InDesign to ePub

[mpkadobe]

I used InDesign to lay out a 600 page novel. It is set up to be published as a paperback. There are 6 main sections that are actually separate ID documents which are linked in ID as a book. The 6 sections are separated with full-bleed illustrations, and there are chapter headings at the beginning of each chapter. In addition each page has a header with page numbers and section titles, etc.  (see attached PDF)

Now I want to export an ePub file to use as the platform for a Kindle ebook. I exported a trial epub file from ID, and all the text and illustrations are there, but unfortunately there are two problems:

1) All the text is sort of smashed together with no breaks between the various chapters.

2) There is no TOC information to help an ebook reader navigate the ebook.

Do I need to completely reformat the paperback ID file in a different way to be useful for epub?

If so, is there a good tutorial on how to set up an ID project to work for epub exporting?

Thanks for your help.

[BobLevine]

Impossible to answer without seeing the file but generally speaking the document should be one long threaded text story with the images anchored within. The use of styles is also very important to break the chapters and generate a TOC.

[Randy Hagan]

As a general rule, It's much easier to tailor an InDesign document created with ePub output in mind than it is to repurpose a print pub into an electronic one. Beyond that, there are various types and versions of ePub files to consider that can affect how your digital book will appear (or in unfortunate circumstances, may not appear) in ePub readers.

To get a good explanation of ePub specifications, and how best to use InDesign to meet them, I recommend Adobe Help documentation you'll find through this link. If you jump into the rabbit hole and follow the accompanying follow-on links listed in that help file, it'll give you a lot of insight in determining what kind of ePub formatting will work best for you and how InDesign can help you get the results you'd like to have.

Hope this helps,

Randy

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

I usually use the Articles panel to orgainize the order of parts of the ePub. I'm not in front of my layout computer right now, but I don't think you can use it for a book file. If that's accurate, you might want to move all the pages into one file for the ePub (Pages panel menu>Move). Another option to try to to set the content order on page order, but I think the Articles panel is better. 

I suspect James Gifford will reply to this since making ePubs is one of his specialities. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

No, EPUB from InDesign isn't easy. And as Randy nails it, it can be even harder to go from a layout developed for print than one developed from the beginning either for e-book or dual-format export. Most first timers have some expectation that it's like print or PDF or JPEG export — point, click, go, perfect. It's not. Even from perfect source material, getting an acceptable EPUB result, much less a 'perfect' one, takes extra work that isn't necessarily... obvious.

To start with, here's a rundown of the general concepts: http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/DPR/dpr_indesign_epub_basics.php . That covers pretty much everything from a cold start to a good grasp of what's involved.

The problem is that EPUB demands absolutely meticulous document structure and format, even in the invisibile details. A typical print layout, by a designer who doesn't sweat the small details (uses shortcuts, spot formatting, little hacks to get the results they want), will not make it to EPUB format successfully. It's a bit like the difference between a clay mockup of a car, and an actual car: they may look the same, but only one is going to drive on out of the shop. Everything that's "inside" matters a great deal.

It also sounds as if you exported to Fixed-Page EPUB, FXL. Don't. FXL has a few remaining niche uses, mostly for 'picture page' books, but is difficult, obsolete and a very poor choice for text books (that is, books that are all or mostly text). Reflowable EPUB is the right mode.

It's probably too late to back up and make your print InDesign file optimal for EPUB, or dual-format, so the best path is to create a complete duplicate of the project so that you can re-carve it into a form that will give you the EPUB export you want. (It will no longer be suitable for print, in most cases, so you don't want to try to tweak your existing layout. It is possible to create dual-format ID docs that export to both PDF and EPUB, but that is both an advanced technique and one that needs to be in mind pretty much from the start.)

So absorb that reference essay, and come on back with your next questions. 🙂

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

@James Gifford—NitroPress I got the impression that the OP was making (or trying to make) and flowable ePub. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

The comments about text being smooshed etc. make me think FXL; also, most first-timers make the natural, but wrong assumption that it's the right or simple choice since it's "just like PDF" and other familiar things. I could be wrong. 🙂

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

I read that as the chapters are all running together consecutively with no graphics between them. The OP will have to clarify.

[Randy Hagan]

I also thought that. But when I checked the sample file provided with the post, it's either a print-format file and not relevant, or considered that fixed ePub intent, and wasn't getting the desired result. Setup would be different considering the setup, so I'm hopeful if the original poster is still reading this thread we could get an update on what kind of ePub output is desired..

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Aye, the OP needs to process all the above and fill in details. The example file seems to be a print-format PDF export, which doesn't help the discussion much; if it's an EPUB export, the page structure and headers/page numbers indicate FXL. (As it doesn't show anything I'd call a flaw, I'd bet on the former.)

Just covering all the bases for expediency, and the tendency of first-timers to go with FXL is a given. 🙂

[mpkadobe]

Thank you everyone for your great replies. Very helpful. I can see the only option for me it to make a separate copy of the project, conflate all the separate documents into one, and rebuild it as a ePub focused ID file.

I do love a challege and learning new stuff.....

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Yep. Again, EPUB is deceptive in that it seems to be another pushbutton export option... and ain't. But it does yield to a learning curve.

Two quick points: if you're going to reconstruct the book anyway, combining it into one file will make things easier. But you don't absolutely have to; you can export to EPUB from a Book as well. BUT but – consider before you set up another project using the Book structure. It's not a necessary thing, it doesn't add a lot to a project or simplify it, and it does add another layer of overhead and management.

Use a Book when –

• The component chapters will need a lot of separate development, especially by multiple authors or editors.
• The book overall is quite large or uses a lot of images, so that breaking it into smaller files speeds up the editing and layout process and helps keep one glitched file from taking the whole project's updates and work with it.

Otherwise, a single-file project and making use of features like sections, articles and simple page-break chapter headings makes life a lot simpler, all the way to print and/or export.

Happy to answer all the questions you might have. 🙂

[mpkadobe]

Thank you James for the tips. I chose to separate the project in 6 sections because the novel is broken into 6 sections and is 600 pages overall, so I thought it would be easier to navigate that way.

Working on the ePub version now, I have already conflated the 6 into 1 and am getting my head wrapped around how to format everything (for flowable epub) so that the text is neatly separated as needed.

Again, thank you for your help.

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @mpkadobe,

Thank you for the detailed update! It’s great to hear that you’ve consolidated the sections into one file and are diving into formatting for a reflowable EPUB. Tackling a project of this size and complexity is no small feat, and it’s clear you’re up for the challenge!

As you move forward, some key steps to keep in mind:

1. Make sure to use Paragraph Styles for headings, body text, and other elements consistently. Styles are essential for creating the chapter breaks and generating a Table of Contents (TOC) automatically.

2. TOC Setup: To include TOC navigation in your EPUB, define the TOC style in InDesign and map it to your chapter headings or any other key elements in the document.

3. Ensure all illustrations and graphics are anchored within the text flow so they appear in the correct order in the reflowable layout.

4. Use the Articles panel to arrange the export order of content. This is especially useful for fine-tuning how your text and images appear in the EPUB file.

5. Export the EPUB periodically to check how it looks in different readers (like Adobe Digital Editions or Kindle Previewer). This will help you catch and address formatting issues early.

If you run into challenges, feel free to share details or screenshots. The community and I are here to help!

Best of luck with this project.

Best, 
Abhishek

[mpkadobe]

Thank you for the tips Abhishek. I am actually familar with Paragraph Styles, so it was not hard to reformat the book for epub. The only remaining difficulty is how to introduce blank space such as line breaks in the epub format. 

For instance, if I want the tile of the book to appear alone on the first "page", I know how to put in splits so that it appears alone, but to get it to be in the middle (vertically) of the page I do not understand. I figured out the trick of using white font character to force text down to the middle of a page, and that works when reading the epub in Mac Books with a white background, but when the epub gets converted to Kindle, the white text becomes black again and the "invisible" characters become visible. 

Any good tips on how to insert blank space in epub?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

You basically can't use any formatting hacks for e-book export. Whereas in print you could (as an extreme example) put every letter in its own text frame and meticulously align them on the page, and no one looking at a printed result would have any clue of the structure, it's not too much to say that EPUB is the structure — you can't hide how the page elements are built and positioned. So you have to use very clean formatting, especially for things like spacing, so as not to leave any unwanted 'structure' exposed in the result.

If you need space between paragraphs, or paragraphs and anchored objects like images, you have to use spacing (mostly above/below). You can't use extra/empty paragraph returns, and should avoid line returns/soft returns even more than in print layout. Absolutely nothing else (within reason) will work. EPUB deletes empty paragraphs, soft returns should be stripped as a routine practice, and the correspondence of spacing in ID and spacing in EPUB is... complicated. (A general rule is that one inch in ID will translate to one-half inch in most EPUB readers.)

If you want items (such as chapter headings) spaced down from the top of a page, use the Rule Above method within ID (ask if you don't know how that trick works), and a combination of page break - document split - space above in EPUB.

That is, for a chapter heading you want spaced down from the top of a [virtual reader] page, give that paragraph style a page break/before, give it the spacing-above you desire (at that 1 inch to 1/2 inch ratio, as a starting point), and then split the EPUB document on that paragraph style.

Since the next question will be about full-page graphics/images 🙂 — you can't do them in reflowable EPUB. The best you can do is break an image to a new page, and assign it an individual object size setting of None. That will usually make an image the maximum possible ssize, a bit wider than the text margins but not the full screen width.

[mpkadobe]

Thank you James for the details. It makes for a LOT of paragraph styles to fine tune an epub, doesn't it?

I actually had figured out how to use 'space before' and 'space after' in the paragraph settings, as well as checking Split ePub in the export tags. All that was working.

One issue I was having was the book title on the very first page. Even though I set the 'book title' style for 1 inch space above, that space was not showing in ID becuase there was nothing above it. So, I thought it wasn't working. Now I see that when exported to epub and viewed in an app like Apple Books, that space above does show up.

Thanks again for all your help.

Marc

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

It doesn't necessarily mean a lot of styles unless you have the (bad) habits of using just a few styles and then spacing things with extra returns and overrides. Especially for something as structurally simple as a novel, a dozen styles will probably do it. But each has to be optimized for EPUB export and used correctly, within a methodically planned structure. You do have to have a defined style for each and every variation, so the trick is to minimize those variations where you can.

First pages are usually easy in that they are the true top of the EPUB's single page; space-above etc. is usually respected there without any problems. (It's on later, virtual pages that there is no actual "top" and the extra formatting is needed.) And all EPUB reades, along with Kindle, are different, so you either have to accept varying presentations or fine tune them for each resale portal (Kindle and Apple especially, with Smashwords/D2D usually being happy with a fairly vanilla version).

It gets easier to fine-tune and fix EPUB exports once you make the jump to CSS style management; on the one hand, you have to add that knowledge, but afterwards you're no longer dependent on ID's defaults and quirks.

[mpkadobe]

James, when I export from ID to epub, the file automatically opens in Apple Books. One issue I have been having is it always opens to page 4, the first chapter page, rather than page 1, the book title page. Is there a setting that will correct that?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

The answer is complicated but mostly no — at least, not from the ID export level. Readers choose their own starting point, sometimes by hard coding and sometimes by user settings. If you open it with Kindle Previewer, it will open on the cover image. If you open it in Thorium or Calibre (the two most vanilla, general EPUB readers), it might open on either — I can't recall off hand — but you can select the cover from the dynamic TOC. And so forth.

You can edit the header information of the EPUB to force or change this behavior, but I strongly disbelieve in post-export editing. As with so much in the e-book world, you have only so much control over the various readers and platforms and it's best to just relax to it. 😛

[mpkadobe]

Got it.

Thanks again for your advice.