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A
alisonc13530911
Participant
April 11, 2017
Question

Why are my epub files so huge?

  • April 11, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 4775 views

I have just completed a very small epub ebook. It has three images (all jpegs, the largest 927kb, the other two under 100kb) and very little text. It all looks gorgeous, but I am having real problems with the file size. It ended up exporting to epub at 16MB, which is way too large. I have been saving as and I converted all the files to IDML and back again, but no dice, still 16MB. Assuming this was because of a lot of gunge collected as I put it together I began again, with all new paragraph styles etc just to be sure. Got it down to 6.7MB, which is still a ridiculous size for this ebook, but usable for my purposes. I am planning to make a much longer ebook (not image heavy, but a lot of text) and if the inflation continues at this rate I'll have 100MBs in no time for books that ought to be no more than 4MB. Why is thjs happening, and how can I make economical files?

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1 reply

BobLevine
Community Expert
BobLevineCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 11, 2017

What version of InDesign? What version of EPUB? How many fonts are there and are they being embedded? Which fonts?

A
alisonc13530911Author
Participant
April 11, 2017

Hi Bob, thanks for answering. It's the latest version, EPUB 3.0. Only one font (Georgia), though I'm using italics and bold. I'm unsure whether it's embedded - how do you tell?

I think I found out why the file swelled, though. I looked inside and found a rogue 5.6MB image that must have been generated during export (presumably the rasterized image?) I'm using a jpg as a cover image, that's the >1MB one. Is it possible to stop it generating this extra image and just use the one I put in? And - if you have time - what in general is best practice for slim EPUBs? Would deeply appreciate any advice.

BobLevine
Community Expert
BobLevineCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 12, 2017

Use a very simple cover image or don't use one at all. You don't have to allow InDesign to generate one.

I don't recall ever trying to get a file down to the size you want/require. At a certain point you just can't go any smaller. The HTML and font files alone will cause the file to increase.

You still didn't tell us what version of InDesign you're using.

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