Quote:
Originally Posted by jinlo
I'm a bit confused again. Are you saying that you are starting the conversion process from a pdf file? Does that mean you used Adobe Acrobat to write your book?
I'm not trying to be a pain here. I'm just trying to understand the process. Everything I've come across points toward starting with the source files in the original word processing format. If you used MS Word to write your novel, it seems it would make sense to start from the .doc file. If you didn't use MS Word, then it still might be easier to convert the original source file to a word doc and go from there. Starting the process with a pdf file, to me anyway, seems like a recipe for a disaster in every other ebook format.
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Jinlo,
In the case of my book The Legend of Witch Bane, my publisher prepared my book for Kindle and released a shoddy version. I complained to them and they told me that they were having much difficulty trying to figure out how to format books for DTP. Up to that point I was ignorant about the process of publishing books for Kindle and found it strange that their team of capable computer techs who performed these conversions for a living had so much trouble preparing my book for Kindle.
In their defense, my book contains tons of illustrations and my publisher used a .pdf copy of my book as the source of the conversion and thus encountered myriad problems. Through persistence, lots of complaining, and a whole lot of patience, I have finally got my publisher to produce a Kindle book that I am proud to say has my name on it.
However, because I side stepped the process of using a publisher for my new book Rogue Hunter, I was forced to undertake publishing it as a digital book on my own. Since this book has no interior illustrations and was not prepared using a .pdf, I used the original MSWord as the source copy for the conversion to DTP.
This was a disastrous conversion that was nearly unfixable. I even took the advice of several authors who had successfully prepared their books for Kindle and reset my MSWord document using the Styles feature which I was told would solve my problem. This too failed to do the job.
It was then that I learned that it is easier to use MobiPocket Creator to create my ebook and then upload it to DTP. I did this and although it was a much cleaner conversion than the previous ones, this version was also plagued with many problems. Through trial and error and much research, I was able to address 99 percent of all the formatting issues with Rogue Hunter. Sad to say, it took me nearly a month and a half to do this.
When I began the process of publishing my book for non-Kindle owners, I assumed that the MobiPocket conversion would not have the problems associated with DTP. However, I was wrong and it too has many formatting problems. This is an ongoing process for me as I try to clean up the formatting for Rogue Hunter. I dare not even attempt to publish The Legend of Witch Bane on MobiPocket. For starters, my book has illustrations and they are only included in the pdf version of my book. Since pdf is going to be a problem, I figure I'll have to hire a content publisher to prepare The Legend of Witch Bane for MobiPocket. Unfortunately, I don't have the funds for this right now.
If all goes well, I'll have Rogue Hunter cleaned up and all ready to go for MobiPocket in another month or so. But if it gives you any clue to what I'm up against with, every formatting error in my book has to be reformatted using html tags. It's not fun or quick. But I'll stick with it until I get my book in shape. Only then will I publish it and make it available for sale.
For now, my books are only available for Kindle owners.