Quote:
Originally Posted by Tugger
It automatically gives you both the mobi7 and KF8 versions (packaged together). And it does give you all the kindlegen source, in a zip file. It is quite easy to unpack and then unzip, make any changes, and then put the revised version through kindlegen again. But once it is fully debugged that should not be necessary.
I don't know enough about using InDesign to make an epub and then converting that for Kindle to say how it compares. What additional work is needed if one uses this method? Does it support all the KF8 features as well as the usual - toc, images, footnotes, hyperlinks, styles, fonts etc.
A publisher can produce the printed book in InDesign, and then also have the Kindle edition as well with no additional work whatsoever.
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Well, in response to your last sentence---apparently not. K8 simply does not support "everything" that is supported in print--for example, vertical and horizontal alignment, which is used extensively in INDD (InDesign). That's why something as simple as dropcaps in a print book are a giant PITA in ePUB and MOBI--because the human reader can override the publisher fonts and suddenly, all that painstaking vertical alignment just goes straight to Hades. And that's just
one example, the one that comes most quickly to mind. I won't even get into the issue of setting image sizes manually for the K7 version with K8 fallbacks if you have the images floating (or text-boxes, pull-quotes, etc.)
tomsem is asking you his question because dropping a clean ePUB onto Kindlegen or Previewer gives you the "master mobi" you are talking about--a K7 and K8 file. What you're running is some add-on that runs between INDD and KG, as you're getting a master mobi. I can guarantee you that your "tool" is running Kindlegen. And there's nothing that K8 has (not discussing fixed-formats here) that ePUB does not; it's the other way around.
I think--and granted, I'm biased here--that having seen hundreds of epubs output by INDD thus far, it's likely that ebook makers will be around for print publishers for
quite a while yet. K8 can look a lot like print--but K7 certainly doesn't. If a K8 book is made with floating images, and exported that way, it certainly won't look like that in K7. As far as I know, Amazon's been working on "improving" that plug-in for quite a while.
As I said, the reality is that no ebooks support all the features of print, and I see this all the time with ePUBs handed over to me "for a little fixing," as if I had a magic wand to fix ePUBS that were made with INDD, (and a cheap magic wand, mind you) and I actually end up having to go back to the client and tell them it's cheaper if I use their PDF than to try to clean up the horror that INDD outputs. You, Tugger, may well be happy with the mobi's that you're getting, but mobi is a far simpler format (even K8) than ePUB. I've seen the INDD output, and it ain't pretty. That the plug-in works as well as it does is a miracle, IMHO.
(And I'll only say
one snarky thing about print designers with INDD who obfuscate and tell their publisher clients that they
"can't" output their INDD file to RTF. There, I said it. Not directed at the OP--just one of those weeks where I heard it 3 times
already, and it's only
Tuesday.)
Hitch
(for those observing, I hope you have an easy fast for Yom Kippur.)