Participant

Question

Fixed format ebook not retaining font

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
March 15, 2022
2 replies
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Hi everyone, I'm hoping someone can help!

I produce reflowable ebooks all the time, and have the styling/formatting down. However, a publisher I freelance for wants a dyslexia-friendly ebook, which requires a specific font, font size and leading, and so I created a fixed format ebook instead (which I haven't done before). It's retained everything for the epub version, but when I convert to mobi (it's a requirement they have, I don't know why, as I don't use mobi files personally any more!) it strips out the font and makes it a standard sans serif one. Anyone know how I can make sure it's retained in the mobi version please?

EPUB

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BobLevine

Community Expert

I thought Amazon deprecated the MOBI format. If the EPUB functions properly in the Books app on Mac or iOS/iPAD, that's the best you'll get out of InDesign.

In short, whatever the issue is, it has nothing to do with InDesign.

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

Certainly true. The problem doesn't have anything to do, or can be fixed from, InDesign.

Nonetheless, the OP is having the problem. And there are other tools that can address the issue.

BobLevine

Community Expert

Good luck with that...you're going to need it. I have way above average CSS/HTML skills and wouldn't even think to crack open a fixed layout epub generated by InDesign.

I'm not trying to throw cold water on this, but every now and again, a project comes along that you just have to pass on.

There's nothing unique about EPUB when it comes to this. HTML/CSS is a standard for EPUB as well as the web so anywhere you can learn about it, will translate nicely across those platforms.

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

You've got a fair number of moving parts here, which kinda make it hard to sleuth what you need to do to get the results you want. Fixed-format .mobi files (which can provide their own challenges), a specific font of unknown format and origins, unknown distribution lines for the fixed-format .mobi output, etc.

But I did run across a forum thread that may offer you some options to consider/workflows to try to get you where you want to be. Without more specifics, I can't predict exactly what will work best for you, but there are some good toggle switches/process options here that may get you past your issues.

Hope this helps,

Randy

J

jenniferp88940690Author

Participant

Thank you so much for your response! The font is 'OpenDyslexicAlta'. I'm converting to mobi using Kindlegen and Calibre with no success with either. With calibre I tried exporting to the 'old' and 'new' and 'both' but none of them worked (and take a long time for each conversion). I'm in over my head, as I normally only need to produce reasonably simple relowable epubs that convert fine for them, but really wanted to sort it for them because it's a great idea for dyslexic readers and the beta readers have responded really well to the sample PDF version! I'll come back to the thread you kindly sent, as I'm not understanding it (but may just be tired!).

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

Hopefully this will help. It's a long thread, but there are multiple courses of action that have addressed two users and among them, both were able to resolve their font embedding issues.

I'm not familiar with Kindlegen, but I have used Calibre to crack/modify epub files before. It has good export tools, but as Bob Levine offered elsewhere in this thread, Amazon (the primary user of .mobi reflowable and fixed-format files) has deprecated its use of .mobi files for Kindle documents. For reflowable epubs, .mobi files are now entirely a no-go. Amazon would really prefer you use other formats for fixed-format epubs and if you insist on using .mobi input, it has specific formatting it expects you to perform before it will accept a file.

Perhaps the biggest lessons I got from the thread is that it's better to subset fonts at the end of the process than it is at any point before, and that there are tools/processes to make the difficult happen, so this may not be a blind alley for you. You may want to specifically ask your publishing client why a .mobi format file is needed, because there may be better options to meet those needs.

Jus' sayin',

Randy

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