EPUB fixed layout option

I see it's been a while since you posted this question with no input offered. Don't know if you are anyone else cares about this anymore, but I have a suggestion.

It took me a while to figure this out myself. First I tried a few of the PDF to fixed layout Epub converters available of line. The results were a mixed-bag subtle errors which I couldn't live with. Eventually I just put together an easy way to go about it if you have a version of Adobe Acrobat Pro or any other feature-rich PDF editing software.

In short, you need to break up the formatting between pages in InDesign. This can be done using paragraph styles if it is a simple layout. However, most people looking to expert in fixed layout typically have layouts that would be a pain to go through and add styles specifically to split the file in the epub export - if they didn't do this from the beginning. It's much easier to do in Acrobat Pro, though the process is also a lot less direct.

Another method you can use is by having each page or section of your book as a separate document in an InDesign "book document", but again, kind of troublesome if you are talking about individual pages.

What you need to do is export your InDesign document to a PDF. In Acrobat, break up the book into individual pages by using the "Extract" or "Split Document" feature. This creates a separate PDF for all pages with formatting still entact.

Next, you are going to do the opposite. In Acrobat, use the "Combine..." feature to create a new book. The book should be in the same order as the numbered of the pages which are suffixed in the extracted pages file names.

Again, the basic idea is that you are breaking up the formatting and text frames in the book so that when exported to epub they won't run together on single pages, all the while maintaining the original formatting in each page.

Now use Indesign's "PlaceMutliplePDF" script to reimport the PDF book into Indesign, which will place each PDF page on a new Indesign page automatically. Before you do that, make sure that you create a new file that has the same page dimensions as the original, including all bleeds. Make the bleed a part of the page size rather than sizing the bleeds separately, otherwise you will have to readjust the content to fit the page correctly. There is also a script for that in CS6, but you can save yourself some time by just creating a bigger page size. For example, if you started off with a 6"x9" page size and a bleed of .125" all around, change your page size to 6.25"x9.25" with no bleeds.

Finally, export the new InDesign file using the Epub 3.0 option. The finished product will be a fixed layout Epub.