Quote:
Originally Posted by ottischwenk
I have created around 500 ebooks from paper books without any problems, whereby I did not attach any importance to the layout of the paper book.
But not yet a paper book from an ebook
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We do both ebooks and paper versions.
There is no problem creating a proper epub from a paper only copy, but even with cutting off the spine and a sheet feeder it's a huge amount of time compared to reformatting wordprocessor source that's perfect for a ebook into source for professional paper book.
We only proof print maybe 8 pages on paper, ever. The printing company prints our PDF on paper.
We proof read and annotate on eink. Not on paper since about 1996 and not on a laptop screen since about 2014.
We do quickly check PDFs by printing about 8 pages in duplex and double page on the laptop for all front matter / contents/chapter starts/rear matter.
We do proof print covers.
The default styles and layouts we have in LO Writer convert with no additional HTML or CSS editing to epub. Amazon KDP gets epub. We test Amazon formats by conversion from epub and also download Amazon's preview. We don't test KFX, only old mobi and current AZW3/KF8.
Paper books ideally need a binding offset, so left and right pages. Typically the front and rear matter is different to ebooks. The contents section is different. Footnotes are different. The pages have headers and footers with page numbers and might have the chapter.
If an end of page or chapter error creeps in the POD/Printer's version of the PDF might miss a page break or have an extra one, and thus the binding offset becomes the outer margin. The House Style Guide might mandate that a chapter always starts on a right hand page, or any new page. Some publishers only have a larger break. MS Word has an end of line bug that sometimes only shows up on a copy of a PDF. To clear it: Hit return then backspace delete.
Decent paper layout is different to ebook. You might also replace some spaces on the paper version with skinnier spaces, best avoided on ebooks. While small caps, standing caps and drop caps are possible in ebooks, we avoid all of that so as to have maximum compatibility. You might want them on paper. Paper can use fonts that don't work so well in ebooks. Paper can have more exotic image / text layout than is wise to attempt on ebooks.