[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Atty

We have a PDF of a book that we published.

Using the conversion process butchered the file, as I see is expected by the help forums here. What other way can I take all these files and make them into an ebook more easily?

Well, of course the conversion process "butchered" the file. You are, with all due respect, trying to breed two dogs together and get a donkey. The file format you have is, largely, irrelevant, to a competent (let me stress that word) converter. Your layout, however--that's a whole other kettle of fish.

Can I convert it or export the individual pages somehow to make them more easily converted into a PDF?

??? You already have a PDF. Do you mean, into an eBook? No. You actually
have a variety of problems/challenges/issues. See below.

Each page is laid out like a school workbook. With an introduction, objectives, and spaces to answer the questions. Ideally we just want every page to be laid out exactly as they are in the PDF, just in a file to be read by a tablet.

Then you may need to consider not distributing this book through normal "eBook" channels, like Amazon, B&N, iBooks, KoboBooks. None of those accept PDFs for sale. There are other options, but, there are pros and cons for each.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Well, the gang here is top notch, with mad skills and all that, but this is a massive, massive conversion job. If you really want an actual ebook, that is.

I'm going to mooch canned texts that I use, in my business, daily, to try to go over all the issues involved. Warning: long, but there's no easy/fast way o discuss this, not intelligently or completely.

1. Firstly, eBooks are NOT INTERACTIVE. Apps are interactive; eBooks, by and large, are not. Yes, there is some interactivity in iBooks, but the trade-off is, typically, you'll sell one book on iBooks for every thousand you sell on Amazon and every 80-110 that you sell on B&N.
2. Thusly, you may wish to consider making this an app. Of course, apps typically run thousands, while eBooks are typically under a thousand bucks. Actually, most (fiction) are under $250, but not a book like this.
3. I think I should tell you that the capabilities of e-readers—of any kind—aren't really suited to display your book, as-is, without some modification. There isn't any e-reader that has (excepting “fixed-format,” and I’ll discuss that below) the ability to display 2- or 3-column format. Which you have. (e.g., top of your page 11.)
4. And even if it could, you’d need to think about what we call, internally, the “20lb. problem,” which is, too much content for a small screen. A Kindle screen is precisely 3½"x4¾" in size, with a ¼" margin all-round.
5. A book that is laid out and created at 8½" x 11", has 93.5 square inches of space. A Kindle/Nook screen, by comparison, has a mere 16.62 square inches.
6. This means that an e-reader screen has only 17.78% of the space of the typical PDF or default Word page layout.
7. Obviously, I can't measure your pages, but if I were a betting woman, I'd bet that those were laid out at what, 8.5" x 11"? 8" x 10'?
8. To get an idea what your book, reproduced exactly as it is currently laid out, would look like on an e-reader, shrink your PDF to ~33% of the size, and remember also that your aspect ratio is slightly different than an e-reader’s.
9. Someone could make a fixed-format book for you. That's the only way to make multi-column format, and to make a final ebook that looks exactly like what you have now.
10. If they don't make it the right way, the pages won't zoom. Can you imagine, trying to read those pages on a smartphone--without zooming?
11. Moreover, many Kindles cannot display or read Fixed-layout ebooks.
12. With regard to ePUB format, in FXL, firstly, it will really cost you, if you don't have the source files, which presumably, are in InDesign.
13. And, if you get the wrong InDesigner, that will be a debacle, too.
14. You cannot sell a fixed-layout ePUB on B&N--so you're locked out of the 2nd-largest marketplace. Generally speaking, using my several-thousand clients, and their 3500 eBooks, as a sampling, you'll sell 88-92% of all your ebooks on Amazon; 8-11% on B&N's Nookpress platform, and those two together will be ~99.98% of your sales. All the others--Apple, KoboBooks, Sony, etc., etc., etc., are scrapping over that 2/10ths-of-one-percent ort (crumb) leftover from Amazon & B&N's tables.
15. If you remake the book, it will be a ton of work. Everything will have to be re-laid out, in all likelihood. Unfortunately, your sample pages, while entertaining, aren't very helpful for a professional, because we can't tell, by only looking at that, how much has to be redone. if all the pages were like your page 6, the answer would be "very few." If they're like page 6 and 9, still, not that many. BUT, you start adding in page 10, 11, and 13, and it does start to add up.
16. If you do hire a professional, they'll revamp the book, by and large, but it would function correctly and properly, and provide a good reading and learning experience (that's the most important thing, don't forget) for the buyer. That's what matters.

No matter what path you take, you cannot do a project like this with Calibre. I mean, a professional, perhaps, could do a preliminary conversion with Calibre, I guess, and then spend days cleaning it up, but that's frankly back-asswards. It's certainly not how we'd approach it. This book either requires major overhauling, to be done as a reflowable, or someone who knows how to make fixed-layout. You can't do fixed-layout with Calibre, and most professionals likely aren't going to use it, for the reasons you've already seen.

I wish you luck. When you go shopping for a professional, make sure that you seriously check their credentials. Don't assume that some pretty pictures on a website equals experience. I get at least a dozen projects a week, that have been bollixed by so-called "professional converters," and most, unfortunately, will simply take a file, run it though Calibre, and hand you back the results. You've already seen what that gets you.

Good luck. You may also want to do a bit more investigation into eBooks, how they work, what they do well, what they don't, etc., before going further. I'm not saying that your Book can't be done--of course it can. And it can be done fabulously. But unless you find an expert wiling to donate their time, it's not going to be a free project. Granted--that's not what you asked. But the fact that you tried to make it using free software generally indicates that that's the pricing that you're shooting for, and I think you should do some more research, so that you aren't flabbergasted when you speak to real professionals.

Hitch