The Lynda.com course by Anne-Marie Concepción, “InDesign CC: EPUB Fundamentals,” was incredibly helpful for my first attempt at self-publishing an e-book of a print book. On my Mac, I export my book file from InDesign CC 2014 as a reflowable EPUB 3, and it looks and functions perfectly in iBooks (desktop and iDevices). I use Kindle Previewer to convert to MOBI, and almost everything is right in Kindle.
In the InDesign export options, I am selecting Preserve Local Overrides. (I’m sorry, Anne-Marie! I know you told me not to, but 99% of my formatting is converting perfectly, so I hope to save time with this book. Next time I’ll use character styles for everything from the start, I promise!) My main problem is small caps. Not only do my paragraph styles for chapter titles and sub-headings use small caps (and some date references to B.C. or A.D.), but the English word “Lord” needs to be in small caps in certain places in the body of the book to signal translation of a different Hebrew word than when appearing as the regular font “Lord.” So, this is not just a style preference for headings, but an actual problem for meaning in the body of the book.
The small caps are appearing correctly in my Kindle for Mac desktop app. They are also appearing correctly on my ancient, original Kindle reader (and Kindle Previewer suggests they’ll look right on a Fire, but my order is shipping, so I haven’t tested that physical device yet). However, the small caps are changing to regular font in the Kindle app on my iPhone and iPad. What a frustrating inconsistency!
I tried removing the local override and creating a character style defined to small caps. Worked on the desktop app and ancient Kindle (and Previewer), but not on the iDevices. I tried faking small caps by shrinking caps for those letters to a font size about 75% of the first letter (both as an override and as a character style). Worked on the desktop app and ancient Kindle (and Previewer), but not on the iDevices.
Is there something I can do in InDesign that will cause small caps to correctly display in the iDevice apps? Or do I have to crack open the EPUB, add code, and zip it back up before I convert to MOBI? If so, what file do I amend, and what code do I add where?
My second problem is that there are a few places in the book that use a custom Greek font, with permission from the creator, in quotations of other authors. So again, it isn’t just a style preference, but a requirement to accurately quote those authors. In export options, I selected Include Embeddable Fonts, and the Greek appears in iBooks and on my Kindle for Mac desktop app (and Previewer), but not in the Kindle app for iDevices or the ancient Kindle reader. Is there something I can do about this?
Thank you in advance for any help you can offer!
.
