[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I would never accept someone else's INDD file, and I don't know anyone, you excepted, it seems, who will.

Well actually, I don't (I despise Adobe products... I tend to stick with free/open source alternatives). BUT, if someone DID hand one over, I wouldn't mind installing InDesign and exporting it for myself. At work, the typographer actually just exports the InDesign EPUB for me. (I just completed a new book last month, simultaneous PDF/EPUB/MOBI/Physical release).

Originally Posted by Hitch

If I'm getting an INDD file from another designer, it means that s/he doesn't know how to make an ePUB from it, which means that 5 hours in, we're still going to be trying to figure out what "char-override 66" means, in the CSS.

Yeah, that dreaded CSS that comes out of there is HORRIBLE (especially because a lot of this stuff is not relevant in EPUB (kerning, letter-spacing, etc. etc.). I tend to request the EPUB (from InDesign) AND the finalized PDF.

I do A/B comparison (have PDF open in left-half of screen, EPUB on right), and I strip out all the classes that I see are not relevant (I actually strip everything down to pretty much headings + blockquotes + bold/italics).

Then I plop in my "in-house CSS", and from there, I just go through and introduce spacing, no indentation, a few margins here and there... doesn't take long at all. (Last InDesign EPUB took me 5 hours (most of this was me checking the book for actual typos/inconsistencies)).

Although you probably get a LOT more horrible documents than I do. (I must admit, I maybe only did six or seven new books directly from InDesign output, some were super clean, others were pretty bad (but still better than PDF )).

Also, your "in-house CSS" is probably a lot more complex than what I use. My mentality is bare minimum, for maximum portability, and minimal chance of breaking on the multitude of present/future devices.

Side Note: Which reminds me, another thing that the cheap places do is just Input -> Output. Someone who cares about quality will spend a little time to point out ACTUAL typos/inconsistent usage. (For example, I point out hyphenation problems, forgetting to italicize a newspaper/journal, missing accents in words (Indexes usually are rife with little errors), check my site for in-depth changelog of hundreds/thousands of typos I have caught when making the EPUBs, ...)

Originally Posted by Hitch

Moreover, we almost never do get all the INDD files when we do get a submission; the images are missing, the fonts are missing, you name it.

This is what I was talking about with people not understanding the tools they use! We like to imagine that everyone is masters of XYZ, but in reality, there are A TON of people who don't know what they are doing when designing the documents.

As I mentioned a few posts back, you will have someone who does something as simple as editing metadata, and thinks that the output PDF is exactly the same (it sure "looks" the same).

Or you have people who use Word/InDesign/Quark and make their document LOOK good, but have zero clue about using Styles. So the "backend" of the file is HIDEOUS (not noticeable until you try to change formats/move things around).

And Hitch can probably explain the horror Word document stories (after Christmas time it seems). You always get the dreaded person who PRESSES ENTER TWO TIMES to get a "double-spaced" document.

Originally Posted by Hitch

Believe it or not, it's FASTER for us to OCR it with Abbyy and export it using our custom clips, than it is to slum through 60, 70, 100 "character override styles" and figure out what the designer MEANT to say.

Hmmm... and the error rate that is introduced? Do you do something like: Strip all the InDesign poo out of the EPUB (so it is basically plaintext), and then compare that to your OCRed output?

That is how I handle cases where I pull HTML from a different source. I run the original PDF through a very rough OCR, and then code compare what I generated with the HTML site. They usually catch mistakes that I missed, and I usually catch mistakes that they missed.. so combined, I get a better EPUB in the end!

I am just ecstatic every time I run into the book in anything OTHER than PDF, ANYTHING is better than working backwards from PDFs. (Although I do like to have both versions available so I can pull higher resolution images)

Originally Posted by Hitch

Nobody in India is getting $0.50-$5.00 page for a scanned book. Not for the scanning. They'll get closer to $0.50 for the completed book, per page. That's in ePUB and MOBI formats, both. That pricing includes the scanning (if needed), OCR, A/B compare, html output, ePUB creation, MOBI creation. It can get up to $1/page, but generally, that's where it tops out, and the Indians are now being underpriced by the Chinese, FWIW.

Yeesh... didn't know it was that cheap. Maybe I was mixing up my American/Indian companies. I scoured looking for PDF pricing a while back, most of them just have it hidden and say "send us the PDF and we will quote you!"

Originally Posted by Hitch

Even for plain fiction, it takes time to do correctly. Doing a full-bore, print layout for a highly technical book will cost a LOT of money, and the publisher has to feel that the result of that expenditure will be worth it.

[...]

You're talking thousands in print layout costs--without even starting on the ebook versions.

Thanks for the information. I definitely don't have much knowledge about the print side of things.

Side Note: Tome about the conversion process is complete!