Best format for etextbook

[SolRaven]

Originally Posted by screwdriver223

Hi

I'm the editor of a textbook, and am interested in developing an ebook version to distribute with the next edition of the paper version. The textbook is ~1400 pages, and contains multiple figures, and tables.

I don't know what your budget is, but I believe Inkling has got it right.

[screwdriver223]

Originally Posted by SolRaven

I don't know what your budget is, but I believe Inkling has got it right.

[Resurrecting a 6 month old thread...]

Inkling looks awesome. I think it'll be the future of textbooks.

Unfortunately, I don't think it's an option for us. First, it only supports ipad, which perhaps 30% of our market owns. Second, it requires a significant amount of 'translation' and development to create from the book. We would be willing to make that investment (in both time and money) once, but we publish updated editions annually and we are looking for a solution that can be generated easily from the same source (inDesign) as the print version of the text.

[screwdriver223]

First of all, thank you everyone for your helpful and thoughtful replies. Your perspectives were much appreciated.

We've looked at the epub format and, unfortunately, it is not an option for our textbook. The text is typeset in inDesign, and contains complex layouts, and hundreds of figures and tables. The 'automatic' epub output from inDesign looks horrible. Given the length of the book (1400 pages) and our publication frequency (updated once a year), tweaking the epub output is just not a practical option. If you think there's a workable solution to this, I'm all ears.

That leaves us with distributing a pdf version of our text. As far as we can tell, Google is the only vendor which will sell a packaged pdf text 'as is', and not convert it to a proprietary flowing-text version. (In theory, a flowing-text version would be great, but it doesn't seem possible without hundreds of hours of manual work.)

Yes, the hardcopy of our text has been scanned and is available as a torrent. We tried to wrap it as a flash application on our website, but that too was circumvented and there are now high quality pdfs of our text torrented. We appreciate that no distribution method provides perfect DRM, but would like one that makes it easy for legitimate users to buy and use our product without making it trivially easy for people to share the book without buying it.

We really want to provide an ebook solution that our readers will enjoy. However, the solution needs to work within our somewhat flexible constraints. If any of you have reasons why we shouldn't sell through Google as a pdf text, or if you have any other suggestions, I would really like to hear.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by screwdriver223

First of all, thank you everyone for your helpful and thoughtful replies. Your perspectives were much appreciated.

We've looked at the epub format and, unfortunately, it is not an option for our textbook. The text is typeset in inDesign, and contains complex layouts, and hundreds of figures and tables. The 'automatic' epub output from inDesign looks horrible. Given the length of the book (1400 pages) and our publication frequency (updated once a year), tweaking the epub output is just not a practical option. If you think there's a workable solution to this, I'm all ears.

That leaves us with distributing a pdf version of our text. As far as we can tell, Google is the only vendor which will sell a packaged pdf text 'as is', and not convert it to a proprietary flowing-text version. (In theory, a flowing-text version would be great, but it doesn't seem possible without hundreds of hours of manual work.)

Yes, the hardcopy of our text has been scanned and is available as a torrent. We tried to wrap it as a flash application on our website, but that too was circumvented and there are now high quality pdfs of our text torrented. We appreciate that no distribution method provides perfect DRM, but would like one that makes it easy for legitimate users to buy and use our product without making it trivially easy for people to share the book without buying it.

We really want to provide an ebook solution that our readers will enjoy. However, the solution needs to work within our somewhat flexible constraints. If any of you have reasons why we shouldn't sell through Google as a pdf text, or if you have any other suggestions, I would really like to hear.

I guarantee that if you took all the time you've wasted trying to prevent TEH TORRENTS and stuck it into that oh-so-time-consuming hand-tweaking, you'd be a lot better off. Someone who knows their way around Sigil could probably tweak your book with maybe 2-3 weeks of dedicated work. I'd bet safe money *I* could, anyway, and I'm not as much of an HTML guru as I'd like to be.

[VicLavigne]

Well, both epub and Mobi ebooks are designed for text presentation, and not focused on layout. If layout is your primary concern, then yes PDF is the best output. Useful on computers and tablets, not so useful on the multiple other devices first mentioned in the original post. That is too bad. I suspect that using the "automatic" epub output is your failure in this.... it would necessarily take more work than clicking a button to "convert". Tables and charts can be added in as inline pictures, or even placed at the back of the document and linked via clickable links. But again, this will take a little more work than your company seems willing to do.

Vic

[Ken Maltby]

The format that meets your needs (except the silly DRM idea) is HTML itself.
Epub is just a specific definition of HTML parameters, to the extent it can meet your
needs it is because of the HTML it contains. There are number of eReaders (dedicated
devices) that can handle HTML to varying extent and all the browsers in devices, tablets,
and computers are made to handle it.

Luck;
Ken