Inspiring

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Refining EPUB Exports from InDesign: Seeking Book Recommendations for Better Results

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
November 5, 2024
3 replies
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I'm not pleased with EPUBs created by exporting from InDesign. My justified text comes out ragged right. And when I switch from Roman to italic or boldface type the type gets scrunched.

I haven't taken a coding class in over 20-25 years and I haven't done any coding work in that time as print book design has kept me occupied. So my question is: Is there a book--I much prefer book tutorials than videos--that provides in depth, step-by-step instruction on how to refine these EPUBs to maintain much more of the polished look of the InDesign files?

Thank you.

Steve Tiano

EPUB

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer James Gifford—NitroPress

Might be, might be. 🙂 You might also find these resources useful: Digital Publishing Basics .

The real hurdle, though, for most who turn to EPUB export, especially from a body of experience in more traditional publication, is somewhere between adjusting your expectations and what I sum up as "respecting the medium."

EPUB is not an alternative to print, imaged pages or PDF. It is a specialized publication path with its own strengths and weaknesses. Those who have the most trouble with it are those who expect it to be, more or less, some variant of PDF. The only thing EPUB and PDF share are (1) industry-wide loose adherence to the standards and (2) a plethora of readers, viewers and tools that produce different results — and where the spectrum of PDF viewers remains fairly consistent with flat pages and gets complicated with advanced features like forms, animation and interactive elements, EPUB readers are, as a whole, so wildly variant as to barely exist in the same space.

It goes from there. 🙂 And there's absolutely no shortage of bad, misguided, poor, really poor and ya-gotta-be-kidding-me advice and instruction out there, covering well over a decade of variations, standards, ephemeral tools and processes, and largely amateur-based methods.

L

Laura Brady

Inspiring

You might consider this learning path. It contains a lot of videos but also has text explainers. https://apln.ca/category/indesign-to-epub/

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

I'll simply say that while I have seen many tutorials on creating EPUB with ID, I have yet to see one that is not limited to a narrow approach in which everything is perfect. Creating EPUBs is a process unlike any other in ID, with an overwhelming number of choices, pitfalls, failure caused by subtle faults in the source/live file, and very little in the way of guidance or guardrails. (And that's before a novice gets drowned in the vast pool of mis/dis/bad information that floods the web.) I don't know that I've ever heard from a user who felt they'd learned something useful by working through a fixed tutorial, other than that it's all a helluva lot more complicated than the "now press this button" approach — which does work, to some extent, for the great majority of ID tutorials — can convey.

Learning to create EPUBs with ID is more akin to learning a complex sport. You're going to fall down a lot, and need repeated practice and someone to coach your technique, before you get to even a fairly simple and successful result.

It shouldn't be that way. But EPUB is, in the end, an example of how not to achieve a goal... any goal.

L

Laura Brady

Inspiring

Well that series is regularly updated by experts in the field, so it may be more trustworthy than a general Google search. It is accessibility focussed but that's to be expected in this day and age. (If you're not paying attention to accessibility, you're not paying attention.)

There is a lot of junk advice when it comes to EPUB but the APLN is a good source of information and includes a community hub where people can ask questions and get answers from smart people.

James Gifford—NitroPressCorrect answer

Legend

Might be, might be. 🙂 You might also find these resources useful: Digital Publishing Basics .

The real hurdle, though, for most who turn to EPUB export, especially from a body of experience in more traditional publication, is somewhere between adjusting your expectations and what I sum up as "respecting the medium."

EPUB is not an alternative to print, imaged pages or PDF. It is a specialized publication path with its own strengths and weaknesses. Those who have the most trouble with it are those who expect it to be, more or less, some variant of PDF. The only thing EPUB and PDF share are (1) industry-wide loose adherence to the standards and (2) a plethora of readers, viewers and tools that produce different results — and where the spectrum of PDF viewers remains fairly consistent with flat pages and gets complicated with advanced features like forms, animation and interactive elements, EPUB readers are, as a whole, so wildly variant as to barely exist in the same space.

It goes from there. 🙂 And there's absolutely no shortage of bad, misguided, poor, really poor and ya-gotta-be-kidding-me advice and instruction out there, covering well over a decade of variations, standards, ephemeral tools and processes, and largely amateur-based methods.

BobLevine

Community Expert

Is this for reflowable or fixed layout? What version of InDesign and most importantly, how are you viewing the EPUB?

S

stianoAuthor

Inspiring

Fixed page layout. InDy 2025. In Apple's Book's app.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

Fixed-page (FXL) is obsolete and deprecated for anything but picture-page books. Should absolutely not be used for text content.

Apple's viewer is reasonably good/standard but has many "improvements" that skew it from the vanilla. standards-compliant ones. But if Apple is your sales target, it's the one to use.

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