The day started with what should have been a straightforward task. Create an EPUB version of RISE Healing From the Inside Out. Import a document. Click a few buttons. Export. Done.
I stayed loyal to Kotobee for a long time because I love its speed and simplicity. When it works, it feels almost invisible. That kind of ease matters when you are balancing writing, publishing, editing, website work, family, and everything else life keeps stacking on the counter. But Kotobee refused to cooperate, and what followed became one of the more important lessons of my author life.
When the Tool You Trust Stops Talking to You
The export just spun. No progress. No file. No end in sight.
I worked through the problem the way I usually work through problems, one variable at a time. I removed images, then replaced them. I checked alt text, since I had already run into a version of this issue before, when large image files caused an export to hang indefinitely. I suspected hyperlinks next, since this project carried more of them than any book I had built before. I removed links. I removed entire pages that contained links. Kotobee kept spinning.
The hardest part was not the failure itself. It was the silence underneath it. Kotobee never told me what was wrong. There was no error path, no “line 742 contains an invalid attribute,” no hint of whether the problem lived in the images, the formatting, the links, or the imported Word code. It simply circled while my morning disappeared into it.
The Intimidating Tool That Finally Told Me the Truth
That frustration is what finally pushed me into Sigil.
At first glance, Sigil looked like the harder path. Instead of a polished interface with friendly buttons, I was staring straight at code. And y’all, I do not know Jack Squat about code. But something shifted once I imported the Web Text file and ran a validation check. Sigil actually told me what was broken.
The validation started at 2081 errors. That number sounds overwhelming until you understand what is actually behind it. I was not facing 2081 unique problems. I was facing a small handful of repeated issues that Word had quietly scattered across dozens of sections. Word had inserted things like align=”center” and clear=”all”, old link= and vlink= attributes, outdated HTML divider styles, and image IDs with spaces in them, like id=”Picture 7″. None of these mean anything to EPUB standards, and each one multiplied into several validation errors of its own.
Working through them looked something like this: removing the invalid Word link and vlink attributes, clearing out the old align styling, fixing empty title tags, correcting invalid image IDs, repairing broken divider formatting, and clearing out the leftover Word HTML junk one issue at a time. It was slow, but it was honest work. Each fix had a visible cause and a visible effect.
Ironically, the tool that looked harder became easier the moment I understood the pattern underneath it. Sigil was not punishing me. It was simply telling me the truth, which is more than Kotobee had done all morning. Once I stopped guessing and started fixing root causes, the whole process turned from chaos into something closer to a checklist.
The Lesson I Did Not Want to Learn
Then Sigil crashed.
I had not saved since opening the file, so I lost everything. Metadata, chapter splitting, all the cleanup work, gone in an instant. I had to start over from the beginning.
That single moment may have taught me more than the entire 2081-error validation process combined. Crashes do not care how much effort you have already poured into something. They do not pause to acknowledge your progress before they take it. The only real defense is a habit, not a hope.
Save like a paranoid squirrel storing acorns.
Not occasionally. Not when you remember. After metadata. After importing. After fixing images. After chapter splits. After TOC creation. After every single validation fix. Squirrels survive winter because they never trust that the food will still be there tomorrow. I am learning to treat my work the same way.
What This Day Actually Taught Me
There is a quieter truth sitting underneath all of this, one that applies far beyond ebook formatting. The tool that feels easiest is not always the one that serves you best when something goes wrong. Kotobee’s simplicity was a gift right up until the moment it needed to explain itself, and then that same simplicity became a wall. Sigil’s complexity looked like a burden right up until the moment it needed to tell me the truth, and then that complexity became a map.
I think about this in more than one area of my life. The path that feels smooth is not always the path that is actually working. Sometimes what looks like a harder road is simply the one honest enough to show you exactly where the break is, so you can fix it instead of guessing at it forever.
Still Building, Still Learning
I do not share this to complain about software. I share it because building something, whether it is a book, a business, or a life realigned toward wholeness, rarely looks like the clean, linear process it appears to be from the outside. It looks like spinning wheels, silent failures, unexpected crashes, and starting over more times than you expected to.
And still, the book gets made. The EPUB exports. The work continues. That has always been the truest picture of building anything worth building.
Save Like a Paranoid Squirrel Storing Acorns
There is a reason that line stuck with me longer than any of the technical fixes did. Squirrels do not wait for winter to prove itself before they start burying acorns. They act as though the cold is already coming, because eventually, it always does.
I think most of us live the opposite way. We save our marriages when they are already cracking. We tend our health after the diagnosis. We back up our work, our words, our relationships, only after something has already been lost.
But the squirrel is not paranoid. It is faithful to a pattern it cannot see the end of yet, storing away what matters before it is asked to prove why. Maybe that is the deeper lesson Kotobee never meant to teach me.
Save your progress before the crash. Say the kind word before the silence gets long. Tend what you love before you need it to already be strong. Winter comes for all of it eventually, book files and hearts alike, and the ones who are ready are simply the ones who never stopped storing acorns.
Continue the Journey
If you want the fuller story behind why Healthy in Heart Media exists and where this season of writing, publishing, and building is headed, Shifting Focus, Staying Faithful: A Personal Update picks up that thread in more depth.
And if you are curious about the book that started this whole EPUB adventure, RISE: Healing From the Inside Out — Stress, Nervous System & Emotional Health is Volume 3 of the RISE series, and the very manuscript that gave Sigil and me our 281 reasons to get acquainted.
If you would like to know more about who is behind these books and this website, Meet the Author shares the fuller journey.
Reading list:
Every book that reaches you carries a few hidden battles behind it. Thank you for being here for this one.
