Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
So the InDesign to EPUB workflow is a series of iterative steps. And there are
some edits you do in InDesign, some edits you do in an EPUB editor, and you're
always checking to make sure that it's working along the way.
So let me give you an overview of how this works, and rest assured that we're
going to be examining each of these steps in detail throughout this title.
So first of all, we're starting with an InDesign file.
By the way, EPUBs can be created from Microsoft Word files, from HTML files, but
of course we're starting with the pinnacle: InDesign.
And I'm going to talk about some things in the InDesign file that translate over
to EPUB, and some things that don't, and the best ways to prepare your InDesign
file for an optimum EPUB export. So there's some tweaking that you are going
to need to do to the InDesign file. In fact, you'll probably find yourself, if
you've designed it for print, doing a Save As, and then really tweaking it heavily
for your EPUB export. Then inside InDesign there is a command to
Export to EPUB format. Depending on the version that you have, it
might be called Export for Digital Editions, which is the name of the
default utility that Adobe ships with for viewing EPUBs;
I showed that in the previous video. Or it might be called Export for EPUB, but
even then the dialog box still says Digital Editions Export options.
So they're synonymous. You end up with an EPUB file that opens up
in your default EPUB previewer, which as I said is probably Adobe Digital Editions,
and you use that as a rough proof. Because ADE, Adobe Digital Editions, really
isn't 100% accurate previewer of what it's going to look like, say, on iBooks,
or on a Nook. The situation is similar to Web browsers and
Web sites. You create a Web site and it looks one way
in Firefox, and quite different in Internet Explorer, for example.
That's what happens with eReaders when they open up these files.
So we use ADE as a rough proof to make sure that all your images came in, and all
your text came in, and that they're in the right order as a rough proof.
At this point you probably want to validate it, and validating is an important step.
It's a free service, that I will be talking about in a video, that checks your
EPUB file to make sure that it adheres to the standards set forth for all EPUB
files. That the links are working right, that the required files are there, and so on.
It's important because when you are ready to sell this, when you're ready to
distribute it to the Barnes & Noble store, the Sony ReaderStore, the Apple
iBookstore, they will not accept your EPUB unless it validates.
So it's a good idea to start now to make sure that what got exported from
InDesign will validate. And then when we go on to the next step, which is
editing the innards of the EPUB file, you will know that if it doesn't validate
in the future, it wasn't something from InDesign; you probably forgot to close
a tag or something. So that's the next step is that we are going
to open up the EPUB file and edit it. And I showed what an EPUB file looks like
inside in the previous video, so we are going to do some simple, or maybe complex,
editing of the XHTML files, and the CSS files. I will be talking about different ways to
do that, and some common fixes that you might want to do.
You add metadata to the files, and so on. It's actually kind of interesting.
And then of course you want to proof and validate again.
So like I said, it's a series of iterative steps, but at this point when you're
proofing you probably want to go beyond Adobe Digital Editions, and actually get
it, say, on to your iPad, and proof it in iBooks, or put it on a Nook.
In other words, you want to preview it in something closer to what your
customers are going to be looking at to make sure it works there as well.
Finally, when you're happy with how it looks, you do a final validation, which
again is important, because it's just going to be kicked back to you if it
doesn't validate. And then you upload it. You upload it to your Web site if you're going
to sell it by yourself on your own Web site. You upload it to the Apple iBookstore,
or to a third-party aggregator who is helping you distribute this
EPUB in the different venues that we will be talking about later on in this
title. And if you're going to be selling it on the
Amazon Kindle Store, you can upload that EPUB directly to the Kindle Store, and
they will convert it to the Kindle format for you, because Amazon uses a slightly
different format. They don't use EPUBs, they use something called
MOBI. And I have a chapter in this title all about
converting to MOBI files, because I really think it's better if you convert it
yourself on your desktop, and then preview it in the Kindle Previewer, and even
put it on a Kindle and see what it looks like before you upload it, but we'll
get to that. The main thing is that we start with a valid
EPUB, and then at the very end we upload it to the reseller. And that in a nutshell
is the basic InDesign to eBook workflow.