InDesign to Ebook: Resources. By Colleen Cunningham, eBook Developer, F+W Media Note: Please visit the updated dedicated e-production resources page. Here at Digital Book World we published an article (InDesign to Ebook: Resources) over a year ago, summing up useful resources and tools for producing ebooks and for converting into ebook formats. After getting a great response from the community, we decided to update that article and make a dedicated e-production resources page that we’ll keep updated with the latest and greatest ebook information.
If you are new to ebook production, start with The Basics section for a short introduction. Ebooks in the EPUB and Kindle format basically consist of sets of downloadable, zipped-up websites that use CSS and HTML to format the content. Many print designers are asking, “How much code do I really need to learn?” Around the Web Books Community Conferences Ebook Retailer Specs Podcasts Special Topic: Regular Expressions Around the Web Book Industry Study Group Cari Jansen eBook Architects. Choosing InDesign ePub output options. InDesign CS4 is one of the most popular tools for creating ePubs, but the range of options it provides when exporting can confound many users. While I’m not a wizened InDesign expert, I have accumulated a set of choices for the various options that differ from the defaults and can help form the basis of high-quality ePub output from InDesign.
As you become more comfortable working with InDesign’s particular quirks, you’ll probably want to adapt these instructions to your particular style of manuscript setup. 0. Use InDesign CS4 It’s critically important to use the InDesign CS4 rather than an earlier version. From your CS4 .indb file, select Export Book for Digital Editions…, an export filename, and start working through the three-paneled set of output options: 1. General options panel in InDesign CS4 ePub output The first section of General options have to do with the metadata that InDesign will include in the OPF. The next set of choices around CSS is more flexible. 2. 3. Making eBooks from InDesign, Part 2. This article is excerpted from the October/November 2009 issue of InDesign Magazine, #32.
Subscribe to InDesign Magazine. In part 1 of this series, you learned how to create a file in InDesign that successfully exports to a format eBook readers can display. But after exporting an EPUB file from InDesign, it’s sometimes necessary to modify it. For instance, you might want to insert a forced page break, add metadata to the file, or change table formatting. In this article, I’ll walk you through the process of opening an EPUB file, and I’ll explain how the file’s components work. Click the image below to download the article as a PDF file. Making eBooks from InDesign, Part 1. This article is excerpted from the October/November 2009 issue of InDesign Magazine, #32.
Subscribe to InDesign Magazine. It’s been talked about for years: a paperless book that can be downloaded from a Web site and read on an electronic reading device. And now that thousands of eBooks are being downloaded every day, the eBook revolution is finally upon us. After ordering an eBook, you can instantly download it to your computer, smartphone, or dedicated eBook device and start reading it. You can search through the text for a specific word or phrase. You can adjust the size of the text and choose a different font. You can add digital bookmarks and non-permanent annotations.
With all these benefits combined with an increased consumer appetite for eBooks, it’s no wonder that publishers are making material available in digital format. In this article, I’ll first introduce you to the EPUB file format. In part 2, I'll show you how to edit an EPUB file after export. Go to part 2. Creating epub from InDesign – EBW Knowledge Base. There are many ways to create epub files. One of these is via InDesign. Since most books move through InDesign at some stage, this is likely to be a popular route for many designers and production teams. Unfortunately, this isn’t yet a simple process.
I hope that one day these notes will stand as a testament to how hard this used to be. There are two routes to epub to consider here. If the book is already typeset, consider carefully whether it is worth your time reworking the file in InDesign for epub export. We’ve included advice for working from InDesign CS3, but really, really you want at least CS4 for this. The advice given here doesn’t yet cover CS5, we wrote this a while ago.