(Unique?) conversion challenge

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by jmurphy

Sorry, Brian. All I know is that PagePerfect is a thing. That appears to be the name of the format, not the name of the tool. Does B&N have support forums, or a method of opening a ticket? Other than that I'm out of ideas, sorry.

middle of the page:

https://ebookpartnership.com/fixed-layout-file-formats/

[DNSB]

I looked at the sample of the book from Amazon. Unpacking the file with KindleUnpack gave me a collection of images for each page. I stuffed the images into an epub file using Sigil and added one image with a svg wrapper per xhtml file. Pretty much a minimal effort conversion.

Looking at the file I created on my Kobo Sage, one reason that this book is not available on eInk Kindles is that the text size (looking at About the Music) is below 4mm. Looking at the margins on the pages, the images could be trimmed to improve the text size.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

middle of the page:

https://ebookpartnership.com/fixed-layout-file-formats/

From that page:

To upload a PagePerfect file to B&N you must have a Publisher account with them (or use a service which has a Publisher account with B&N – view details of our distribution service). You cannot upload a PagePerfect file through NOOK Press.

[BrianHayesMusic]

j.p.s.

Thank you. The idea of converting the MOBI file that I created for KDP to an EPUB, using Calibre, is a clever idea that sounded promising. However, again, that did not work, either. I'm going to have to look into the kindleunpack as a Calibre plugin.

jmurphy,

Thank you, again, for hanging in here with me. I did start a B&N support ticket. However, the ticket was regarding one of my earlier issues about an error message that I received in my first upload attempt. Nevertheless, I have not heard back yet. The way I wound up here was that the help article and video that B&N put together actually directed me to this forum. They actually posted a link directly to here. Apparently, the person who put together the help article is one of the moderators here?

[BrianHayesMusic]

Dr Drib,

I was excited to check this out but jhowell indicated that you must have a Publisher account?

DNSB,

Did you actually solve this!?! It's getting late, now, so I'll have to look at this at the start of my day, tomorrow, but this is looking promising!! I see what you mean about the margins. Part of that problem was caused by the fact that KDP required larger margins for the paperback version and I inadvertently wound up using that same file for the Kindle. I used Adobe Acrobat Pro to increase those margins. Perhaps I can use Acrobat to make them smaller as well.

[BrianHayesMusic]

DNSB,

I actually have my entire book saved as individual pages in JPEG, TIFF and PNG formats. I wound up with these as a result of using the "Export to" feature in Acrobat Pro in another one of my attempts.

I never heard of Sigil. Maybe this is something I can use? Unfortunately, "adding an image with a svg wrapper per xhtml file" is language that goes over my head, me being such a newbie Maybe I can get up to speed on some of this stuff.

[BrianHayesMusic]

I want to thank you for all of your responses.

DNSB, I followed a YouTube tutorial on how to insert my 113 pages of JPEGs in Sigil and convert it to an EPUB but, apparently, Sigil has since eliminated their page view feature which makes it too difficult for a newbie such as myself.

All of you are so smart and I'm a brand new publisher. I think I'm fairly savvy. I designed every part of my book, including the cover but I am no match for the skills required to convert my existing files into something that is suitable for a B&N eBook. Do any of you have any steps that are easy enough for even someone as clueless as me to follow? Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll be forced to give up.

[PeterT]

Sigil still has a tool similar to pageview. It's now called PageEdit and is a seperate download and install. See https://sigil-ebook.com/pageedit/

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

[Turtle91]

The function you are looking for in Sigil is called "Preview". It is a window that gives you instant visual of what you are typing in the code view window. It is 1000000001% better than the old page view that was very buggy and caused some bad code to be generated unless you were very knowledgeable about the subject. e.g. The current version is much better for newer users.

The only difference you need to be aware of from the directions on that video are instead of double-clicking on the page tab to switch between code view and page view, just hit the F10 key (or click on View/Preview in the menu) to bring up the preview window. Then you can dock it to the side, or keep it modal and place it anywhere, even on a 2nd monitor. When you close and reopen Sigil it will remain in its previous position.

PeterT is referencing an optional companion software to Sigil which is a basic WYSIWYG text editor. You can use PageEdit, or any other 3rd party html editor via Sigil's 'Open With' functionality, but it is not required. If you designed your whole book (Awesome!) then you certainly either already have, or can easily learn, the basic html/css knowledge to work on Sigil's codeview page.... we're talking basic stuff like putting paragraph tags <p>...</p> around paragraphs to designate the beginning and end of a paragraph, or heading tags <h3>...</h3> to designate the beginning and end of your heading (like a chapter title). (see the attached image)

There are also some helpful guides/tutorials on MR's Wiki page that may help...just be aware that some info may be slightly outdated.

Cheers!

[BrianHayesMusic]

Turtle91,

Thank you for your response. I'm not sure of you saw my original thread but my book doesn't really contain any paragraphs or headers. It is a book of images. Musical scores to be exact. Compiling my book didn't require any htm or css knowledge at all.

Maybe the fail in the tutorial had nothing to do with the absence of page view feature in Sigil. All I know is that he was looking at a blank window (which I believed to be page view) and I was looking at a box with html. Here is the tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9sE7NxzmYM

Everything is going fine until 3:45 and then I get an error message: "You can not insert a file at this position."

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by BrianHayesMusic

Turtle91,

Thank you for your response. I'm not sure of you saw my original thread but my book doesn't really contain any paragraphs or headers. It is a book of images. Musical scores to be exact. Compiling my book didn't require any htm or css knowledge at all.

Maybe the fail in the tutorial had nothing to do with the absence of page view feature in Sigil. All I know is that he was looking at a blank window (which I believed to be page view) and I was looking at a box with html. Here is the tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9sE7NxzmYM

Everything is going fine until 3:45 and then I get an error message: "You can not insert a file at this position."

This works best with two monitors. Open Sigil, hit F10 to bring up the preview windows and drag it to the second monitor.

Basically, I only added two html files when I started the process. I configured one for the cover and the other for the internal pages. I then added the images to Images in Sigil (right click on the Images folder in the Browser and add existing files). At that point, I right clicked on the second html file in Browser and clicked copy. I then repeated the process until I had enough copies and then modified the image file name in the html file. I also added the <h3 class="hidden">chapter title</h3> in the first html file in each block to make generating the ToC easier.

If I had had to do the entire book, I would have looked at one of Sigil's plugins called Plugin to insert and wrap an image with SVG to automate the insert and wrap process.

[Turtle91]

Yes, I saw your post. What, I think, you are missing is that ALL ePub format books are made of html (actually xhtml but that doesn't really matter) and css even if your book is nothing but images.

The image files themselves are simply a 'resource' in the ePub that can be used throughout the book multiple times with different sizes, shapes, display regions, etc. As DNSB mentioned, you may want to trim your images to get rid of those massive margins...that's just wasted image space making your image files (and overall ePub) much larger than it needs to be. You can (and should) let the user set their own margin sizes on their own device/app based on their own preferences.

The html file is the actual 'paper' that you put the image on...these are the pages the user looks at. You could have a million images in the ePub but if they aren't referenced from an html page, with html code, then you would never 'see' them.

The css file is the resource page that lists all the information on HOW you want to display your image, paragraphs, etc. - How do you want to make it look... Do you want the image to have a pretty red border, a pink background, be really narrow but really tall, take up the whole page or just a portion of it, be on the right/left/center of the page, etc.

That old version (0.9.2 in the video I think) of Sigil used the WYSIWYG PageView that would put the html/css codes into the book for you...but it was often wrong, or created bugs that would be even more difficult to fix than just doing it by hand in the first place. The newer versions of Sigil removed that buggy function and replaced it with something much better.

The error that you were receiving was likely because you had your cursor somewhere that it couldn't be. Image references need to be in the 'body' of the document, not in the 'head' section; the cursor needs to be between the <body> and the </body> tags. Ideally you would put the image within some kind of element that you can style as you wish, such as a <div>.

The references and tutorials I linked in my previous post take a couple hours to look through...but it is time WELL spent. It will save you sooo much time because you won't have to try and find the step-by-step tutorial (that doesn't exist) walking you through how to do every little thing you want to do. YOUR book requires VERY basic html/css because it is just a bunch of images. The attachment image I had shows one option of inserting images onto a page...there are others.

html:
<div><img alt="" src="../Images/img_1.jpg"/></div>

with css:
div {margin:1em auto; text-align:center} 
div img {width:75%; max-width:600px}

*set the percentage to how much of the screen width you want to fill
 set the max-width to the width of your image in pixels to help prevent fuzzy images if they try and get stretched too large on a large format display. This is optional...and 'technically' not exactly what's going on behind the scenes, but it is close enough and helps.

You could even go with an svg wrapped image that takes up the full screen while still keeping the proper aspect ratio (eg it would fill the screen from top to bottom and have extra space on the sides for an image that is taller than it is wide, or fill the screen from side to side with space on the top/bottom if the image is wider than it is tall). Unfortunately, some older devices (older kindle formats iirc) don't like svg images except as a cover image...so you need to know your market, know your device/app capabilities, and choose the correct html/css.

Here's an example of an svg wrapped image:

<body style="margin:0; padding:0; text-align:center; background-color:white">

  <div style="margin:0; padding:0">
    <svg 
		xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" 
		height="100vh" width="100vw" 
		preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet" version="1.1" 
		viewBox="0 0 600 902" 
		xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
        <image width="600" height="902" xlink:href="../Images/img_1.jpg"/>
    </svg>
  </div>

</body>

If you copy/paste that onto a separate html page (one for each of your images) then all you need to do is update the numbers with the image width and height (in pixels) and update the filename with the correct name.

Of course, Sigil automatically puts all the other information on the page for you:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
  <title></title>
</head>

<body>
  <p>&nbsp;</p>
</body>
</html>

You would just need to replace the red text with the example I showed you. This gives a final html that looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
  <title></title>
</head>

<body style="margin:0; padding:0; text-align:center; background-color:white">

  <div style="margin:0; padding:0">
    <svg 
		xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" 
		height="100vh" width="100vw" 
		preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet" version="1.1" 
		viewBox="0 0 600 902" 
		xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
        <image width="600" height="902" xlink:href="../Images/img_1.jpg"/>
    </svg>
  </div>

</body>
</html>

Now.... you might have a little smoke coming out of your ears thinking of doing that for 100+ images, but don't worry. There is a nice little Sigil plugin (InsertImageSVG) that will auto-magically do the work for you.

There are many threads on putting images into ePubs, with all the pluses and minuses for each technique. You can do a quick search and find those - there are too many to quickly list here.

I hope that helps you!

Cheers,

[BrianHayesMusic]

DNSB & Turtle91,

These are very thorough answers, I can't thank you enough. Maybe with a fresh morning brain, I'll be able to get this done, myself, with the help of your explanations. But even if I can not, I have a guy I can go to who speaks your language much better than I do. He's my go-to guy whenever I get stuck when building / modifying my websites. (I built those myself, too.) It's amazing what I am able to accomplish with the help of folks like you, me being such a complete newbie and a hack. Thank you, again!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by BrianHayesMusic

DNSB & Turtle91,

These are very thorough answers, I can't thank you enough. Maybe with a fresh morning brain, I'll be able to get this done, myself, with the help of your explanations. But even if I can not, I have a guy I can go to who speaks your language much better than I do. He's my go-to guy whenever I get stuck when building / modifying my websites. (I built those myself, too.) It's amazing what I am able to accomplish with the help of folks like you, me being such a complete newbie and a hack. Thank you, again!

Okay, gang:

Let's sort out some of what's going on here. Yes, B&N has a fixed-layout option, PagePerfect, but just like NookKids', the format is a) proprietary and b) more importantly, cannot be uploaded through the NookPress portal. So, that's a non-starter.

Moreover, even if this ePUB were to be made in InDesign, and exported as a fixed-layout ePUB3, you can't upload that at NookPress's portal, either.

So, none of those are options. Not PagePerfect, not NookKids, not FXL ePUB3.0.

(N.b.: if you use a distributor that distributes to Nook, you CAN upload a fixed-layout ePUB3.0 file. Now, some will bitch that you shouldn't/can't, like IngramSpark, but the important part is, the file works at B&N.)

The KKBC (Kindle Kids' Book Creator) simply does what someone here mentioned--it slaps a "wrapper" around a PDF, that encases the ePDF and allows it to display on Kindles. I feel compelled to add that for this particular book, myself, I would have used Kindle Create instead, because KC's output format, KPF, for this, allows page-zooming and the MOBI created by KKBC does NOT. Given the subject matter, I'd go for the KC-generated .kpf file and upload that over the old one. (Just my advice).

The only way forward that I see here is to either a) do this ePUB file manually--creating HTML pages, most likely, for each page (as a jpg or whatever). If you laid this all out in INDD, you'll get an ePUB 3.0 fixed-layout as the result and see above about that (no fly zone).

And maybe I'm nuts, but I don't see the KKBC MOBI converting to ePUB worth a damn, but given you're discussing using Calibre, you can try it. The time investment to see an initial result would be nominal, but...don't forget, your ePUB also has to pass ePUBcheck and my thinking here is that there's no way that would work.

That's my $.02, FWIW.

Hitch

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Hitch

And maybe I'm nuts, but I don't see the KKBC MOBI converting to ePUB worth a damn, but given you're discussing using Calibre, you can try it. The time investment to see an initial result would be nominal, but...don't forget, your ePUB also has to pass ePUBcheck and my thinking here is that there's no way that would work.

That's my $.02, FWIW.

Once again you are correct. The calibre conversion was not a happy camper when it came to epubcheck. Not to mention that all the images were inserted as background images. The KindleUnpack epub conversion at least left the images as images but again epubcheck was severely unhappy. That was when I went to using KindleUnpack to unpack the file so I could get at the images.