Perfect Ebook Conversion

[herebedragons69]

I've made a website for an Author that wants to sell his ebook online. He provided me with a pdf and and word doc of his ebook. I have tried online converters and then calibre and a program called "k2pdfopt" and then ran that pdf through "calibre". When I view them all on my ipad the converted document is not the same as the pdf. However, in the calibre ebook viewer they look pretty good.

What's the best way to get a true 100% conversion of the ebook that looks exactly like the pdf on all ebook devices? I'd like to look at free and paid solutions.

Sorry if I'm in the wrong forum. Moderators please move to correct forum if need be.

Thank you.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by herebedragons69

What's the best way to get a true 100% conversion of the ebook that looks exactly like the pdf on all ebook devices? I'd like to look at free and paid solutions.

PDF is designed to set out exactly how each page will look. EBook formats like Epub or Mobi are designed very differently. I am not aware of any tool which does a good job converting pdf's. I have not tried converting a word document but it should produce much better results than converting a pdf. What you should probably do is convert the word documents to epub, then edit manually in Sigil. When you are happy with the epub you can then use Calibre to convert to the other ebook formats you want. Be aware that Calibre allows you to vary many parameters of the conversion process. You do not need to just accept the defaults.

[BetterRed]

@herebedragons69 - the degree of perfection will also depend on what reader software you use on what devices. One ex PDF EPUB on an Ipad read with Marvin could be far short of perfect, but the same EPUB converted to a MOBI and read on a Kindle could be almost so. Whilst another ex PDF EPUB may look great on the Ipad/Marvin combo and awful on a Kindle

Yes, I exaggerate a little, but there is no such thing as a perfect conversion across all device/software combos especially if you start with a PDF. From the calibre User Manual

What are the best source formats to convert?

In order of decreasing preference: LIT, MOBI, AZW, EPUB, AZW3, FB2, DOCX, HTML, PRC, ODT, RTF, PDB, TXT, PDF

If you can save the DOC file as DOCX then you can import it into the calibre book editor to create the EPUB. The difference in doing that and converting the DOCX to EPUB with calibre, is that it doesn't 'flatten' the CSS - which you may or may not consider to be a good thing.

BR

[JSWolf]

What are the best source formats to convert?

In order of decreasing preference: LIT, MOBI, AZW, EPUB, AZW3, FB2, DOCX, HTML, PRC, ODT, RTF, PDB, TXT, PDF

The best source format is ePub. There is no way in this world that LIT and Mobipocket (Mobi and AZW are both Mobipocket) are better source formats then ePub.

[herebedragons69]

Thank you very much for the very informative answers. I think I have a very nice conversion from calibre using a word docx. Thanks for that tip about saving the doc as a docx. It looks good on my iPad. And the other information that you both have provided will be useful for my client to hear.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The best source format is ePub. There is no way in this world that LIT and Mobipocket (Mobi and AZW are both Mobipocket) are better source formats then ePub.

It is meant in the calibre sense, which is that you will keep formatting etc.

If you are going to run a conversion, your finely-tuned EPUB is worth nearly as much as the blended smoothie calibre spits out for the ereader.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The best source format is ePub. There is no way in this world that LIT and Mobipocket (Mobi and AZW are both Mobipocket) are better source formats then ePub.

While eschwartz is correct in one sense, this from JSWolf is more correct in the sense that applies to the OP's situation, though not completely.

eschwartz's list is appropriate for conversions from eBook to eBook, which is not the problem at hand. When creating an eBook from some non-eBook format (RTF, DOC, DOCX, PDF, ...) it is generally best to convert the non-eBook format (PDF being the absolute worst choice among the common formats) to ePub and doing final formatting and tweaking to the ePUB before generating the needed final formats. With the current state of the art you need to create the book in some format other than ePUB as there are no ePUB editors up to the task of efficient original content creation.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by dwig

While eschwartz is correct in one sense, this from JSWolf is more correct in the sense that applies to the OP's situation, though not completely.

eschwartz's list is appropriate for conversions from eBook to eBook, which is not the problem at hand. When creating an eBook from some non-eBook format (RTF, DOC, DOCX, PDF, ...) it is generally best to convert the non-eBook format (PDF being the absolute worst choice among the common formats) to ePub and doing final formatting and tweaking to the ePUB before generating the needed final formats. With the current state of the art you need to create the book in some format other than ePUB as there are no ePUB editors up to the task of efficient original content creation.

In that case, EPUB is the destination format.

calibre's conversion logic always stands as-is. If you have a LIT and an EPUB with the same content and formatting, there is no benefit to converting the EPUB. Granted, the EPUB will usually have more info since it is a later revision.