Quote:
Originally Posted by gezginrocker
Thanks for the answer, although I thought this section was for noobs but you are are assuming that I'm a technical person who can do CSS/XML cleaning. This is my first attemp to create an ebook.
I have opened both html and epub at Sigil and they both look perfectly normal. So I've no idea what the hell I need to clean.
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Well...
I think that this is where there's always a disconnect, between what noobs perceive as "noobs," and what we (experienced and commercial bookmakers) think of as "noobs." To me, a noob is someone who can write and understand HTML and CSS, but doesn't know how to apply that in an ebook. Your comprehension of the term is someone who knows how to do basically nothing except create a file/book in Word, and then use free software that you found on the web to make an ebook--that you hope, presumably, to sell for money. Right?
Here's the rub: to make an eBook properly, you either have to learn the HTML and CSS that goes into it, and apply it--particularly if you hope to sell on a platform like GooglePlay, from which people will be buying and downloading into the widest possible number of varied readers--
or you have to invest in a program like Jutoh or perhaps Scrivener to do the coding-lifting for you ($40USD, I believe they both cost). You could, alternatively, try Atlantis Word processor, which has an export to ePUB function. However, again, I think that runs around $40.00.
There's no way around "noob-ness" with a get-out-of-jail-free card. If you decide to use Calibre to make an ePUB, then what you put INTO it has to be pristine--and you need to know enough to know how to fix it, when it doesn't come out exactly right. If you then decide that you're going to try to make another commercial book, a MOBI (Kindle) book, you need to know enough about the ePUB you're using as your source to know how to fix it, and how to do things like media-queries so that it will work on KF7 and KF8 devices.
This is the problem with all those "you can make your own eBook!" blogs. They tell the reading masses that making an ebook is EASY--just upload your Word file at XXX, and kablammo! Instant magic bestselling author. But this is all still computers, and it's all still GIGO--Garbage In, Garbage Out. If you haven't thoroughly cleaned and styled your Word file, then what you get out isn't going to be very good. And if you don't learn enough HTML and CSS to clean up the results, to get your FINAL book, it won't be very good, either. Not at Googleplay--where your book will be viewed on dozens of different readers--and not at Amazon, which has a challenge for EVERY different reading device.
Changing fonts in a Word file, or character spacing, won't help you--not at all. Because those things are NOT conveyed, by the file, through a conversion into ePUB. So, start cleaning up your Word file, using STYLES, and take Pablo's tutorial on ePUB basics at the MR Wiki.
FWIW.
Hitch