Quote:
Originally Posted by wymore
Interesting. Too bad there can't be a happy medium for the color with text reformatted but retaining the pictures.
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There could be, but it would be (yet another) publication to produce. It depends a lot on the publisher's workflow and at what point and in what format the final, edited copy is "frozen." In my case, with P&W, I had to do a lot of coding to back out of our (pre-)pre-press stage, convert the text, shove it into something that can have the images reinserted, and then build that into a Kindle-compatible feed.
I'll know shortly what the process is like for B&N-compatible mags, as we're just about to begin that process. In theory, we should just be able to export ePub versions of our pre-press files from InDesign with little-to-no extra effort.
BUT--that would result in the full magazine, like Nat Geo, described above. To produce the happy medium you refer to, we'd have to introduce yet another editing/formatting stage to create that new layout. So now we've overwhelmed our managing editor and have to add staff just to keep up and suddenly we have to go back and look at cost-effectiveness.
In a market where one or two NEXT BIG THINGs appear each year, each requiring its own customized production workflow, it's impossible for small publishers (specifically small non-profit publishers, in my case) to keep up.