe you have an idea for an ebook-related tutorial? Join us in the comments section below to share.

You might also like:

EPUB vs PDF: The Battle of the Formats

Adding Google Fonts to your EPUB

How to Edit EPUB Books Manually

2 Comments

  • Raymond a Busacco

    May 7, 2023

    Hi, After I combine several of my short story’s into one epub file can I then publish it with Amazon KDP’ under whatever title I want to use. All of my ebooks are with kdp. Thanks please reply to rayagie@yahoo.com if possible.

    Reply
    • Kotobee

      May 30, 2023

      Unfortunately, Amazon KDP does not directly support EPUB files for publishing. However, you can convert your combined short stories in EPUB format to a compatible format like MOBI using conversion tools or services like Kotobee Author. Once converted, you can upload the MOBI file to Amazon KDP and publish it under your desired title, similar to your other ebooks on KDP. Make sure to review Amazon KDP’s guidelines for formatting requirements.

      Reply

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