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Old 09-23-2012, 04:31 AM   #16
Hitch
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Originally Posted by Turk.Turkleton View Post
1. I've taken 1 class in college that covered the basics, but I've not had anything I would call "real" experience with HTML/CSS and I'm trying to learn as I go.

2. I'm using Epub because I thought it was one style all Ereaders could use. I've learned quite a bit over the past couple of days and I'll have to figure out where to go from here.
It's the format that the vast majority use, and you can successfully upload ePUB to Amazon, which has by far the greatest number of sales, even internationally.

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3. Sigil seemed like the best free resource to create Epub.
In my opinion, it is. We do this professionally and commercially, and we all use Sigil at my office. Some of us use it more for finishing, some more during creation; we all use it for editing...it's an invaluable tool.
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4. I would like to have it readable on any of the popular Ereaders. Nook, Nook Color, Kindle, Kindle Fire, and the Ipad. I would like to create professional looking ebooks for some Ideas I've had that are very heavy on images and not just text and format that normal ebook tutorials illustrate.
Well, that's another discussion. Nook, NookColor, iBooks, all use ePUB. Kindle, Kindle Fire, use MOBI format, even if they create that from an ePUB source. However, you need to be aware, when you say "...very heavy on images..." that ebooks are not mini-websites, despite all of Apple's TV and Internet commercials that want to sell that idea (and that feature, of all things, APPS disguised as eBooks. It irritates the crap out of me). eBooks are, essentially, text-delivery devices; they are not image galleries on tablets or little pinch-and-zoom websites. It's important for you to know that. If you want to create a very image-heavy, fancy-ish book, you can, if you own a Mac, use iBooks Author, which is also very simple, but no other device (other than an i-Device with iBooks) can effectively display the resulting ePUB (it's fab for textbooks, I'll say that for it), so it significantly limits your market. Between them, Amazon and Nook command 99.98% of the ebook market. All the others, Apple included, are scrapping over that 2/10ths-of-1-percent ort leftover from their combined tables. Thus, if you want to create books to earn--you can't ignore Amazon and Nook.

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5. With these answers which tools would you suggest?
Look, like you, I had rudimentary HTML and CSS when I started. I started out, about 4+ years ago, making books with MobiPocket Creator, which I still think is a perfectly good little program, and a damned good one with which to learn (watch out for the IE 9 bug--search the MOBI forum here for info about that). I then moved on to Sigil, and in-between I learned to make an ePUB from scratch, using Liz Castro's excellent book, ePUB:Straight to the Point. Now, Liz is a Jobbleshead, and she's in love with Indesign, so if you are neither you can pretty much ignore the first half of the book, but the second half is great for learning ePUB essentials. Some of her stuff is now a little out-of-date, due to software/firmware/hardware upgrades, but the basics (OPF goes here, NCX goes there) are still the same. I'd recommend you do those three things--then you can move up to something like the webpage you cited. Trust me, you ain't ready for that yet, firstly, and secondly, only iBooks supports ePUB3 at this time, and even that, kinda sketchily (Apple being Apple, they support what they want and don't support what they don't care about, like using the NCX for the TOC.)

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Thanks!

Turk
No problem. Just don't try to run before you can walk, and you'll do fine.

Hitch
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Old 09-25-2012, 12:34 PM   #17
Man Eating Duck
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Originally Posted by Turk.Turkleton View Post
If someone could point me in the right direction, or has a epub file that shows how to put the background image in correctly, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Turk
You could have a look at Treasure Island, SBT uses negative bottom margin on an image at the start of each chapter in order to overlay text. He uses a percentage, which doesn't scale gracefully, but -6em seems to work better as it's relative to text size.

As others have said you *will* cause trouble for some readers if you don't take great care in only displaying text over white parts of the image. Also, unintended artifacts will probably occur on different combinations of devices and software, so I would stay away from this effect if you don't have a very good reason to use it.
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