Quote:
Originally Posted by AnemicOak
The source the PDF is made from would usually be an InDesign or Quark document/layout. Although a wordprocessing doc is in the loop someplace along the line I'm not sure if final copy edits are made in a word processor or the layout software. I would guess each publisher has a slightly different workflow. I do know a lot of edits are still done on paper for the most part and then applied to the electronic file.
InDesign will produce ePubs directly which Adobe recommends be converted to Mobi/Kindle using Calibre. Have had a chance to give InDesign's ePub output a good check yet to see if it's any good or not though.
For older books they have to scan and ocr for the most part.
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We use InDesign. Our editors have some leeway on whether or how much they want to edit the original manuscript file (usually in Word). For some books where there's not going to be a lot of restructuring in layout (multiple columns, graphics, etc) a manuscript edit makes more sense. Since, however, a big part of preparing a book for us is getting the various elements to layout and fit properly, it's unavoidable that most of the editing has to be done in layout after the book has been poured into InDesign. (And yes, a lot of our editing is still done on hard copy and then applied electronically.)
Anyway, I do know that InDesign can export files as epubs, but like you, I haven't really had the time to explore how well that works and whether or not our files will export properly. When I tried a sample file the other day, for example, InDesign choked up about halfway through the conversion and couldn't go any further.
I'm still trying to educate myself on the various formats and their pros and cons and how easy they will be for us to work with!