Endnote Duplicate error when uploading to IngramSpark

[helenatawny]

I'm using InDesign 2024 and created this book for print first then made it an epub. I had to convert footnotes to endnotes to make it reflowable. Any idea what I can do for these duplicate ID's?

I did not import the file from Word originally. I manually copy and pasted the text from an rtf. Also, I removed the original footnote entry, and redid them manually, to try and remove any duplication within the text (but perhaps i'm thinking wrong about that attempt.)

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Sigh. End notes. One of these days I'm going to have to take on a deep-dive look at all the issues and see if I can resolve the causes of end note/footnote failures and some easy fixes.

In this case, though, I think it might be a fault of your workflow. It's almost always best to import Word-sourced files using the Place feature, with control of all the details through the Import Options menu. Cutting and pasting content, especially content with images, links, footnotes etc. is always going to break something, somewhere. And in deleting the notes and re-inserting them (which is a good basic practice to avoid/fix note issues) I suspect you left a few stray markers or links in the document code.

No easy fix, although the snip you provide indicates nearly all the errors are with one note. Delete all the text around that note (sentence before and after, with any possible location of the note link in the middle) and retype it all, then reinsert the note. If, on the other hand, this is just a sample of many such errors... it may take more work. That "cut out the mess and re-insert it" method is the only simple fix I know of.

A full fix will probably take this:

• Remove all notes from the document.
• Search for any stray note tags or links (using hidden character searches) to delete.
• Save to IDML and re-open as INDD under a new name (to 'purge' the file).
• Export to EPUB and look for any sign of remaning notes in a local viewer (Kindle Previewer is good for this, or Calibre.)
• Re-insert the notes manually.

Yeah, lots of fun.

Completely editorial note, though, I am not sure there's a lot of value in putting an e-book version on IngramSpark. Yes, in theory it makes it available for sale and in theory readers and libraries might buy it... but my experience is that selling to the EPUB market is a waste of time. I have books on Smashwords and elsewhere and don't think any of them has ever sold a copy. For good or bad, e-book sales worth the effort of listing them means Kindle.

[helenatawny]

I was hoping you would answer! And I knew you'd comment about the endnotes lol. 

So I used the footnote feature when inserting all footnotes, and then converted to endnotes originally. I do generally place my text from Word into the text as you've suggested because then I don't lose any formatting. The manual formatting makes for a much longer and more tedious process when creating a book. Mind you, I work for a book publisher so we are talking books with hundrerds, and in some cases over a thousand pages.

But I found the issue!

So I was looking at the endnotes themselves and I realized there were paragraph returns in only these two endnotes. The amount of errors that were coming up were relative to the amount of paragraph returns. So I made them forced line breaks instead, and viola!, problem fixed. Such a weird case here.

I was also getting an error with the fonts, but I discoved I had the 'embed fonts' box checked, so by unchecking all the problems we're resolved.

Thanks again for all of your help on this forum!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Yes, footnotes have to be one paragraph each, at least for export. Using soft returns is usually deprecated, but this is one of the places to use them if really needed.

It gets easier when it's only one or two notes among the crowd. You can usually spot the cause even it's not one that quite makes sense.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I just wanted to add that this may be a very important observation. There are frequently cases of footnotes and endnotes that do bizarre things on EPUB export, and in most cases it's a matter of working it through, one clumsy point at a time, and sometimes still not getting a good outcome.

I don't know that extra paragraphs in the notes has ever been noticed or addressed — but it's a point I will keep in mind nex time the topic comes up.