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Phillip17531679m4xu
Participant
Jul 5, 2022 5:20 PM UTC
Question

Problems producing KDP book from FrameMaker 2020 on KDP

I have a book which successfully published with FrameMaker 2019. I copied the folder with the book and accomopanying files to a new directory and upgraded everything to FrameMaker 2020. The PDF produced by this causes the dreaded KDP message of "There are errors in your file" message with no further diagnostics. (I'm using a 64 bit Windows version of FrameMaker version 16.0.4.1062) Many thanks for any insights! 

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16 replies

FrameMaker-dk
Community Expert
FrameMaker-dkCommunity Expert
Community Expert
Jul 13, 2022 7:47 PM UTC

I believe FrameMakers KDP feature relies on a script which is no longer being developed or maintained by Amazon.

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Bjørn Smalbro - FrameMaker.dk
defaultu5ynaceqt2n2
Participant
Jul 8, 2022 1:31 PM UTC

How do I start my own topic with an issue?

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Bob_Niland
Community Expert
Bob_NilandCommunity Expert
Community Expert
Jul 8, 2022 1:58 PM UTC

re: How do I start my own topic with an issue?

In this forum?

Navigate to the top FM page

Hit the big blue ( Post ) button.

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Phillip17531679m4xuAuthor
Participant
Jul 7, 2022 2:50 PM UTC

Dear All, I'm making progress slowly with this. Some of this FrameMaker specific. I've found that copying the book and then opening all files and having them convert to the latest FrameMaker version needs to happen. If you don't, FrameMaker (somewhat unhelpfully IMHO) erases all tables of contents, figures, tables etc. to blank new FrameMaker indexes, losing all the reference pages and such. 

That now said, the only outstanding problem is that the fonts Courier New, Courier New Bold, and Symbol are flagged by KDP as not being embedded. A quick check of the PDF reveals that these fonts are embedded, but are "embedded subsets." Curiously, Courier New is listed as both "Embedded" and an "Embedded subset." I'll keep folks posted if I make progress. thanks. 

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Matt-Tech Comm Tools
Community Expert
Matt-Tech Comm ToolsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
Jul 15, 2022 5:11 PM UTC

You may find that you renamed your book file, causing Fm to create differently named TOC IX, etc.

 

You can import those resources from the files that have the name of the old book so you don't have to redefine those formats.

 

-Matt

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-Matt Sullivan, FrameMaker Course Creator, Author, Trainer, Consultant
QuintinSeegers
QuintinSeegers
Legend
Jul 6, 2022 9:29 PM UTC

I'm thinking of using FrameMaker to do the final layout for my next fiction novel (who said FrameMaker is for technical manuals only?) published through KDP, so I'd be interested in a solution as well, in case I run into the same issue.

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Bob_Niland
Community Expert
Bob_NilandCommunity Expert
Community Expert
Jul 7, 2022 5:03 PM UTC

What's the copyright plan for the novel?

If, for example, it's CC BY-NC-ND
you will have a problem using FM for that.
U+229C CIRCLED EQUALS might work, but
U+1F10F CIRCLED DOLLAR SIGN WITH OVERLAID BACKSLASH

U+1F16D CIRCLED CC

U+1F16F CIRCLED HUMAN FIGURE
will not, even if you have a font that populates them. See:
Unable to author or render Unicode SMP

For a recent project, I had to resort to an overlay font (CC-Icons) to get those icons into the PDF.
How overlays flow into eBook formats is not something I'd have a guess on, and it wouldn't surprise me if they don't work, which might leave you with having to embed some SVGs of those glyphs (and any other Supplementary Plane Unicode you might need, which is over half of today's populated Unicode space).

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QuintinSeegers
QuintinSeegers
Legend
Jul 7, 2022 8:40 PM UTC

Not sure I follow, @Bob_Niland. Only the © symbol appears in the text (on the copyright page), e.g. Copyright © Quintin Seegers. There are no Creative Commons licenses used.

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Jeff_Coatsworth
Community Expert
Jeff_CoatsworthCommunity Expert
Community Expert
Jul 6, 2022 11:54 AM UTC

The only person I know that's had much experience with publishing to Kindle or ePub is @Matt-Tech Comm Tools - maybe he'll see this one & join in.

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Matt-Tech Comm Tools
Community Expert
Matt-Tech Comm ToolsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
Jul 12, 2022 10:54 PM UTC

Hi Jeff, I did indeed see this! 

Phillip, sorry for the slow response. 

The best way to resolve your issues is by analyzing the errors found by the epub validator. 

I wrote up a summary of the resolution back in 2013, and you can find it at

https://techcommtools.com/ebooks-with-fm-rh/

 

I believe the EPUBCHECK errors were what I used to identify/rectify the 1500 or so errors!

Fortunately, I quickly corrected the errors as they were generally consistent things in directory structure naming, odd characters in markers, and ad hoc formatting in content.  

Let us know how your project turns out!

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-Matt Sullivan, FrameMaker Course Creator, Author, Trainer, Consultant
K.Daube
Community Expert
K.DaubeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
Jul 5, 2022 5:48 PM UTC

KDP = Kindle Direct Publishing ?

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Phillip17531679m4xuAuthor
Participant
Jul 5, 2022 8:53 PM UTC

apologies, yes, Kindle Direct Publishing

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