Where do I put the font EULA?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

IMHO, it's more likely that they don't like the fact that adding Charis SIL will significantly increase the size of a book without adding much value, and since Amazon needs to host all the books on their servers and server space costs money they most likely don't want publisher to embed full font sets, regardless of the font.

That can easily be fixed by subsetting the font. In fact, I suggest subsetting no matter which font is used. Calibre does a very good job subsetting,

Charis SIL is a nice font, but, IMHO, it's not better than the default serif font, Caecilia, which has been optimized for eInk displays.

Caecilla has not actually been optimized for eInk. It's the Kindle software diddling Caecilla to have more weight and create the different versions like the condensed version. Caecilla looks like a cross between Courier and a variable width font. It's not all that nice. Charis SIL does look much nicer.

I agree that Charis SIL is rather larger and does need to be subset. The Sta Wars sample I had a look at yesterday did have Charis SIL embedded but the fonts have been subset. Subsetting can take an ePub of 2-3MB to less then 1MB.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

I do not know anything about selling e-books, since I create them for my own pleasure and some others. However, I do know that you do not want to come near to Smashwords...
You upload your Word document and puts it through their product called Meatgrinder and boy, what a fitting name. You never end up with a product you would like (especially with your wishes) and tons of errors. And, don't forget, no change of fixing those in the ePUB.
Just do a quick search here on Smashwords and/or Meatgrinder...
I heard that they apparently now also allow upload of ePUB, but I would not trust them with it.

The meatgrinder is using some version of Calibre. I would give the direct ePub upload a go and see what happens. If it works, you get much more control over your eBook.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That can easily be fixed by subsetting the font. In fact, I suggest subsetting no matter which font is used. Calibre does a very good job subsetting,

But as you probably know:

1. Amazon KDP often rejects perfectly valid books generated with Calibre
2. KindleGen can obfuscate but not subset fonts
3. Free font subsetting tools often also mess with other font data

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Caecilla has not actually been optimized for eInk.

Maybe "optimize" is the wrong word, but unlike other ereader vendors, Amazon at least picked medium width default fonts. For example, the default font, PMN Caecilia LT 65 Medium, is a medium width font (usually 55 is regular and 75 bold) that also natively supports small caps and lots of special characters missing in RMSKD/ADE readers.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Caecilla looks like a cross between Courier and a variable width font. It's not all that nice. Charis SIL does look much nicer.

It all boils down to a matter of taste. I like Caecilia.

[Psymon]

Okay! I think I'm pretty much just about done with my ebook -- and here's my "sample copy" for y'all!

I started to enter all the data into iTunes Producer -- and discovered in the process that that's a bit of an ordeal in itself (grrrr!) :/ -- and in there noticed that one can either leave creating a "sample copy" up to Apple to do, or make one oneself. Since I have no idea which part(s) Apple would choose, I thought I might be better off making one myself, so that I can include a little bit from the "main" (modern) half of my book, and a bit from the "appendix" (the "olde" half), while stripping out at the same time any other, extra stuff that perhaps wouldn't quite belong in a sample copy (for example the dedication page -- which I here turned into a "SAMPLE COPY" page, and also deleting the majority of chapters and artwork/graphics, of course).

I'm curious what anyone thinks, naturally -- both about whether this seems apropos for a "sample copy" for up on the iBooks Store, and also whether I've done anything that's glaringly wrong as far as coding, etc. goes (if you can be troubled to look inside), of course.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

But as you probably know:

1. Amazon KDP often rejects perfectly valid books generated with Calibre
2. KindleGen can obfuscate but not subset fonts
3. Free font subsetting tools often also mess with other font data

You don't convert anything. You create the ePub and then you load that ePub into Calibre, subset the font, open file location to copy the ePub, use Kindlegen to generate the combination KF8/Mobi and voila. But don;t forget to change the name of the font files and the name in the CSS.[/quote]

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But don;t forget to change the name of the font files and the name in the CSS.

Um, can you explain that a bit more? Do you mean just change the filename, or the name of the font that's embedded within the font info itself (or both)?

And whichever you mean, what's the reason one should do that?

I was wondering about that, actually, because I did make some modifications to several of the fonts I've used, and then also subset most (but not all) of them using Calibre, too, which had me thinking that perhaps I should make note of that right in the font itself. And maybe also make note of that -- that the embedded fonts have been modified and subsetted -- in my actual epub (i.e. in a "visible" way, where people could easily read that).

[JSWolf]

Instead of the filenames Charis SIL uses, rename them to something else. Also, don't use "Charis" as the font family name; use something else. Subset the font, that would prevent it from being detected via file size.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Instead of the filenames Charis SIL uses, rename them to something else. Also, don't use "Charis" as the font family name; use something else. Subset the font, that would prevent it from being detected via file size.

Oh, was what you wrote about changing the name(s) only with regard to Charis (and that Kindle issue)? I didn't use Charis (nor is my book for Kindle... yet), but I guess I was wondering about doing that just generally speaking.

I guess I was thinking that it's one thing to embed a font, but if one makes changes to it then should that be made note of right within the font itself (beyond any filename change)? I was wondering about this not so much from an epub-creation perspective, but rather from the perspective of type design (and type designers, if one is "messing with" their creations, even if they're free).

[JSWolf]

Thing is, if Amazon is so paranoid that people are going to like Charis SIL better that they feel a need to try to remove it, then author's should go the whatever lengths to have their books look they way they want.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Psymon

From the sounds of it, "Smashwords" sounds like a rather apt name for them -- I suppose "smashbooks" was probably already taken.

I might have to copy/emulate/"steal" that word.

Originally Posted by Psymon

All this discussion here really has been a huge eye-opener for me, though -- virtually everyone I know (family and friends) who have an ereader all have iPads (and iPhones), I don't know anyone at all that has a Kindle or any other reader.

Well there is your problem! You should expand throw off the chains of that locked down Apple ecosystem, and migrate to the good stuff! haha.

Hmmmmm... have you tested your ebook in Marvin yet?

It is an alternative to iBooks which seems to be quite popular with the people here on MobileRead (even has its own section now):

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=260

Originally Posted by Psymon

Obviously I shouldn't be just designing for only my family and friends, but I really had no idea just how relatively UN-popular the iPad is.

Yeah, in the overall market... it is small. Perhaps in the tablet market their share is larger (I don't remember any stats off the top of my head), but we are talking about the much larger ebook market (and the ebook market is just a small subset of the overall BOOK market).

Also, it depends on where you are planning on selling this in the world. In the US, Amazon dominates the sales in the ebook market, but in other countries, the situation is different. Which is why you typically want your book in EPUB and MOBI (KF8/KF7)... so you can be read on nearly all devices in nearly all countries.

Originally Posted by Psymon

And on that note, actually, I realize that so much of this technology is still fairly new, but the inability of some of these readers to display even basic typography (let alone graphics) is so discouraging, it's like what the internet was before the World Wide Web (and graphics) were available -- if anyone else out there (besides me) is old enough to remember that -- i.e. just plain text, like it was typed on an old manual typewriter, with horridly plain headings and blue, underlined "links" and stuff.

Well, a lot of these specs were designed for extremely low powered devices. This allows you to create them much more cheaply. Having to accommodate such complex CSS and typography would mean the device would need a faster CPU, more RAM, more space, etc. etc. (This would raise the production costs dramatically).

Of course, the prices of technology is dropping every day thanks to the market and good ol' competition.

This is also the reason why you want to make clean/maintainable code though, because when the devices DO get better (they will), you can easily edit/fix your book to take advantage of newer methods/CSS/Fonts/Readers.

Originally Posted by Psymon

I'm seriously wondering if I should just not bother at all with trying to design for "backwards compatibility", it's so "backwards" -- and surely it's only a matter of time before all those simpler readers become passé and are able to display what the iPad (and other readers) can.

Yes, it would be nice if you could just cut off and forget about a lot of these crappy (compared to the bleeding edge devices of today... and those devices will be crappy compared to the bleeding edge six years from now), but they are still a HUGE share of the market. iPads are just a drop in the water compared to all the old Kindles out there.... not to mention that Kindles are a drop in the water compared to all the other older ereading devices that are still chugging along.

Originally Posted by Psymon

See, even this is news to me, I still have so much to learn. Does KindleGen actually do conversions of books, like, I could take my EPUB file and run it through there and convert it to MOBI format? I thought it was just a "generator" for running the previewer program so you can test out your books... or something.

KindleGen = the commandline tool to generate MOBI/KF8 for sale on Amazon.
Kindle Previewer = a GUI drag/drop for feeding books into KindleGen, and it allows you to "see how it would look on the different Kindles" (cannot be trusted in a lot of cases... ALWAYS try to test on the physical device itself.. ESPECIALLY in your case, as you are doing very complex things with CSS/fonts).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000765261

[DomesticExtremis]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Okay! I think I'm pretty much just about done with my ebook -- and here's my "sample copy" for y'all!

I'm curious what anyone thinks, naturally -- both about whether this seems apropos for a "sample copy" for up on the iBooks Store, and also whether I've done anything that's glaringly wrong as far as coding, etc. goes (if you can be troubled to look inside), of course.

Checked this on Calibre e-book viewer and my Kobo Mini. It looks good, I like the artwork too, though I'd say the book is a bit short

One bijou faultette - in your metadata Comments section, you forgot to put the semi-colon after the '&amp'

An Illusive Phantasm of Friendship & Love: A Memoir Adapted from the Original Correspondence

ETA I fixed it in sigil, which resulted in the following in the content.opf file:

<dc:description>An Illusive Phantasm of Friendship &amp;amp; Love: A Memoir Adapted from the Original Correspondence</dc:description>

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by DomesticExtremis

One bijou faultette - in your metadata Comments section, you forgot to put the semi-colon after the '&amp'

An Illusive Phantasm of Friendship & Love: A Memoir Adapted from the Original Correspondence

ETA I fixed it in sigil, which resulted in the following in the content.opf file:

<dc:description>An Illusive Phantasm of Friendship &amp;amp; Love: A Memoir Adapted from the Original Correspondence</dc:description>

If you change it in the metadata editor, you need of course only insert an & and remove the rest...

[Psymon]

Multiple replies here (first a couple of short ones, followed by a longer one)...

Originally Posted by DomesticExtremis

Checked this on Calibre e-book viewer and my Kobo Mini. It looks good, I like the artwork too, though I'd say the book is a bit short

Thank you so much for looking/checking! And yeah, I know it's short, but this is just the sample version, of course. Mind you, the entire work isn't really all that long either, but having both the "new" and "olde" versions does double that up, and I do hope that the artwork I included (and with any luck my overall design, too) will help make this worthwhile for people.

Also, you wrote...

One bijou faultette - in your metadata Comments section, you forgot to put the semi-colon after the '&amp'

...and then Toxaris followed up on that with...

Originally Posted by Toxaris

If you change it in the metadata editor, you need of course only insert an & and remove the rest...

That's so strange! I remember encountering some issue regarding that ampersand as I was working on this, too, and thought I'd fixed that -- and then it seems to have returned somehow. I just did what you said, though, just putting an ampersand alone (not a character entity) and that seems to have worked.

In any case, after posting that sample file here I did find a much more glaring, in-your-face error -- there's an "s" on the title page of the "Epistyll" part that should be a "long-ess". I don't know how I missed that (after looking at everything a million times)! That error isn't in the original "olde" text either, so I can only assume that somehow that came about when I did that conversion from the old JSL font that I originally used and the other Fell one.

Anyway, maybe nobody noticed that "spelling" mistake -- but at least I did.

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Hmmmmm... have you tested your ebook in Marvin yet?

I did, actually! It looks fine, but when you're in two-page landscape mode I did notice a rather odd behaviour -- whenever a new HTML file stars in the epub, Marvin seems to insert an extra blank page in-between.

That kinda sucks -- like, at the beginning, instead of having the frontispiece and title page opposite each other (as it should be), you end up with the frontispiece, opposite a blank page, then the title page, opposite a blank page. And every single "new" HTML file has that -- but each individual chapter (of text) in my book is fine.

That really does suck about Marvin -- but I can only presume that's an issue in virtually every ebook one views in it? I do realize that Marvin has apparently become rather popular, but personally, after playing around with it a bit, I can't really say that I like it myself (in comparison to iBooks).

I did also test my book in Sony Reader on the iPad -- I couldn't find a two-page option to try in there, but it seemed to come out just fine (perfectly, in fact).

It's also fine (perfect) in ADE on my PC, and obviously in iBooks on both the iPad and Mac -- although what's frustrating about the latter is that it puts the cover page on the left page, which leaves it opposite the frontispiece, and then the title page on the next page. That throws everything outta wack! But obviously that'll be the same issue for any/every book out there, not just mine (at least when left/right pagination can make a difference, generally at the beginning of a book). iBooks for the Mac is fairly new, though, so hopefully they'll change/fix that eventually.

Also, it depends on where you are planning on selling this in the world. In the US, Amazon dominates the sales in the ebook market, but in other countries, the situation is different. Which is why you typically want your book in EPUB and MOBI (KF8/KF7)... so you can be read on nearly all devices in nearly all countries.

I definitely have to learn about MOBI, and converting to EPUB from that -- I guess there's a forum here somewhere for that. I'm not in a hurry to do so, but I'll find it!

Well, a lot of these specs were designed for extremely low powered devices. This allows you to create them much more cheaply. Having to accommodate such complex CSS and typography would mean the device would need a faster CPU, more RAM, more space, etc. etc. (This would raise the production costs dramatically).

Yeah, I realize that this first project of mine isn't a typical ebook project -- I'd like to think of this as a sort of "e-livre d'artist", kinda thing. My next project will be so much simpler and easy to do, and although I do still intend to make it look "nice" (in platforms that support "nice"), it won't be such a drastic loss or complication for platforms that are more like just "plain text".

I'm really glad that I started with this book, though -- it's been a really great learning experience for me, encountering all sorts of issues that I likely won't need to deal with much in the future, but at least I've got all the solutions under my belt now.

Yes, it would be nice if you could just cut off and forget about a lot of these crappy (compared to the bleeding edge devices of today... and those devices will be crappy compared to the bleeding edge six years from now), but they are still a HUGE share of the market. iPads are just a drop in the water compared to all the old Kindles out there.... not to mention that Kindles are a drop in the water compared to all the other older ereading devices that are still chugging along.

Yeah, I really just don't know what to do at the moment with regard to this particular book and those other readers go -- the modern text for my "Imaginary Friend" piece would be just fine to do up as "plain text", of course, but so long to the entire second "olde" half, not to mention all the lovely paintings, etc. that I included. If I was going to publish -- and sell -- it for those other, plainer platforms at all, well, I guess the price would have to be half-price, too, pretty much. :/

Kindle Previewer = a GUI drag/drop for feeding books into KindleGen, and it allows you to "see how it would look on the different Kindles" (cannot be trusted in a lot of cases... ALWAYS try to test on the physical device itself.. ESPECIALLY in your case, as you are doing very complex things with CSS/fonts).

Yeah, I did have that Kindle Previewer installed before (it's a long story, but my very first version of this ebook was in MOBI format, generated via WordPerfect, but then I later realized that I needed EPUB format for it to work on the iPad). I was indeed concerned at that time about whether or not the "previewer" was showing what I would really see on the actual device(s).

This whole amazon/kindle issue really sucks, actually -- I'd really like to get my book on there, too, just for the potential market available, but the design (or lack-of-design) issues involved seem really quite daunting. :/

Anyway, thanks, you guys (or gals) for checking out my book! Appreciate your looking, and also/moreso your valued feedback!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Thing is, if Amazon is so paranoid that people are going to like Charis SIL better that they feel a need to try to remove it, then author's should go the whatever lengths to have their books look they way they want.

Wolfie:

Really? C'mon, now. Amazon's not paranoid that people are going to like Charis better. That's silliness. I've already related here that we had problems with Charis ourselves; the font did not function properly. Now, could it be a different Charis than what you've done, or than John Doe used? Sure. We all know that not all fonts are created equal, but we tend to use foundry fonts for certain types of books/specs, and we had a highly unfortunate experience with it. That's not down to Amazon's paranoia.

Hitch

[DomesticExtremis]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Multiple replies here (first a couple of short ones, followed by a longer one)...



Thank you so much for looking/checking! And yeah, I know it's short, but this is just the sample version, of course. Mind you, the entire work isn't really all that long either, but having both the "new" and "olde" versions does double that up, and I do hope that the artwork I included (and with any luck my overall design, too) will help make this worthwhile for people.

Also, you wrote...



...and then Toxaris followed up on that with...



That's so strange! I remember encountering some issue regarding that ampersand as I was working on this, too, and thought I'd fixed that -- and then it seems to have returned somehow. I just did what you said, though, just putting an ampersand alone (not a character entity) and that seems to have worked.

In any case, after posting that sample file here I did find a much more glaring, in-your-face error -- there's an "s" on the title page of the "Epistyll" part that should be a "long-ess". I don't know how I missed that (after looking at everything a million times)! That error isn't in the original "olde" text either, so I can only assume that somehow that came about when I did that conversion from the old JSL font that I originally used and the other Fell one.

Anyway, maybe nobody noticed that "spelling" mistake -- but at least I did.

Well I didn't really read it thoroughly - just looked at the metadata on my Mini.
I might go back and proof read it later.
No problem testing - I pinched your display-options.xml for my own olde style booke, so I got something out of it