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Participant
January 14, 2024
Answered

CANNOT get proper format conversion for eBook

  • January 14, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 1426 views

I am SO frustrated. I am trying to get my ebook on platforms like Amazon and no one accepts PDF. When I export to ePub, it looks NOTHING LIKE MY BOOK! The formatting is off, the pictures are all jumbled around. There are no errors or anything on my document. I have NO idea what is going on and I want to get it on Kindle. I can't do HTML because of the pictures, PDF is not taking, and the epub files look nothing like my book. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO PUBLICH MY BOOK when Adobe software can't even format it for the platform's needs. NOTHING is working. I need help. I'm so sad.
Thank you,

Giovanna

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer James Gifford—NitroPress

EPUB is not PDF... in many ways, but mostly in that it does not make any perfect snapshot of layout pages. It takes a fair amount of knowledge and (on every project) rounds of trial to get things right.

 

The book in the sig has pretty much everything you need to do pro reflowable EPUB and Kindle. It assumes you have reasonable mastery of InDesign and at least a grasp of CSS style coding.

 

You'll also find some basic tutorials here (drawn from/expanding on the book): http://nitrosyncretic.com/DPR/dpr_index.php

 

Happy to help with specific questions or the whole process, as well.

 

BTW — you want to export to reflowable EPUB. Fixed-page EPUB is an obsolete non-solution that is much more difficult to work with, despite seeming to be a simple/easy choice.

3 replies

Participant
April 9, 2024

Export it as a fixed layout epub, not a reflowable epub, and everything will stay where it is meant to be

 

BobLevine
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 9, 2024

Fixed layout EPUB is a horrible format for just about everything. And most EPUB readers will turn it into a jumbled mess. This discussion is several months old and was answered long ago. Everyone is welcome to contribute to this community but please, in the future, if you're going to do so, add something of value.

Participant
April 10, 2024

Hi there Bob, gosh I was just trying to help the poor lass. Nobody seems to have given her a positive answer. I recently did a marathon 640 page book for a client, and not a simple book. It contained charts, diagrams (placed as pictures) within the text flow, internal hyperlinks to other places in the book, external hyperlinks to other sites, footnotes etc. Things that HAD to stay on the pages they were placed, as often the diagram on a particular page was discussed on the facing page. So not only did the format have to stay fixed to stop the text flowing around the diagrams, which is what seems to be happening to poor Giovanna, it had to be fixed spreads. The book was exported to epub for use as an iBook (Apple) and it works perfectly. Yes, you do need to know what you are doing when exporting in order to make sure things like your table of contents and hyperlinks carry over but the final result looks and behaves exactly as it should. So, this is perfect for a Mac or an iPad, not for a Kindle which has to be created as another format, but this can be done using Kindle Creator which is free to download from Amazon, and again, you can create your Kindle book as a 'print replica' file and it will look and behave the same way. No reflows, nothing moves, everything stays as it should. I did have trouble getting my Kindle publication to include my table of contents, and didn't manage to find an easy answer on their website. Now I don't know what other epub readers there are, maybe they don't all work the same way, but my fixed layout publications work perfectly on the platforms they were created for.

James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
January 15, 2024

Note that if you "can't do HTML because of the pictures," you are going to have hurdles with EPUB as well — EPUB is, essentially, a packaged website and subject to most of the same layout and content limitations. If you have complex image layouts, you're going to have to adapt them to what XHTML/CSS can manage... which is quite a bit and quite fancy if you have the chops, but again, EPUB is not just a snapshot of page layouts, so you have to work within the limits of each medium.

James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
January 14, 2024

EPUB is not PDF... in many ways, but mostly in that it does not make any perfect snapshot of layout pages. It takes a fair amount of knowledge and (on every project) rounds of trial to get things right.

 

The book in the sig has pretty much everything you need to do pro reflowable EPUB and Kindle. It assumes you have reasonable mastery of InDesign and at least a grasp of CSS style coding.

 

You'll also find some basic tutorials here (drawn from/expanding on the book): http://nitrosyncretic.com/DPR/dpr_index.php

 

Happy to help with specific questions or the whole process, as well.

 

BTW — you want to export to reflowable EPUB. Fixed-page EPUB is an obsolete non-solution that is much more difficult to work with, despite seeming to be a simple/easy choice.