May I ask, what the thoughts are towards e-pubs for Android tablets at the moment? I see that Cari's getting her e-mag out there on Android soon. Any one else into Android via InDesign - whether e-pub books or DPS mags? Also, experience/thoughts concerning aggregators or going solo would be interesting. 

I tested a PDF with .mp4s on an iPad, and the video worked fine 

(needed the ezPDF Reader to make that work). I didn't do anything 

with the video file other than make sure it was H264 compliant.

Tom Chmielewski

Editor/Publisher

TEC Publishing

(269) 978-8182

www.tecpublishing.com

tom@tecpublishing.com

Steve,

Thanks for the link ... great resource.  Let me extend that to the entire community you guys have been an invaluable resource and I look forward to future opportunities to problem solve with this fine group!

Cheers,

Command_Q

So, Bob, I'd assumed (being on PC), I'd use the winzip utility to unzip (after changing the epub file to a zip file). And then after fiddling with the CSS in Dreamweaver, saving changes, I'd have to zip the file again, then change the file name back to epub, no? Am I missing something "native" in windows?? Sorry if this is a dumb question.

Thanks. I'll give it a go.

Bob,

Preface by saying I'm on a PC. The only place I found where I could change the .epub file extension to .zip was in exporting book to epub, in the "save as" field. It did convert the .epub to .zip, but since I have winzip already installed, the file ended up in the winzip file format. I extracted the OEBP folder, opened the css file in dreamweaver, made the changes I wanted (in this case, fixing the formatting of the initial text drop cap), saved that in Dreamweaver. Then I sent the OEBP folder back into the Winzip, but now I have no idea where to go to change the .zip extension back to .epub. The winzip zip files always show up in explorer as an icon. I also tried compressing to a compress folder, but can't find in explorer where that folder got saved to. Anne Marie Conception makes it all look so easy. Any thoughts?

Maybe I should just go back over Anne-Marie's video to see again the text editor she named that doesn't require unzipping. I hope there's one for PC, that doesn't screw up my computer, like Sigil did.

I’m a small traditional paper book publisher who wants to convert some my back catalogue into ebooks. And to release both paper and ebook versions of future books. 

I’ve been using InDesign CS3 for traditional book publishing. It does the job well and there’s been no compelling reason to upgrade. That is, until I went to a recent Adobe roadshow and heard of the wonders of InDesign 5.5 for ebook production. OK – it was time to upgrade and wet my feet in the ebook field!

Keen to get started, I took a look at the programme’s built-in Help. Not helpful. As far as working with ebooks is concerned, the Help menu in InDesign 5.5 seems to be mainly a list of choices to make when exporting to the epub format. No explanation of the significance of these. There were links to articles, extremely limited videos, and forums such as this one. All very well, and appreciated, but essentially that’s an Adobe cop-out.

Most of the information and discussion about CS5.5’s epub world relates to fancy Wired Magazine-type publications or all-singing and dancing apps for iPads. Or existing epublishers are making comparisons with earlier InDesign versions and discussing thingsthat are only comprehensible to people ‘in the know’.  Very little is helpful to someone who is starting from scratch and wants to produce an ebook version of a traditional, text-oriented book.

Where is the basic information that tells me how to get started and how I should tweak an existing InDesign file in order to produce an acceptable ebook? Essentially all I want in my end product is a graphic of the book’s cover, then the title page, imprint page, table of contents, foreword and 23 chapters of text. In other words, I want to produce a simple product like the latest James Patterson novel at iBooks.

Where can I get this basic information? There’s stuff out there relating to earlier versions of InDesign, but I don’t want to go near it, because the latest version is supposed to have been extensovely re-jigged. I’m not into voluntary confusion.

‘From the ground up’ instructions for CD5.5 seem don’t seem to be available from Adobe. Third parties who write books and articles, and produce videos about InDesign aren’t up to speed yet.

It’s five months since CS5.5 was released. Considering that Adobe has pushed ebook production as a compelling reason for upgrading to CS5.5, they should have provided comprehensive support material from Day One. They should have worked with third party book and video producers so their material would be available from Day One.

I’m not a happy camper. Sure, I’ll probably work all this out eventually. But I have more profitable things to do with my time.

With luck I’ve missed something and there is a manual out there – specifically for InDesign CS5 – provided free by Adobe, as essential support to what is one of the world’s more expensive software programs.

Why a PM? Don't you suppose the rest of us might like to see the Adobe tools perform?

There seem to be two kinds of eBooks in the iBookstore. There're the...

simple product like the latest James Patterson novel at iBooks.

...that johnmacg spoke about in his previous post.

And there're the  — what I call — enhanced eBooks. The best way to describe these is by example. SO, go to iTunes and download Amelia Bedelia. It's a kids book; you don't have to buy it, just the test pages.

What's the difference?

1. The "simple" eBooks johnmacg refers to:

• Have the controls built into the book pages. Yes, you can summon/dismiss them by tapping, but there's a place for them on the header line, as part of the book
  
• Allow you to increase the type size by selecting the little A, big A feature. They do not allow spreading finger enlargement.
  
• Display bread crumbs at the page bottom for zipping through the pages.
• Impose margins that take up a lot of top, outside, bottom space.
• Trigger a link to a standard TOC text when you touch the TOC icon.
• Change page count as you enlarge/reduce font size.

2. The "enhanced" type books I refer to:

• Have controls that appear/disappear above the trim line of the books. They are not part of the "book" real estate.
  
• Allow you to size (reduce/enlarge) by spreading fingers. The little A, big A feature does not appear. The entire page enlarges.
• Display thumbnails, not bread crumbs for book navigation (makes sense because these books are visually rich and frequently have a lower page content).
• Do not impose margins; you can have images into margin and beyond, into what would be considered the "bleed" area in a print book.
• Does not trigger a link to a standard TOC, but to rows of thumbnail icons for each page.
• Do not change page count as you enlarge/reduce font size

Unlike johnmacg, I'm interested in category 2 — what I call the enhanced eBook. And I can produce books like this up to a point. That's because it seems to me that they must start life as PDFs and somehow get converted into ePubs to be acceptable to the iBookstore.

We have created prototypes in inDesign, output them to PDF, then loaded them onto an iPad on the PDF tab, of course. What we get is a book that looks like and performs exactly like Amelia Bedelia. Same features I enumerated above.

What we don't get is how to create the page paradigm, with the shadow demarcation in the gutter and the supplemental pages on the outer edges. Does this have to be designed as an inDesign master page?

We also can't duplicate the "page turning" transition, even though it is available in the Page Transitions menu, but for SWF only (thanks a lot Adobe!). But these are minor to solving the problem of how one converts — if my startiing-life-as-a-PDF hypothesis is correct — a PDF with all the "enhanced"  functions into an Apple acceptable ePub? Do we need a programmer? Can we do it alone withinDesign? How do we do it?

I have whole books waiting to go — text over illustrations, text alone, illustrations alone  —, but we don't know how to do the rest. Someone must know, because we see the two types of books in the iBookstore. We've downloaded them, compared them. Feature-wise, our PDFs match Amelia Bedelia 95%.

Why is there no information from Adobe on the types of books in the iBookstore, how to create each one step-by-step, how to test and error check them so they meet Apple standards, and finally how to load them to the iBookstore?

I second jonmacg. CS5.5 is a big disappontment, not because it can't do these things, but because even after five months, we still don't know WHAT it can do?

PS. I don't want to pay someone, or anyone, $3000 for training. I've already figured out most of it. Selling an expensive product and then trying to gouge us for training is not acceptable. We want a top-down statement of the kinds of eBooks this product can produce, plus step-by-step instructions for each.

@Johnmacg: At least, do watch Anne-Marie Conception's Lynda.com training, "InDesign CS5 to EPUB, Kindle, and iPad" -- that got me most of the way there, but I'm now having to learn more CSS to be able to make the tweaks to the CSS stylesheet Anne-Marie makes look so simple... At least I've been able to publish my first ebook to amazon & B&N, basic, with the cover, TOC, text, proper chapter, para. spacing & line breaks.

Thanks for the update, AM,

Can you give another link for  the Colin Fleming webinar? The link you gave opens up a window with the audio audible, but with gray survey boxes covering the page.

Mystimac