How to Use Vellum to Create Professional eBooks for Free
Vellum is a software that allows you to create beautiful and professional eBooks for various platforms, such as Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and more. Vellum is free to download, but requires an in-app purchase to generate your final, formatted eBooks. However, there is a way to use Vellum for free, if you are willing to do some extra work.
In this article, we will show you how to use Vellum to create eBooks for free, by using a standard IT skills setup that involves a Mac computer, a Windows virtual machine, and a Calibre eBook converter. This setup will allow you to preview your eBooks in Vellum, export them as generic EPUB files, and then convert them to the desired format using Calibre.
it skills standard vellum setup free
Step 1: Download and Install Vellum on Your Mac
The first step is to download and install Vellum on your Mac computer. You can get Vellum from https://vellum.pub/. Vellum is compatible with macOS 10.11 or later. Once you have downloaded the Vellum.dmg file, double-click it to open it and drag the Vellum app icon to your Applications folder.
Step 2: Download and Install a Windows Virtual Machine on Your Mac
The next step is to download and install a Windows virtual machine on your Mac. A virtual machine is a software that allows you to run another operating system inside your current one. You will need a Windows virtual machine to run Calibre, which is the software that will convert your EPUB files to other formats.
There are several options for Windows virtual machines, such as Parallels Desktop, VMware Fusion, or VirtualBox. For this tutorial, we will use VirtualBox, which is free and open source. You can get VirtualBox from https://www.virtualbox.org/. Download the latest version for Mac OS X hosts and install it on your Mac.
You will also need a Windows installation image (ISO file) to install Windows on your virtual machine. You can get a free Windows 10 ISO file from Microsoft's website: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO. Choose the edition and language you want and download the ISO file.
Once you have VirtualBox and the Windows ISO file, you can create a new virtual machine by following these steps:
Open VirtualBox and click on the New button.
Name your virtual machine (e.g., Windows 10), choose Microsoft Windows as the type, and Windows 10 (64-bit) as the version.
Assign some memory (RAM) to your virtual machine (e.g., 4 GB).
Create a virtual hard disk for your virtual machine (e.g., 50 GB).
Choose VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image) as the hard disk file type.
Choose Dynamically allocated as the storage on physical hard disk.
Click on Create to finish creating your virtual machine.
Select your virtual machine from the list and click on Settings.
Go to Storage and click on the Empty slot under Controller: IDE.
Click on the disk icon next to Optical Drive and choose Choose/Create a Virtual Optical Disk.
Browse to the location of your Windows ISO file and select it.
Click on OK to save your settings.
Step 3: Install Windows on Your Virtual Machine
The next step is to install Windows on your virtual machine. To do this, follow these steps:
Start your virtual machine by clicking on the Start button in VirtualBox.
Follow the instructions on the screen to install Windows 10. You will need to enter a product key or choose I don't have a product key. You can use Windows 10 without activating it for personal use.
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