In June of this year I self-published an 8.5″H x 11″W, 120 page book in full colour using ID CS3. The pages are spreads and the images all hi-res, 300 dpi. The Export PDF… file is large, 322MB. The printer asked for “spreads off” and I sent the file as separate pages. The result on the digital press was excellent with some minor problems.
I now want to publish it through Amazon (Kindle). I read somewhere that KDF books shouldn't exceed 50MB. Most of my color pages are full page. My book is in 5 sections, and I haven't tried “cross media export>XTML digital edition” yet.
I would have to upgrade to CS4, 5, or 5.5 to use the Kindle plugin fo ID. I think I could also do my book again as a PDF using 72dpi 8.5 x 11 images and single pages, but this is a lot of work converting nearly 100 images to 72dpi.
I guess my main questions are: can I use 2-page spreads in an eBook, ePub; would the 'cross media export' do this with my existing book; and failing all else would a “re-built” low res PDF be accepted by Kindle? Is it worth $424 to get CS4 or higher, in order to use the Kindle Plugin to make an ePub?
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