Searching for epub info

[JoeatData]

Hi, we are a book printer and we are having some of our clients asking about epub format. Sales and Upper Management have asked the prepress department if we can research and produce epubs for clients.

During my research I found that we can produce epubs through the newer versions of Quark and Indesign(which is still a work in progress). First of all we are supplied final pdfs about 80%-90% of the time. We do have clients that supply final Indesign and Quark files. We do no design work.

My first question is: If clients have a design department or a source where their book is designed for them wouldn't it be easier for that designer to produce a final epub for them?

My first though with the research I have done it would seem more feasible for the client to ask the designer to do that for them instead of us(the printer). Am I wrong to think this? This is not exactly what I want to tell our Sales and Management when we are trying to scratch out more sales and maintain our client base in these economic times. Is there any profit for us? Or is it just more work?

My next question is: Is there any software(software that actually works) that produces epub from pdfs? Like I said, about 80%-90% is supplied in pdf format. I have found software of things from the internet but these first few tests have failed when trying to convert. I have scripted pdfs into indesign and had some success when producing epubs, but it only seems to be correct when the bookmarks in the pdf are present. We do have clients that create pdfs from Word and this turns into a big mess usually.

How are they doing epubs from old publications where there aren't electronic files? Are these older publication scanned then an OCR placed for the chapter breaks?

I have been using Indesign CS5.5 for most of my testing and viewing the product in Adobe Digital Edition 1.7.2. I have found a couple of video's to help. I am wondering if there are any shortcuts, hints, or situations that others have had to deal with while working with epubs.

Any info that anyone has will be helpful and appreciated. Thanks

 

[Ptheobald1]

epubs

epubs

Hi Joe,
In my former life in magazine publication prepress we used Olive Active Publisher to create eZines (as we called them) from final print X1-a PDFs. Of course, the PDFs went through some secret sauce conversion in the workflow.

Here's the url of their site...
Olive Software - the leading provider of digital edition & digital archiving solutions for the publishing industry

Pat

 

[Laurens]

My first question is: If clients have a design department or a source where their book is designed for them wouldn't it be easier for that designer to produce a final epub for them?

Yes, that would be a lot easier but obviously a lot depends on the competence of the people in the design department. It is amazing how many of these people don't realize that the 'ball is back in their camp' so to speak. PDF really is the wrong file format to create epub files from. Even if you could properly recover all of the body text, usually all of the structural data such as chapter information is gone.

Have a look at Calibre - a free tool that many use to convert various file formats to epub. I've tried it with a few PDFs myself: the result range from 'pretty good' to 'absolutely worthless'. Calibre cannot be blamed for that: garbage in, garbage out. The Printplanet equivalent for epub production are the MobileRead Forums - lots of good information to be found there. Another recommendation is the blog of Liz Castro, as well as her books.

 

[JoeatData]

Ptheobald1- thanks for the info. I have viewed their web page. I wasn't able to find something I could download. Leaving me with the impression that they are a service to product epub/ezines. But it's another source for me to follow.

Laurens- That's the exact info I was looking for when I was asking about pdf's to epub. I have tested Calibre...some good some bad. Leaving me with the impression it was the pdf and not me. Like you said: "garbage in, garbage out." I have found a software called wondershare and downloaded the trial. It does seem to work with the trial but the negative thing about it is the trial version will only do 5 pages. Spending the money for the full version for something that could be a risk isn't an option......Back to the fact that pdf's aren't the right file format and the garbage in, garbage out theory.

"Yes, that would be a lot easier but obviously a lot depends on the competence of the people in the design department. It is amazing how many of these people don't realize that the 'ball is back in their camp' so to speak".

Guessing this is the nature of our business. We have some clients that are competent and others that aren't(Won't pay the wage for an experienced designer. So they hire the first person that accepts the offer). Too many times there are situation where a client will want more than they are willing to pay for. There are times you can work with a client. Then there's that one client that will complain and state they have been doing design work for 20 years and still produce a poorly designed file. It's been the same story for each place I have been employed at.

Thanks for the info guys, much appreciated.

 

[Shaja]

JoeatData - I recently went to a InDesign seminar hosted by InDesign Secrets, and the afternoon portion was spent demonstrating how to create and publish an ePub through the tools you mentioned in your first post. I went because I am interested in creating an electronic version of our company brochure for an iPad. This company offers some podcasts and tips that you might find helpful via their website at InDesign Secrets: Tutorials, Tips, Templates, Blog, Podcast, and More. Also, the subscription training site at lynda.com has videos on the subject.

We're really talking about two different kinds of epublications. For you, the question is what kind of ebook are you looking to create?

Mobile readers, like Kindle, are solely about the reading, not about the interactivity. If you are only looking to convert a text/pdf file to a mobile format for use on a reader, then I second the nomination for Calibre (Kindle uses the AZW format,; mobi also works, but the traditional Kindles do not use ePub and I don't know if the new Fire does). Charge for your time spent cleaning up the conversion - there's nothing worse than a poorly formatted file with weird line breaks, missing letters, missing words, etc (spoken as a Kindle owner and fan).

A true ePub has embedded videos, animations, audio, hyperlinks, embedded documents, scrollable content, etc. If that's what your bosses are talking about, then I would suggest you're looking at setting up a new business unit for designing and charging for your services plus recovering the costs of digital publishing.

(Edited to add this link): Amazon has a help section on how to publish content for Kindle through their site. Thought it might give you some ideas. http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_rel_topic?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200038060.

 

[JoeatData]

Shaja- Thanks for the info. I had been in Adobe for Indesign. But didn't think of using Indesign Secrets.

I am assuming that they are only looking for a reader format without all the videos and other things.

Poor file breaks and other such formatting problems it part of what I am trying to avoid and learn to avoid. As of right now it doesn't seem like everyone is on the same page with these epub.
It seems that every Platform such as Kindle are doing their own thing, with their own software and it's isn't compatible with any other Platform.

At least that's the impression I am being left with as I continue to explore for more info.

 

[Shaja]

I get the same impression, that ePUB is a big wild west world still being shaken out. Glad my exploring could help you - looking forward to hearing what you find out, too.

 

[Tech]

Hi Joe,
For the most part, you have all the answers already. Converting PDF > ePub = bad idea. Simply two different formats requiring different setups and workflow. I work at a publishers upstream, for the most part, publishers are looking to outsource the epub process because, you guessed, designers really dont know how to do this nor do they want to nor do they have the budget to train or hire new hands to do epub conversion.

I seriously think people buying these epubs do not understand they are only paying for straight text [xml/html with CSS style sheets] files. The so-called enhanced epubs has embedded videos and/or music [some e-readers still does a poor job playing these. From publishers' point of view, it's another format/medium for they products to appear and add revenue. Hence they all want a piece of the pie.

ePub/mobi/pdf are all going through a growing pain. By that, I mean no one publishers has figured out nor invest and learn how to distinguish their e-product reading experiences from the actual books. So far, the most innovations/creativity has been done on children app books, but outside of that genre only Al Gore's app book impressed me. I'm still publishers creating files that matches their physical books in appearance from cover to cover...which is damn silly. With pdf format ebooks, some even includes endpaper that is belongs to a book binding process. People making these decisions do not understand the physical experiences of a book is not the same in digital format.

So going back to your dilemma, I would explain to your sales/management team why investing in providing this conversion service may not be worth while. For one, I bet clients will hold you guys to the fire for editorial accuracy and unless you have a team to proof epubs for QA...this process alone can be time consuming. Creating epub isn't just pushing export option, there is a process of refining and cleaning out junk in html/css follow by QAing files and making these will display correctly....then there is a potential font legal issue if publishers are giving you fonts neither you nor they own to work with.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

Some very good InDesign discussions are held on this mail list:

InDesign talk | Google Groups


Stephen Marsh

 

[JoeatData]

Tech, Stephen....thanks for the info and leads

It's good to have some validation with some of the things I have found with the research on epub.

I had a meeting with the GM the other day and with both of us piecing the research we found the one thing we know is....everything is clear as mud when it comes to epub. It seems that our Sales Reps are pushing for us to supply epub formats. I can't blame them, they are looking for more sales. What they don't realize is this in no "push-button process" or wham bam thank you ma'am process.

Other articles I have found have many publishers sending the author's Word documents overseas to be produced to epubs. Wondering if Word is more or less suitable then a PDF. Word isn't really suitable for printing and now they want to go epub with it? lol. My GM went as far as contacting a couple of these outsource companies for his own research. Either way is sounds like another form of "garbage in, garbage out." Let pass the buck down the line. This just seems to be another thing to pass on to the Printer. Damn if you do, Damned if you don't.

I have read in some cases the publisher is being blamed for the poor-formating and errors produced. Yes, I can see where the publisher could be or should be responsible. With the way the platforms are and no set standards you really can't place the entire blame on them. As of now it seems that one story/book would have to be produced into many different ways to please everyone and then you will still have that "one" whining and complaining. So business as usual....it wrong so lets blame the printer. But even if you finally have one set standard someone not going to be happy. I am sure there will be other issues that will arise in the process.

I have been in the Printing industry for nearly 30 years. I have seen many changes, especially in the PrePress dept. When I was first asked to research on producing epub I felt like I was back in the Jurassic and I was watching that astroid right before impact. That astroid may be coming but it isn't here. Not yet anyway. For now I can hoping that some of these issue's with epub will work themselves out. Right now is seems like a big game of chicken and it's a matter of who moves first.

 

[Tech]

Glad you have a GM that understands and not chasing after something that is not there. It is not worth associating yourselves with these piss poor products at the moment. Let publishers outsource them to Asia. They may see gains in the short run. I can't imagine epub growing bigger than what it is now unless there is a technology breakthrough. Most of the ebook "growth" are here in US. Rest of the world isn't running with this yet.

Again outside of children's book apps, there is zero innovation to deal with the reading experience between content and the device. There's room for innovation but I dont see publishers investing nor trying.

Here's a dilemma for picture/coffee table books.... the key here is reading experience. Despite all the hype, the potentials, the revolution is not here yet.
http://publishingperspectives.com/2011/11/digital-dilemma-picture-book-publishers/