Quote:
Originally Posted by cybmole
quote "I had a client send me a powerpoint document ..... So I had to manually copy and paste all 95 pages into word "
what ??? RTFM. or press that button labelled F1 now & again. hint - look up outline view
better still - find a more suitable trade - computer geek you are not  |
Sure, he went about it the wrong way. But how did WE learn? Hands up anyone who planned a career in eBook design, chose a school, studied and qualified, joined a guild with trade secrets and THEN found their first job? No, an opportunity arose, we thought "I can do that!" and learnt on the job. And remember, if it's going to be a paid job, it has to start that way. Work once for free, you have to for ever.
When I first encountered eBooks, the best advice seemed to be Word export to HTML, then drop it into some Java-powered conversion engine. And it worked, up to a point. There are still people who think in terms of automatic conversion from Word layout (which they understand) into eBook HTML (which they don't). How will they learn, other than making a fool of themselves on a forum like this one?
I started when a friend, owner of an established specialist publishing company, realised his catalogue had to be available as eBooks. He did the conversions himself, following the best advice he could find (see above). He could do a few things in Sigil, but Code View was a closed book. Results were fair, and his eBooks sold well. But he wanted better, and had lots more books to convert. He decided to teach me the conversion process.
I'm a geek :-) Half-way through the first session I was teaching him. It took me a little time to realise that the "approved" method was all about retaining complication, when a good eBook demanded simplicity. The breakthrough came when he stopped "converting", came to terms with tags and styles and started pouring plain text into Sigil. Last week, he used Regex to construct several hundred hyperlinks to an Endnotes chapter. I was very proud!
Some of his publisher friends now send me work. I'm still learning on the job (mostly learning how to tell a client "No, trying to reproduce that fussy layout will just cause trouble" :-) Everyone I asked has helped me, I have helped everyone who asked. Everyone's happy.