This requires a bit of background. I have been writing and publishing for 40 years, and as I must turn up my toes one of these days, I am trying to convert all my partly-baked ideas into e-books, so I don't have to waste time persuading nervous publishers. So far, I have created nine books, none released, so this isn't a self-promo.
My method: I use Word 2003 for the ground-work: I am mainly working with Word or text files, created as far back as 1981. These are all in a uniform set of styles, so that's the easy way to go.
I create a table of contents in Word, and use parts of that to seed the files with navigation, and that all translates through into the end-product. Once the navigation is done, I save as HTML, load the HTML into Calibre, and create an epub.
I have worked out that certain edits in the Word file "poison" the navigation links. Don't know how, don't care: I now do final edits in Sigil. I note in passing that Sigil is less than impressed with html that Calibre is able to live with. I just let it "clean" it, and the result looks fine.
My intention, long-term, is to sell epub, pdf and mobi formats through the Australian Society of Authors, but I want to release a number at once, and by waiting, I can see how many ISBNs I need to buy. Each version is supposed to have its own ISBN, and if I need more than 50, it is cheaper to buy a block of 100 ISBNs, rather than blocks of 10.
So, I am giving everything a good shake, using a large beta file to test almost to destruction. Right now, I am looking for an Android epub reader which can do what Calibre and Sigil both do on my desktop machine. All of the features mentioned below are there in the file, because Calibre and Sigil show them, and a pdf created from Calibre has all of the things I want visible.
The job I am working on now is a history of science: currently it is at 180,000 words, and there's lots to go. That demands a reader that can manage illustrations, and not choke on large files. My test piece is an epub of 2.5 meg, but recent pdf files that I have had from print publishers have been up to 70 meg, and a number of free readers could not handle those.
I want something that I can recommend for reading epubs that can:
- display Greek characters like pi and nu, plus h-bar and other rarities;
- present tables as they should appear, complete with border and cell margins;
- display italics, bold, and 9, 10 and 12-point body type;
- display my navigation in full;
- display my selected font (Verdana, though I would settle for Arial);
- offer both landscape and portrait.
Yesterday, I worked my way through a number of readers on my Samsung Tab 1. I already have (and am reasonably happy with)
Aldiko,
UB Reader and
eBook, though eBook has an atrocious font with a very strange cap-J. This is a pity, because it's a neat little display, otherwise. It did have a few conniptions handling images.
Here are my comments for the others that I loaded up yesterday and discarded:
Offline reader: could not render the Greek character for pi.
Slick reader: could not render the Greek character for pi.
Ebook.de reader: could not render the Greek character for pi.
Moon reader free: could not render the Greek character for pi. Also, the table of contents is quite long in the testbed version (I am going down to heading 4), and the app was unable to display all of it, truncating it half-way through.
Perfect reader: could not render the Greek character for pi. Also, the table of contents is quite long in the testbed version (I am going down to heading 4), and the app was unable to display all of it, truncating it half-way through.
Good reader free: could not render the Greek character for pi. Also, the table of contents is quite long in the testbed version (I am going down to heading 4), and the app was unable to display all of it, truncating it half-way through.
Free book e-reader: only does landscape.
eLibrary Basic: could not render the Greek character for pi, very slow, so I gave up.
txtr ebooks: seems to be only there to let you read books they have sold you. I could see no way to read what was on the tablet.
Versent: seems to be only there to let you read books they have sold you. I could see no way to read what was on the tablet.
Book info look-up: I couldn't even get this to start. It may have choked on the large file.
I look forward to suggestions and comments. I have noted several mentions of
Mantano and will be looking at that more closely.
peter