Tex:
Thank you, for your as-always detailed and incisive addition to the discussion. Pardon me whilst I go off a bit:
I think that something is getting lost, in this conversation. Tex brought it up, twice, but as he is spared the indignities of dealing with fixed-layout and retailers, he's not quite as attuned to it as I.
Yes, you CAN build a fixed-layout "mobi" file, from a fixed-layout ePUB file. Voila!
EXCEPT, a) it doesn't work correctly on all devices in the Kindleverse, and, b) that will NOT PASS the intake inspection at the KDP, because quite bluntly, it isn't even remotely close to the coding that Amazon mandates, for their fixed-layout books.
(n.b.: I tested the MOBI that the young lady from Fiverr or wherever made. It did not function,
at all, on my Fire device, period. The basic Fire I tested it on is First-Gen. I did not then test it on the others, because...what's the point?
The Fire is the primary market for Fixed-layout.)
PERIOD. I am not saying, Bob, that someone can't find
some way, using INDD or INDD-->ePUB--->MOBI (via Calibre--which is boggling), that wouldn't create a file that might somewhat function on an Android Fire device. Of course.
And, with a certain amount of effort, sewing, and tolerance to extreme pain, I might dress up my Maine Coon as an English Bulldog, and fool the nosy neighbor down the street. But, kids,
that does not an English Bulldog make, firstly, and secondly,
I'm pretty sure that the AKC wouldn't be fooled into listing Mr. Zep as an English Bulldog. Would they?
Now, obviously, in my fanciful scenario, Amazon = AKC.
There's a guy--he's referenced around here someplace--who hangs out in Nook territory, apparently a formatting expert of some kind, who
persists in telling people that you
CAN make a fixed-layout book for Nook. (There's a thread around here someplace.) YES, you can make a fixed-layout ePUB that will work on a Nook Device--somewhat.
What you
CANNOT do, however, is make on that you can
BLOODY SELL ON A NOOK DEVICE.
This entire conversation is starting to remind me of Jeff Goldblum's wonderful line, crafted by Crichton, in
Jurassic Park. To paraphrase:
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"your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."
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And that's relevant here. Why? Because while the book can be made, that doesn't mean that it can be SOLD. To me, given my line of work, that matters. Do we, at my wee shop, conduct experiments? Do I have media queries that we play with, that look like a map of Frodo's trek across Middle Earth? I do, bygod. However, 99% of my time is doing one thing: working on creating books that CAN. BE. SOLD.
Why? Because publishing
is a bloody business. It's not a think-tank. (Lord, if there was ever any magical thinking in that vein, the past 6 years have most surely disabused even the most far-out magical thinker of any such notion.)
You, Bob, have already had your TOC revised AND moved to the rear of the book, being supplanted by Amazon's own efforts, because you went absolutely, positively, directly against their Publisher's Formatting Guidelines which expressly state:
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Do not use page numbers in the TOC. Kindle books do not always map directly to page numbers in physical editions of the book. Kindle Publishing Guidelines, v. 2015-4-`, sec.5, p.18. (Underscore emphasis added).
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You are thus already afoul of the Zon.
Unless the solution is something aside from the visible page numbers, I don't see Amazon biting on this. Not as an acceptable, to-be-sold book. Tex has listed all the various issues. Like your insistance that your index works--on ONE device. I promise you, it wouldn't work on all. That's why companies like mine, by and large, leave the index/indices in our eBooks, exactly as they existed in print, and we tell the readers to use the Search function,
while being guided by the curation of the Index. We are thousands of books into this, and so far--nary a complaint about that.
But I can tell you without missing a beat that I've heard nearly endless complaints about how linked indices work--or don't. People do NOT like clicking, clicking, clicking to find "dog" on "page 23," which is 5 screens away from where they jumped. You didn't create your index like an index is created; you individually linked each word or sentence or paragraph to a specific page number in the index. That's not how 99.99% of all indices are created. Not at all. So, your solution, of linking to a specific WORD, isn't going to work for the business.
Moreover, how crisply does that "back" button methodology work, if the linked entry is 4,5, 6 pages of content, that the reader jumps to, consumes, page-flipping as she goes? I would promise you that the "back" button isn't going to work as advertised in that scenario.
So, sorry, gang. Didn't mean to go off on a tear. The bottom line is:
If you create a "fixed layout mobi" from a fixed-layout ePUB, made with InDesign, that eBook does NOT, and will not,
MEET THE AMAZON QUALITY GUIDELINES. It is NOT formatted CORRECTLY. It will NOT be sold, by Amazon, at least, not for long before they remove it from sale and require you to fix it. It doesn't matter if the book did work. It doesn't, which is a whole other issue--but even if it did, you can't get there from here. (n.b.: and the book failed, utterly, to take advantage of the most fundamental features of fixed-layout--the RM!!!).
As far as the
reflowable book, Bob, I've provided feedback both here and privately. I
do not feel that the typed page number solution is elegant. I just don't.
I mean...how is that new? There's
nothing revolutionary about that. That's what everybody was trying 6-7 years ago. If it works so well, then,
aren't you asking yourself why absolutely none of the retailers have adopted that? Or why the ePUB standards aren't adopting that? I mean, it's tedium to do it that way, but it's not brain surgery. If that solution works so well,
then why haven't all the retailers, etc., simply incorporated that into their guidelines and standards?
So, in closing,
no ePUB template will help you. That's not how you get there from here. You know how we make eBooks, at my shop? Fixed-layout eBooks in MOBI format?
We code them by hand. Period. If that's the format you want, then you have to download Amazon's samples, the Guidelines, and do it up in good old HTML and CSS.
Bob said:
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I am not recommending fixed layout for the smallest Kindles (as Hitch might think?),
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...the problem, Bob, is that you don't get to limit what device buys it. That's Amazon's wheelhouse. Once you put FXL up there--one made in accordance with the Amazon standards, that is--then anyone with one of the allowed devices or readers can buy it. Period.
BTW--fire the Indian "developer." CSS? Geeze, lady, try reading the damn manual.
There's no magic way to make a FXL MOBI from a FXL ePUB. I don't mean to sound terse or didactic, but I kind of feel like I'm saying the same things over and over, to no avail. Perhaps other folks' voices will be clearer.
Done now.
Hitch