{"id":18397,"date":"2020-02-15T09:54:29","date_gmt":"2020-02-15T17:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/?p=18397"},"modified":"2020-02-15T09:55:51","modified_gmt":"2020-02-15T17:55:51","slug":"on-ebook-creation-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2020\/02\/15\/on-ebook-creation-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"On ebook creation: Tools"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

This past year, creating the ebook of Heavenly Breakfast<\/cite> and the ebook of Feast of Serendib<\/cite>, I have learned a whole lot about creating ebooks.<\/p>\r\n

I hope at some point to write up some of what I\u2019ve learned. But here\u2019s the main thing I\u2019ve learned:<\/p>\r\n

Use tools that do all the hard stuff for you.<\/p>\r\n

In particular, if possible, use Vellum<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

(\u2026One really big conceptual-background thing to be aware of, btw, is that a reflowable ebook is, in essence, just a collection of web pages. At core, both ePub and Mobi consist mostly of a set of HTML files and some CSS. So you could<\/em> create ebooks by hand, but I strongly recommend against it.)<\/p>\r\n

For Heavenly Breakfast<\/cite>, I scanned the printed book (using the excellent CZUR scanner<\/a>) into a Word document, proofread that document, imported it into Vellum, and clicked a few buttons to create an ePub version that passed Apple\u2019s checks and a Mobi version that passed Amazon\u2019s checks. (Well, to reach the final Mobi version, I had to run Vellum\u2019s exported ePub-for-Kindle file through Kindlegen. And in both ePub files, I did tweak the CSS slightly.) There was a lot more to the book-creation process than that, but most of the other work was working out content changes and additions with Chip, not ebook-production work. Vellum does a great job of creating ebooks that conform to Apple\u2019s and Amazon\u2019s guidelines\/specifications.<\/p>

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For Feast<\/cite>, I started with an InDesign file, converted every paragraph in the book to using named styles, anchored every photo and illustration to nearby text, exported using InDesign\u2019s ebook-export tool, applied some conditional text, edited the resulting CSS by hand, then went through a convoluted process involving Calibre, which the web is convinced is the only and best tool for editing an ebook. (My process: Convert to AZW3; edit the CSS in Book Editor; then convert to old-style Mobi.) I ran into many problems, mostly because I was trying to reproduce a lovely print book design as an ebook. And the resulting Mobi file doesn\u2019t work in Amazon\u2019s Kindle Previewer tool. More recently, I tried skipping Calibre and using kindlegen, and found a less convoluted approach that does work with Kindle Previewer.<\/p>\r\n

So for books that are mostly text, don\u2019t have fancy design elements, and can be easily gotten into a Word file, Vellum is amazing. (It\u2019s expensive and it\u2019s Mac-only, but it does excellent work. (Though I haven\u2019t looked at its print output; I\u2019m only creating ebooks.) I haven\u2019t tried the lower-cost and free alternatives, so I can\u2019t speak to how good a job they do.) For books that have fancier design elements and start out in an app like InDesign, Vellum is the wrong tool; instead, manual export and manual CSS editing may be the best option. But in the latter case, there are many obstacles and pitfalls, mostly around HTML and CSS features that aren\u2019t supported in some Kindles.<\/p>\n\n