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Old 08-16-2010, 04:27 PM   #1
CharlesinCharge
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Anyone ever do a large scale professional ePub conversion?
Man, am I glad I found this forum. The publishing company I work for has tasked me with finding a viable, cost-effective method for converting around 1,000 titles to ePub. We currently stock the titles in hardcope, tiff, and PDF formats. I've looked into outsourcing the work to offshore companies like Innodata, Cadmus, Apex Covantage, Aptara, etc. Anyone ever work with any of them? Any recommendations? These titles are somewhat complex (many have tables, images, odd characters, etc.), and the output needs to be functionally and asthetically professional. Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks everyone.
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Old 08-16-2010, 05:18 PM   #2
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I really hate to say this, as many of us here are doing epubs professionally, but I've seen really fantastic work from Suntec India, converting pdf's to epubs. Very nice.

Hitch

UPDATE 9/12/2010: HOWEVER, having sent not one but two clients there (clients I really didn't want), I have to say that their customer service blows chunks. Also, if you want to use the epubs for mobi, they use tables in their epubs, which will blow your mobis to hell. Lastly, they won't quote you a fixed price, or ANY price; you send them your file or a sample, and then they give you a price. I admit that I won't give a client a fixed NTE price until I've looked at the file, for about a billion good reasons; but I don't hang up on potential clients, either. Very weird behavior--one of my clients called them not once but had to call SIX times, before she could get a live body, and on the sixth call the guy who answered the phone told her "I don't have time to talk to you" and hung up on her. Not my idea of great customer service, and if our clients were "techie," they wouldn't need us, now, would they?
Last edited by Hitch; 09-12-2010 at 05:09 AM. Reason: Update on Suntec
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Old 08-16-2010, 06:48 PM   #3
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I have not done it professional, but I have converted for personal use. Free PDFs from Gutenberg. And I can tell you, PDF is the WORST to convert from. You can do it but it causes errors, which then you need to learn a bit of CSS to fix in the stylesheet that Calibre uses.
I would advice you outsource it to a company which can do it. For this I have no information. Sorry.
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Old 08-16-2010, 07:12 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CharlesinCharge View Post
Anyone ever work with any of them? and the output needs to be functionally and asthetically professional. Let me know your thoughts.
I have, and still do send out my complex conversions, like what you have...
Why? because I know it would take me 3 times as long to do it myself. I do the rest (text and a few images etc) myself. What you have I would outsource, I have dealt with a few of these companies and would be happy to supply you with some contact details...
Just send me a PM if you are interested.
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Old 08-17-2010, 10:40 AM   #5
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What's your timeframe? I convert from PDF to ePub for the publishing company that I work for and also have been doing some freelance work. I would be willing to convert one of your titles for free so you can see the quality. It does take a while to get some of the books just right.
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Old 08-17-2010, 10:44 AM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CharlesinCharge View Post
Man, am I glad I found this forum. The publishing company I work for has tasked me with finding a viable, cost-effective method for converting around 1,000 titles to ePub. We currently stock the titles in hardcope, tiff, and PDF formats. I've looked into outsourcing the work to offshore companies like Innodata, Cadmus, Apex Covantage, Aptara, etc. Anyone ever work with any of them? Any recommendations? These titles are somewhat complex (many have tables, images, odd characters, etc.), and the output needs to be functionally and asthetically professional. Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks everyone.
One thing you should do is get your company to store any new titles in a better format for conversion. It's probably too late for the titles you already have, but PDF is NOT a source format.
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Old 08-19-2010, 08:49 PM   #7
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Originally Posted by CharlesinCharge View Post
Man, am I glad I found this forum. The publishing company I work for has tasked me with finding a viable, cost-effective method for converting around 1,000 titles to ePub. We currently stock the titles in hardcope, tiff, and PDF formats....
My company provides full-service solution for converting PDFs to ePubs and also for making PDFs accessible. Our key differentiation comes from our technology driven approach (complemented with human quality assurance) and the fact that you would have the option to get back a fully tagged and accessible PDF which can be later used for any type of content re-purposing. More information is available at http://www.pdf2epub.com/publishers. I have also sent you a PM for this.
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Old 08-19-2010, 09:36 PM   #8
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My company provides full-service solution for converting PDFs to ePubs
.

PDFs which are pre tagged.

No UI for OSX so I can't try your software.
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Old 08-19-2010, 11:33 PM   #9
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Originally Posted by Adjust View Post
.

PDFs which are pre tagged.

No UI for OSX so I can't try your software.
Our solution does not require PDFs to be pre-tagged. The plugin is not available for Mac yet but there is a web option available for trial (which is slightly lower quality than full solution but handles PDFs with simple layout and text/ images well).
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Old 08-20-2010, 12:56 AM   #10
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I tried downloading from the site http://www.pdf2epub.com/publishers as listed above. My Norton Antivirus did not like the resultant download and quarantined it. Message from Norton:
"Download Insight analyzed pd2epub_setup_v09_b04.exe Quarantined"

Of course this may be a false positive; Norton does this sometimes...
Bob
Last edited by bobcdy; 08-20-2010 at 12:58 AM. Reason: correction
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Old 08-23-2010, 02:41 AM   #11
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...My Norton Antivirus did not like the resultant download and quarantined it. Message from Norton:
"Download Insight analyzed pd2epub_setup_v09_b04.exe Quarantined"

Of course this may be a false positive; Norton does this sometimes...
Bob
I downloaded "Norton Internet Security 2010" software and scanned my plugin installer with it. The scan came out clear, without any issues. Not sure what could be going on with your installation. I am going to reach out to Norton folks and report this as an issue with their sensitivity setting for malware detection.
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Old 08-23-2010, 05:44 AM   #12
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Good to have your new company, Charles. Please look for a MobileRead pm from me. Best wishes. Neil
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Old 08-23-2010, 06:43 AM   #13
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Welcome to mobileread Charles
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Old 09-06-2010, 11:15 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CharlesinCharge View Post
Man, am I glad I found this forum. The publishing company I work for has tasked me with finding a viable, cost-effective method for converting around 1,000 titles to ePub. We currently stock the titles in hardcope, tiff, and PDF formats. I've looked into outsourcing the work to offshore companies like Innodata, Cadmus, Apex Covantage, Aptara, etc. Anyone ever work with any of them? Any recommendations? These titles are somewhat complex (many have tables, images, odd characters, etc.), and the output needs to be functionally and asthetically professional. Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks everyone.
Charles,

Are there any specific functionality needs your titles have?

Best regards,

Joel
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Old 09-07-2010, 04:21 AM   #15
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Welcome to mobileread ....
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