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Tom33387368tgb3
Participant
November 5, 2023
Question

Hellllllllp: InDesign ePub error msg.

  • November 5, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 482 views

First I want to say thank you to the members here who have been so helpful!

 

Well, we have gone from bad to worse… I  revised the TOC saved the ePub file out... uploaded to Draft2Digital and here's what it said:

 

•Warning - You have submitted an ePub3 that has a fixed layout. This may prevent publication at certain digital stores.

•Warning - You have submitted an ePub3 that is missing an NCX file. This may prevent publication at certain digital stores.
•Warning - You have submitted an encrypted ePub. Encryption is not fully supported across the publishing industry and may delay or prevent publication at certain digital stores.

I don't remember changing anything else...

any comments would be most appreciated!
I have till Monday morning at 9am

 

Thanks

Tom

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    T
    Tom33387368tgb3Author
    Participant
    November 6, 2023

    Any one else?

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Legend
    November 6, 2023

    What are you looking for? None of these warnings is critical/stop-the-presses. It's one validation system saying "These may be problems for some sellers/readers." Which they are, starting with the choice of fixed layout.

     

    EPUB validation used to be critical, when books were assembled by hand, each component file being written or generated as a separate step, and many mistakes could be made. In the era of mature EPUB export tools, validation is useful for resolving some problems but no longer an absolute necessity for successful publication. There is also no absolute standard for validation, other than EPUBcheck, which is integrated into most validators along with lotsa lotsa "help" about what that service thinks needs fixing.

     

    So, yes, you could spend a lot of time fixing those latter two problems. And then find another validator flags variations of them, or other "errors" they don't happen to like. Or not, but will have gained little in the effort.

     

    There's one and only one real problem in the above: choosing fixed layout in 2023.

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Legend
    November 5, 2023

    Fixed layout EPUB (FXL) is a problematic and all but obsolete format. It should not be used for text books (==books that are all text, or mostly text with associated images). Its one remaining use is for picture books (==pages are a single picture, with or without a little text) like children's books, art books, graphic novels etc.

     

    I am not quite sure what the other warnings mean, without further information etc. InDesign can and does export EPUBs that are compatible with every major service; some run more strict validation that requires small nits to be fixed (like the empty TOC problem) and others have unique (or idiosyncratic) requirements that require certain extra steps. EPUB validation is a questionable need when you are no longer building EPUBs from separately crafted files, as the old model had it. Once in a while there is a legitimately broken bit, even from InDesign, usually tracing to a corrupted document file. But often it's pointless nits about the length of a header file or encryption on the metadata string, things that won't affect one reader in a thousand but hold up acceptance of the book.

     

    But unless you are publishing a picture-page book, I'd switch to reflowable, optimize it for that, and you will probably see the collateral warnings disappear.

      T
      Tom33396090hdx4
      Participant
      November 5, 2023

      Using InDesign 2023 on a Windows PC

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