eBook common sense 101

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Eh, I use Word 2011 and save as RTF, then let Calbri make ePub if I do the ePub myself. Otherwise I have Word 2011 save to .doc and send it to Lulu, Smashwords and Amazon and let them do the conversion. IME the .doc format is the most universally accepted one for having just one file to send to everyone to convert to what ever they do.

I never really looked at options for docx (don't have word at home, license too $$$$ for the little use i have of it).

As a customer, when i happen to look at the code and see it just some converted ePub i don't appreciate that. I fell kind of ripped off.
Conversion is hard to do properly, though can give some basics.
Don't hesitate, after conversion, to use sigil to clean up. Regexp are a wonderful tool there.
Keep it simple. Less compatibility issue, less work for you. And less for the e-reader.

Why is a clean code useful for a user point of view ? Well, i went looking at one of my epub because it got the orizon to lag horribly.... And crappy code will sometimes crappy formating.

[cfrizz]

Microsoft Office for home & student is only $150.00, it has Word, Excel, Powerpoint & Onenote. Most people just use Word & Excel. It's nice that they finally put together a package that doesn't cost an arm & a leg.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

Word often can double or triple the size of an ebook. It adds a TON of stuff to the HTML that isn't needed.

I'd recommend LibreOffice (like I said, that's the new name for OpenOffice), or Sigil. Both are free, so go give them both a whirl and see which you prefer.

Assuming it is already written in Word, would there be any advantage to copy and pasting it into Libre at that stage? Would Dreamweaver's "clean up" tool get rid of the extra stuff Word puts in? Then there would also be all the extra styles that Calibre creates but aren't used in the actual document.

For self-hosting all this probably wouldn't matter, but Amazon charges the publisher a transfer fee per kilobyte. So doing all that, plus making a special black and white cover (or removing the cover completely) would be worthwhile.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Assuming it is already written in Word, would there be any advantage to copy and pasting it into Libre at that stage? Would Dreamweaver's "clean up" tool get rid of the extra stuff Word puts in? Then there would also be all the extra styles that Calibre creates but aren't used in the actual document.

For self-hosting all this probably wouldn't matter, but Amazon charges the publisher a transfer fee per kilobyte. So doing all that, plus making a special black and white cover (or removing the cover completely) would be worthwhile.

I wouldn't copy and paste it, but rather just open it up in LibreOffice. LO supports the various Word formats. The problem comes in with exporting from Word, not importing into other stuff. I guess MS just figures most people don't really export from word, so didn't put any effort into making good export functions.

For me, I'd say the biggest reason is for ease of the reader. A poorly made ebook will cause issues. Recently I was reading an epub that had horrendous code. The entire book was in one HTML file, and the code in that file was not optimal. After I was reading a bit into it, my reader would pause and take several seconds to "reformat" each time hit the button for the next page. And yes, I took a look at the metadata in the HTML for that one, and it originated in Word 2007.

[Jack Tingle]

I highly recommend saving your final Word document as an rtf. That strips out a lot of annoying crud. Steve Jordan recommends using WordPad (on PCs) as an intermediary, because it strips out more than the save from Word does, and it's free. From that rtf, use any of the usual suspects to convert it to epub and mobi. I just drop the rtf into Mobipocket directly, since I own a Kindle.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

[VydorScope]

Since I publish to exactly 3 places right now... Smashwords, Amazon, and Lulu... all the debate about wether or not .doc is good is merely academic for me. I have to use .doc.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by jonathan2

What font and size makes the most sense and is the best in terms of the reading experience? At the moment I'm thinking Calibri size 13 or 14 at 1.5 spacing.

Smaller size is better, because most ereaders (all modern ereaders, I think) have multiple sizes, and you can always make text bigger, but not smaller. "Best for reading experience" depends on the reader; one of the advantages of ebooks is that the publisher (or author, for self-pubbed books) doesn't have to figure out what looks best--they just have to figure out what looks okay, and if the reader has specific preferences, they can arrange for those settings (or convert the ebook) for their own device.

I prefer small text, no margins, and 1.1 line spacing, indented paragraphs with no blank line between them; a 13-pt font would drive me bonkers and I'd stop reading. Line spacing bigger than 1.25 is annoying and results in too few lines/page.

I've been writing the eBook in Word 2010 - but what would be the ideal format to release the eBook in - PDF? ePub seems to be a bit of a hassle to convert to from Word.

PDF is only good if you're designing it for specific e-readers. I make PDFs for 6" and 5" readers, because that's what I read on--but I make them to my specific preferences. For customers, I'd stick with the more flexible formats unless you have a compelling reason to go with the fixed-page filetype.

Calibre is a (free, open-source) program that will help you convert your book to ebook format; it needs RTF or HTML to start with, and there are Calibre forums here to help you sort out the details--how to set up the CSS and other aspects to create a table of contents and so on.

The two dominant ebook formats at the moment are .epub and .mobi/.prc; mobi works on Kindles and epub works on pretty much everything else (and some of them also support mobi). You can either poke at Calibre, learn to manually convert, and get the Mobipocket conversion software, or hire someone to do the conversion for you.

[jonathan2]

Great answers guys!

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Eh, I use Word 2011 and save as RTF, then let Calbri make ePub if I do the ePub myself. Otherwise I have Word 2011 save to .doc and send it to Lulu, Smashwords and Amazon and let them do the conversion. IME the .doc format is the most universally accepted one for having just one file to send to everyone to convert to what ever they do.

Interesting... This leads me to ask - can I outsource this? Can I pay a company a small fee to do some converting magic and make it look ace?

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Microsoft Office for home & student is only $150.00, it has Word, Excel, Powerpoint & Onenote. Most people just use Word & Excel. It's nice that they finally put together a package that doesn't cost an arm & a leg.

WAY to expensive for the use I have of it.

Calibre is a (free, open-source) program that will help you convert your book to ebook format; it needs RTF or HTML to start with, and there are Calibre forums here to help you sort out the details--how to set up the CSS and other aspects to create a table of contents and so on.

The few calibre generated ePub i've seen, well. Ouch !!! Maybe it's better with an html sources, but with a mobi source, it's just horrible.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by jonathan2

Interesting... This leads me to ask - can I outsource this? Can I pay a company a small fee to do some converting magic and make it look ace?

Yes. I have seen advertisements for this service,but never bothered to follow and see how much they cost/etc.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by jonathan2

I'm going to distribute it from my website, so I want create the best reading experience possible.

Is there any reason why you're not planning to distribute via people like Amazon and Smashwords? They'll both let you publish for free (they take a cut, obviously), and having your book on their websites will give you a lot more potential customers.

[jonathan2]

Originally Posted by avantman42

Is there any reason why you're not planning to distribute via people like Amazon and Smashwords?

Yes, the book is not in english and my country doesn't have a local version of amazon.

[VydorScope]

As I am a software developer by trade I decide to take a couple fast minutes to look in to all the complaints about conversions.

I pulled 2 epub's off Smashwords and looked at the source in NotePad++ and I do not see what the problem is. Looks like Smashwords uses Open Office + TidyHTML to do its work and the files look clean and simple. The CSS was basic and would have been easy to change if I wanted to.


So then I opened one of my .doc files, saved it as .rtf and converted to epub with Calibre. Calibre did not do as good of a job as Smashwords does. I do not know if that is a artifact of the rtf step in between, or something else, but Calibre was much more verbose then needed. A million times better then if I had saved the file to HTML via MS-Word, but not as good as Smashwords does.

So I guess, I am still not seeing the problem. Ah well...

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by jonathan2

Yes, the book is not in english and my country doesn't have a local version of amazon.

Ah, right. I'm fairly sure that non-English books can be published via Amazon and Smashwords, but I don't know how many sales you'd get via them if there isn't a local Amazon.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Since I publish to exactly 3 places right now... Smashwords, Amazon, and Lulu... all the debate about wether or not .doc is good is merely academic for me. I have to use .doc.

Why do you have to use .doc? Smashwords, Lulu, and Amazon accept other formats, don't they?