CreativePro Forum

Return to Member Forum

• Author
  Posts
• • August 3, 2010 at 12:07 pm #56556
    TeroAK

    Member

    Hi,

    How long it takes time to make a decent ePub from a big old indesign novel.

    I have more than one hundred novels of which I have to do epub files.

    Novels have an average of 400 pages and they are allways in a single Indesign file.

    Novels have been made a long time ago and I think I have a lot of work with paragraph and character styles…

    I would like to hear the experiences of making ePub's.

    Thanks in advance!

  • August 3, 2010 at 1:09 pm #56561
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    The hardest part is getting the styles set up properly. Make sure everything has styles applied to it. The easiest/fastest way to do this, in my experience, is by using the Create Character Styles and Create Paragraph Styles feature in the Blatner Tools plug-ins. I made a movie about how it works:

    Go here and click on “Create Paragraph and Character Styles Automatically”

    https://www.dtptools.com/produc…..teractives

    After you style everything, and make a table of contents, the export goes very fast.

  • February 4, 2011 at 7:43 pm #58653
    tantrictami

    Member

    This is a total newby question but how do you get an epub file into indesign to edit?

  • February 5, 2011 at 9:09 am #58654
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    @tantrictami: Good question, but unfortunately you can't go that way. EPUB is an export-only deal.

  • February 5, 2011 at 12:13 pm #58655
    tantrictami

    Member

    Is there a way to import a public domain work so that it can be edited and commented?

    How about opening a pdf file?

    I'd love to say, open the constitution and the bill of rights and show maps of colonial america or pictures of the signors and their home states. Just make it more interactive. I know I could make it really cool but I don't want to re-type all that. Any suggestions?

  • February 5, 2011 at 3:20 pm #58657
    James Fritz

    Member

    If you are looking for public domain works, you might be able to find the plain text versions of the books. Try Project Gutenberg.

    If you find a PDF you can always export the text to a word file (with acrobat pro) and place the text inside InDesign. Recosoft sells a plug-in for InDesign that lets you convert a PDF file into an InDesign document. If you plan on converting lots of PDFs, it might be worth looking into.

  • February 5, 2011 at 8:32 pm #58659
    tantrictami

    Member

    That will work, I have the full creative suite, I'm just learning my way around it. I'll have to send a suggestion to adobe for future improvements. I'm sure they are worried about what I think right? ha ha

    Thanks

  • February 5, 2011 at 8:42 pm #58660
    tantrictami

    Member

    One more technical question, calibre will convert books into any of these formats epub fb2, lit lrf mobi, pdb, pdf, pmlz, rb, rtf, sn8, tcr, txt zip. Will any of these import to indesign?

  • February 5, 2011 at 8:53 pm #58661
    James Fritz

    Member

    InDesign can import rtf and txt from that list. I would recommend rtf because it will bring formatting and possibly styles along with it.

    By the way, I know it is hard to believe but Adobe does really listen to feature requests. If enough people ask for feature X they will seriously consider bringing it into a future version of InDesign. Here is a link to suggest new features.

  • February 5, 2011 at 9:14 pm #58662
    tantrictami

    Member

    Awesome, thanks so much! I did make my pitch to adobe, lets cross our fingers. It may be easier said than done from the development side but that their project not mine. The next few years are going to be very exciting to see where digital publishing goes, I am sure there are many improvements on the horizon.

• Author
  Posts