So...you think you want to be a commercial Bookmaker? Read on...

[Hitch]

Dearest friends, peeps and commiserators:

This thread probably should have been entitled "you can't make this s**t up," but hey...I try to be thoughtful about offending people only when it's intentional. Anyway..

Some months back, we made some FXL books for one of our more prestigious clients. So, great: we made them. ePUB for iBooks/Kobo, and MOBi for Amazon. I should mention that the ePUB is ePUB3, although honestly, not sure that that plays into it.

Fast forward...now, the client has us making another FXL book. She writes and says "it looks GREAT! Could you put the Smashwords copyright language on it, so I don't have issues when I upload it?" I'm surprised. I didn't know that Smashwords took FXL these days, and of course, I asked her.

She assures me that sure enough, they do, although she adds "there's some problem with the other one, though." I'm like...huhn? I ask her how she knows, and she sends me an error message from Smashwords, in which iBooks tells her that they have removed the book from sale, because a reader complained that the pages were essentially all "scrunched up in the upper-left hand corner."

I invest a boatload of time trying to figure this out. I epubcheck the file again; sure enough, it still passes. I put it on all the intended devices at the office (1st Gen iPad, later iPad, iPhone, iPad mini, Kobo) and I check it on Readium, too. All great. I tweet Mark Coker, who says "yup, we take them" (although he couldn't resist adding "if well designed," which only slightly made me want to smash him in the face).

<----fast forward a few days--->

I've now BOUGHT the bloody ePUB from the Smashwords site, as I can't do that from iBooks (removed from sale). Tweets and emails with the SW personnel. NOTHING makes any sense; this book SHOULD be fine.

I've been emailing back-froth with a SW person. The gist is, "hey, it's not our job, man." So, Smashwords, which is the distributor, says it's an Apple problem. Apple won't talk to us, or the client, because--surprise!--we're NOT the publishers, Smashwords is. Thus, we can't get there from here. My client cannot sell their book.

More emails back/forth with the SW guy, who persists in talking to me like I'm a Word-file uploader. He says I should read the Apple guidelines (...), I should make sure the file ePUBchecks (...)...and so on. Now, being my normal self, I provided my email address, website URL, and all that, figuring that knowing we're a commercial firm SHOULD expedite things, right?

The icing on the cake came Thursday night. I get an email from this helpful person, who tells me this (verbatim):

As mentioned earlier, we offer limited support for EPUB FXL file. However, I would encourage you to visit MobileRead's forum
(https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=179). Many designers and formatters congregate there to help one another with these kinds of technical problems.

.....

(And before you ask: hells, no. The damn file's issues--if any--still can't be determined. There seems to be NOTHING wrong. When I download the for-sale version from SW, it's exactly--exactly--the same file as the one we gave the client; I'm compared it using Beyond Compare. There is NOTHING wrong with the damn file. But we have zero standing--and that includes the author/publisher, mind you!--to contest this with Apple. I'd give a lot to know if they made sure that this alleged "issue" really existed, or if some moron bought the book and then downloaded it to, say, Marvin or some other e-Reader that doesn't support FXL.)

Yes, mods: I know that this isn't about ebookmaking, from a technical standpoint--not really. But the vent & rant thread isn't really a good place for eBook-making-related angst. Sorry.

Hitch

[BetterRed]

If the fruit shop wont sell your client's books then cui bono, cui prodest - tinker, tailor, soldier, spy - the butcher, baker, or the candlestick maker. Not thee methinks.

One of the characteristics of convoluted supply chains is that everyone else can be blamed by everyone else when things go wrong,

Sanders Trumps Clinton in Alaska & Wash State - interesting inner-spring times

BR

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

(And before you ask: hells, no. The damn file's issues--if any--still can't be determined. There seems to be NOTHING wrong. When I download the for-sale version from SW, it's exactly--exactly--the same file as the one we gave the client; I'm compared it using Beyond Compare. There is NOTHING wrong with the damn file.

Just a quick note. If you use Calibre's eBook editor, you can compare two ePub to see what's different. That way if the ePub you bought was somehow changed, you would be able to see what it was that was changed. I do this sometimes when I redownload an eBook and I want to see if anything has changed or changed enough so I know which file to keep.

[PeterT]

It could have been worse; he could have referred you to one of YOUR posts at MR

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by PeterT

It could have been worse; he could have referred you to one of YOUR posts at MR

This.

Except the sad thing is, the Smashwords guy probably found out about MobileRead because of Hitch('s posts)... so I'm not sure that makes it any better.

...

So, Hitch, what was your response, if any? I ask because I can't really think of anything worthy to be a response.
What do you say in a situation like this?

[Pablo]

Originally Posted by PeterT

It could have been worse; he could have referred you to one of YOUR posts at MR

Or he could have suggested Yahoo! Answers.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Just a quick note. If you use Calibre's eBook editor, you can compare two ePub to see what's different. That way if the ePub you bought was somehow changed, you would be able to see what it was that was changed. I do this sometimes when I redownload an eBook and I want to see if anything has changed or changed enough so I know which file to keep.

Scooter's Beyond Compare (which Hitch used) is widely recognised as the gold standard when it to comes file comparison utilities - used by many law enforcement agencies.

BR

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

If the fruit shop wont sell your client's books then cui bono, cui prodest - tinker, tailor, soldier, spy - the butcher, baker, or the candlestick maker. Not thee methinks.

One of the characteristics of convoluted supply chains is that everyone else can be blamed by everyone else when things go wrong,

<snip for multi-quote space>

BR

Yeah, I don't disagree with you, but as great as this client is, (and they are super), I'm not sure that they see this that way. After all: as they are PC people, they don't really have another viable way to get to iBooks. Almost none of the distributors--Bookbaby, etc.--will accept and upload FXL. Hell, they won't even accept and upload MOBI--you have to give them a KDP-ready ePUB. And this ePUB3 FXL book was expressly created for iBooks, with Kobo, Readium, etc., as...extra goodies.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Just a quick note. If you use Calibre's eBook editor, you can compare two ePub to see what's different. That way if the ePub you bought was somehow changed, you would be able to see what it was that was changed. I do this sometimes when I redownload an eBook and I want to see if anything has changed or changed enough so I know which file to keep.

Jon, you are my curmudgeonly sweetie, but I'm using Beyond Compare. It compares folders of files down to the gnat's ass. If a period changed, it would tell me. Unless I've mis-commanded it, (Never say that isn't possible),the two files are absolutely identical. FWIW, they are also identical in size, down to the hundredth. Generally, you don't see that even if someone only inserts a single space somewhere.

Out of curiosity, why would this be different than putting the two ePUBs in either Sigil side-by-side, or cracking them open and viewing them in NoteTab Pro?

Originally Posted by PeterT

It could have been worse; he could have referred you to one of YOUR posts at MR

This had me rolling. That's hysterical. And you're SO right--that would have been in a way, almost worse.

Originally Posted by eschwartz

This.

Except the sad thing is, the Smashwords guy probably found out about MobileRead because of Hitch('s posts)... so I'm not sure that makes it any better.

So, Hitch, what was your response, if any? I ask because I can't really think of anything worthy to be a response.
What do you say in a situation like this?

I really struggled for a bit. I was tempted to mooch from Lord Peter Wimsey, in Have His Carcase, and say something along the lines of "You drive me to the vulgarity of telling you Who I Am," but I (kinda) forbore. I did say something like..."Not to get up on my hind legs, or anything like that, but I feel obliged to tell you that all in all, I am one of the experts at MR." And while most of you here are steelier-eyed ePUB pilots than I, and coding whizzes, which we all know I'm not, I think that in the "dealing with retailer/distributor" area, I have more experience than most here.

Originally Posted by Pablo

Or he could have suggested Yahoo! Answers.

<SNORT>

You are most likely right, Pablo.

The frustrating thing is (aside from being patronized by some customer service guy--who, to be fair to him, really is only trying to help in a situation where he can almost do less than I can to ameliorate the problem--there's naught I can do. iBooks won't talk to me, the publisher or the author--it's apparent from the comments from SW that they won't talk to SW, EITHER.

I mean, that's the kick in the teeth, isn't it? If they'd talk to someone, that wouldn't be so damned awful, but as usual...their idea of customer service is: "we'll tell you if your s**t is broken, and if it is, you have to take it and like it, because, man, we're just SO EFFING COOL. So, you should be grateful that we sent you this damn canned email."

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Worse, you have any idea how hard it is to prove a negative? "Dear client, there's nothing wrong with this file, it's Apple's fault." Nobody is going to believe that--hell, they're APPLE, right?--and worse, it sounds like YOU are trying to blame someone else. I can't audit the file at iBooks, because you can't run it through their intake checker, without publishing the damn thing--which would bring hell down upon us, as the book would then be published in two places. As the book was removed from sale, I can't download THAT, either, to see if there's a problem that was caused by god-only-knows-what.

To TPTB here at MR: we need an "I'm gonna go eat worms" emoty, please. Is there an emoty-suggestion box here, folks? The closest thing is my buddy

Hitch

[Doitsu]

@Hitch: I vaguely remember that someone else reported a similar issue with an FXL epub3 book and it turned out that the epub was down-converted from ePub3 to ePub2.
An easy way to test this is an epub-to-epub conversion with Calibre. (Since Calibre doesn't support ePub3 as an output format the ePub3 book will be automatically converted to an ePub2 book.)
Do an epub-to-epub conversion with Calibre and re-test the generated ePub with iBooks. The converted ePub will most likely have the same problems that the author mentioned.

@JSWolf: Regarding Beyond Compare, there's an older freeware tool that does pretty much the same thing: CSDiff 5.0.
It'll allow you to compare two unpacked ePub folders by selecting them in the Windows file explorer, right-clicking them and then selecting Send to > CSDiff. (A similar tool that many programmers use is WinMerge.)
Both tools can even be set up to detect changes in whitespace.

[JSWolf]

So find out who the person was who had this problem and remove all his electronic equipment. That will solve the problem of this person using electronics who should not be.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

@Hitch: I vaguely remember that someone else reported a similar issue with an FXL epub3 book and it turned out that the epub was down-converted from ePub3 to ePub2.
An easy way to test this is an epub-to-epub conversion with Calibre. (Since Calibre doesn't support ePub3 as an output format the ePub3 book will be automatically converted to an ePub2 book.)
Do an epub-to-epub conversion with Calibre and re-test the generated ePub with iBooks. The converted ePub will most likely have the same problems that the author mentioned.

Doits--shouldn't BC (Beyond Compare) have twigged if the meta, etc., indicated ePUB2, rather than ePUB3? That's one of the first things I considered (great minds think alike!), but I purchased the SW ePUB, and it shows up with zero differences using BC. I'll look--of course.

I wonder...SW swears that they send the file on unmolested, and my investigations thus far seem to bear this out. But...I can't think of anything that iBooks does that would alter that, either. I've loaded some number of books there directly, and other than the screwing around with the TOC display, (which I think is done in the iBooks display software--not something in the ePUB itself), iBooks doesn't alter the book, AFAIK.

When SW was using "the grinder," sure--that makes sense. But as near as I can tell (because I looked for that, too), they didn't. Dammit. And I have NO way to get to iBooks. The testing I can do would not include any post-publishing stuff.

@JSWolf: Regarding Beyond Compare, there's an older freeware tool that does pretty much the same thing: CSDiff 5.0.
It'll allow you to compare two unpacked ePub folders by selecting them in the Windows file explorer, right-clicking them and then selecting Send to > CSDiff. (A similar tool that many programmers use is WinMerge.)
Both tools can even be set up to detect changes in whitespace.

I ended up with BC due to someone here. I don't remember whom--but it was someone here that turned me on to it. It's been a great tool.

@Doits: I'll pore over the post-SW file again. I'd considered ePUB2/3, and reflow/fxl, but I haven't found anything yet that's changed.

Hitch

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Doits--shouldn't BC (Beyond Compare) have twigged if the meta, etc., indicated ePUB2, rather than ePUB3?

It certainly should have reported any changes. That's why I suggested doing a forced epub3 to epub2 conversion with Calibre for testing purposes.
If the down-converted book has the same display problems that the author has reported, you'd know for sure that it must have been down-converted by someone or something.
And if the SmashWords people didn't molest the book the evil empire that is Apple must have done something horrible to your poor book.

if I may channel Sherlock Holmes for a moment:

[...] when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

if I may channel Sherlock Holmes for a moment:

@Hitch, if you did a byte-wise compare with BC and it reported no differences then its London to a brick on that the files are the same. Otherwise, we're into the realms of Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns, Heisenberg's uncertainties, and/or Gödel's Incompletenesses.



BR

[Toxaris]

Perhaps a strange suggestion, but could it be that the one reporting the problem actually used another program than iBooks and encountered the issue there? I mean a lot of people confuse iBooks with iPad.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

It certainly should have reported any changes. That's why I suggested doing a forced epub3 to epub2 conversion with Calibre for testing purposes.
If the down-converted book has the same display problems that the author has reported, you'd know for sure that it must have been down-converted by someone or something.
And if the SmashWords people didn't molest the book the evil empire that is Apple must have done something horrible to your poor book.

if I may channel Sherlock Holmes for a moment:

I agree, 100%. For the life of me, at this point, I'm thinking what Tox is thinking, below--some idiot opened it on the wrong program. I'll try the Calibre forced-convert, but...oh. I wonder--I wonder if someone downloaded it TO Calibre???? Or to a Calibre cloud, and from thence to their i-whatever?

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@Hitch, if you did a byte-wise compare with BC and it reported no differences then its London to a brick on that the files are the same. Otherwise, we're into the realms of Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns, Heisenberg's uncertainties, and/or Gödel's Incompletenesses.

BR

Yup. That's my thinking, too. I simply don't see any diffs. I've perused the OPF, they both say package 3.0...damn it all to hell. (Thanks for the image. GREATLY appreciated.)

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Perhaps a strange suggestion, but could it be that the one reporting the problem actually used another program than iBooks and encountered the issue there? I mean a lot of people confuse iBooks with iPad.

This is where I'm leaning, at this point. Someone bought it on iBooks, and then downloaded it...you know, given the Apple-verse, that sounds nuts, too. And it wasn't bought on Smashwords, we know that. See, if they'd purchased it on SW, that would make sense--download and put it on some Android tablet with some bonko reading software. But in the Appleverse? How likely is that? Seriously, gang, I'm asking. How likely is that?

Hitch