Page transitions don't work in EPUB or interactive PDF

[adieu]

We make guidebooks, currently sold as interactive PDFs with plans to convert to fixed layout EPUBs.

I understand from posts here that page transitions only work in interactive PDFs if you are willing to jump through hoops. We can't make them work, whether in Acrobat full screen mode or not. We have tested a variety of transitions at different speeds on many pages, but none work in Acrobat or Apple Books.

However, I thought from posts here that they would work if converted to fixed layout EPUB. We have tested them in both Adobe Digital Editions and Apple Books without success.  Are there EPUB hoops we're not jumping through?

Thanks.

[adieu]

That's a funny coincidence. Don't fact-check me!

I downloaded the Kindle previewer and opened the file. I see what you mean. It might be a simple issue to fix, not that I would know how. I also notice that none of the hyperlinks work, whether internal or external. That would be a killer, of course. Some googling suggests links might not be so simple to fix, though one page I found says sometimes links don't work in the previewer but do in the finished product. A bug maybe? Does your book get into fixing these issues?

I need to do some research. Thanks for the input. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Oh, I don't know half enough about the island's geography and ports to even spell-check the names. (Especially PNW names...) And funny, this is the second overlap. The guy who publishes The Coffee News (?) was asking questions here the other day. On a Zoom call with my brother, I asked about it, and he holds one up — "You mean this?" Maybe it's fate.

Anyway, both issues (the missing images and the links) are quite fixable if you wanted to go with Kindle publication. Both should work fine; I can guess at some of the causes they don't work in this sort of hack test. Both are specifics somewhat above the coverage of the — my! — guide, but within reach, I think.

Even with your focused market, Kindle might be an excellent replacement for direct PDF sales. A reader is available for pretty much every device and everyone (pretty much) has an Amazon account.

[adieu]

The Kindle reader, as opposed to the previewer, allows the import and viewing of PDFs. They look good, but interactive features such as hyperlinks do not work.

Is the Kindle format not a proprietary version of EPUB? Is there a way to import EPUBs into the reading app that I am missing?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

The history of Kindle is complex. The format has evolved a few times but is based on the "other" e-book format, MOBI, which Amazon bought as a fledgling system, then alternately supported and distanced for years and finally deprecated altogether. It is 100% proprietary at this point.

PDF is not a bad way to get a fixed-page book into Kindle, but it's not the best, either, and I doubt there's any way to get around the interactive button problems, since you can't hack and edit PDF very well.

An FXL EPUB would be the right path and with care, I think all the overlay images and interactive links would work correctly. EPUB and Kindle both support internal links, and that's all you seem to be using. It would probably be a matter of keeping it all simple enough and not ratcheting up the complexity.

[adieu]

Each guide, including the one you looked at, has about 50 external links, about half URL's and half email addresses.

Do you know of a book or website where I could go to learn why the images do not display correctly in EPUB on a Kindle? I've found a couple forums frequented by Kindle creators but the topics discussed don't seem relevant to my issues. Won't spend much time looking into it until late February after the boat show season. Back to work 🙂

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I don't know how well Kindle readers (as opposed to Kindle apps on mobile devices) handle external links, if at all. So that may not be an option if you want to keep the connectivity. OTOH, you could make it clear that an app is needed for full features; that would only honk off some very small intersection of readers who wanted to use your (pretty much inherently mobile) guide on a dedicated hardware Kindle reader.

It is difficult to find any e-publishing forum in which the topics are relevant to much of anything. A vast and hostile wasteland... but I'll stop there.

I'd be happy to work with you on the issue if you want to explore getting your guide fully onto Kindle apps. When you have time, it might be worthwhile to create a micro-version of your work file, with just a few pages that have both shared internal links and outside links. I'd need to see the INDD file at some point, along with the EPUB you've already posted.

My suspicion is that the vanishing images problem is related to layers and the way the active links are construction in InDesign. It might be enough to use simpler methods and bypass the tricky, animated, interactive approach.