I feel so discouraged, and I only barely got started :(

[Psymon]

Hi folks, this is my first post here. I've been doing web/graphic design for almost two decades now, which naturally really helps with getting into ebook creation, but even still this latter is all very new to me -- and I find myself feeling so very confused and discouraged by what certainly seems to be the complexities of it all (far worse than web design, in fact!).

I managed to create my first epub using Sigil, doing all my coding "by hand" and everything validates perfectly with no errors or anything. Unfortunately, the only "real" ebook reader that I have to check my work is my iPad, although I do have the Kindle previewer, too (which sucks). Even just on the iPad, though, I first managed to get my epub looking great in iBooks, but then I downloaded the Kobo reader and my wonderful design just falls apart (so to speak), with my nice full-page images getting broken in half across separate pages, and other weird things going on.

Is this normal, just the way things are, that basically it's just not possible to do nice designs not only for a particular platform (like iPad) but that will work nicely on any ebook reader, and in any software that one might use (for example, in both iBooks and Kobo)?

Or, when all you pros out there design your epubs, do you pretty much design things to look nice one particular platform and in a certain software, and to heck with the rest?

I feel so very discouraged, and I've barely gotten started -- surely this issue has come up before? I've looked all through the various forums here but haven't been able to find any discussion on this. ANY thoughts/suggestions would be much appreciated!

(PS. Hope I've posted this in the correct section of this forum!)

[DaleDe]

Generally ePub can be made to display nearly the same on most readers but it depends on what you call "nice." If you try and make it look exactly like the book then you are in trouble but if you realize that ePub is a format that displays the information in a book with the user in control of more of the presentation then you can be successful. iPad has lots of different readers available so it is better to specify the reader in use rather than the platform. You wouldn't say it looks bad on windows without specifying the application you are using and similarly for any general purpose hardware.

Don't feel discouraged. Perhaps you might want to try Atlantis and let it make the ePub and see how it might look without hand coding the bits and bytes. They have a demo version.

Dale

[Arios]

Hi Psymon, and welcome to mobileread!

Some quick notes here. Do you remember when you started to do web design? It was not easy at first, is it not?

It is the same with epub creation and as you can already do your epub codes by hand it is a very good starting point.

It is true that different platforms show differences and it is the case of Kobo. In addition, there are some bugs that can surely "break" a beautiful formatting.

Hint: At first, take time to digest things! BTW, why not choose a epub that you like really much, that works well with both the iPad you have and the Kobo reader and look to see how it is structured?

I'm all for complexity, but it is sometimes easier to keep things simple, at least initially.

Another tip: I think it is essential to have at least one "real" device to test the epub, and ideally, two is still better. There are often discounts for Sony or Kobo eReaders. Not trying to convince you, but owning both a Sony and a Kobo can be very useful for testing purposes, or just for fun.

In the Sigil's forum (and Workshop too of course!), you could have very detailed replies to your questions.

Good luck!

[Arios]

@DaleDe

You are becoming an AWP addict !

[Psymon]

Hi again, thanks for the replies -- and for the encouragement! I guess the number one issue that I noticed was that I had no problem getting an image to display "full page" in iBooks (on the iPad), regardless of whether or not I was in portrait or two-page landscape orientation. However, in Kobo that supposedly full-page image would "break" into two pieces with part of the image on one page and part on the next.

Is there any concensus on the best way to do this, that will work in all the various softwares/platforms -- or, at least, most of them? I searched the archives here for "full page image", but all I end up with is a billion search results, and I just don't know where to begin.

That is, I suppose, the biggest issue that I'm trying to resolve at the moment -- and sorry if this post belongs somewhere else in here, but there's so many "specific" forums (er, fora? forii?) to choose from, but this seems like such a generally-applicable question that I thought it probably belonged here.

Also, just as an aside, when I started doing web design it was so EASY it was ridiculous! I started waaaaaaaay back before there was any such thing as CSS -- in fact, HTML tables had only just arrived on the scene, not to mention animated GIFs. Wed design was a breeze back then! And now, well, I just feel so very old and feeble-minded (compared to so many kids out there who seem like they can do "everything").

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Hi again, thanks for the replies -- and for the encouragement! I guess the number one issue that I noticed was that I had no problem getting an image to display "full page" in iBooks (on the iPad), regardless of whether or not I was in portrait or two-page landscape orientation. However, in Kobo that supposedly full-page image would "break" into two pieces with part of the image on one page and part on the next.

Is there any concensus on the best way to do this, that will work in all the various softwares/platforms -- or, at least, most of them? I searched the archives here for "full page image", but all I end up with is a billion search results, and I just don't know where to begin.

That is, I suppose, the biggest issue that I'm trying to resolve at the moment -- and sorry if this post belongs somewhere else in here, but there's so many "specific" forums (er, fora? forii?) to choose from, but this seems like such a generally-applicable question that I thought it probably belonged here.

Also, just as an aside, when I started doing web design it was so EASY it was ridiculous! I started waaaaaaaay back before there was any such thing as CSS -- in fact, HTML tables had only just arrived on the scene, not to mention animated GIFs. Wed design was a breeze back then! And now, well, I just feel so very old and feeble-minded (compared to so many kids out there who seem like they can do "everything").

Given that Apple does not obey half the rules of generally-accepted ePUB design, their devices are not a great place to start to learn to make ePUBs. However, as you have one, you should go out and buy Liz Castro's "ePUB: straight to the point" in order to learn the fundamentals of ebook-making. With Liz's book, you can ignore the whole front section on InDesign, but pick out the bits applicable to ePUBs. The entire back half is very useful. There are also very good tutorials here on Mobileread.

It takes time to learn to make ebooks that work across platforms. It's not simple, and it's not like creating websites, because much of what does work for websites does not work for ebooks. You might also consider visiting the MR Library and downloading ePUBs that were made, specifically, by Jellby, to learn what CSS works for ePUBs; his CSS is very good.

Hope that helps. There's a large population of older folks here, so you are in good company. I myself am {mumble} years old, as I've stated many times. ;-)

Hitch

[Toxaris]

As for your original question, a SVG wrapper should work on most devices. The code has been stated several times, usually in relationship with covers.

Don't worry, I started with web development (as a hobby) apparently around the same time as you did. You will get there.

[Jellby]

General advice: keep it simple and don't try smart tricks, because readers[*] are not smart at all.



[*] The devices, not the persons... although this "not" could sometimes be an "and" too.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Given that Apple does not obey half the rules of generally-accepted ePUB design, their devices are not a great place to start to learn to make ePUBs. However, as you have one, you should go out and buy Liz Castro's "ePUB: straight to the point" in order to learn the fundamentals of ebook-making. With Liz's book, you can ignore the whole front section on InDesign, but pick out the bits applicable to ePUBs. The entire back half is very useful. There are also very good tutorials here on Mobileread.

Oh, I didn't realize that about Apple devices, that they don't comply with the epub standards -- I just assumed (mistakenly) that, if anything, they did moreso than other readers. My bad! One should never presume.

As for Liz Castro's book, I managed to find (quite easily) a copy in PDF format. I browsed through it, but it would appear to be less-advanced than I think I need -- I don't really see anything in there that I don't already know. And forgive me for saying so, but I was quite put off by her horrendous sense of typographic design -- to make an analogy, she might be a good car mechanic and is able to get all the "inner workings" running smoothly, but on the outside her book is an Edsel. Seriously, that's one of the most awfully-designed publications I've ever seen (not only in the PDF, but amazon let's you "look inside" and what you see is basically exactly the same), which, quite frankly, leaves me questioning her as being some sort of "expert" in the field. :/

Please don't hate me for saying so -- I do appreciate the suggestion, and if I was more of a beginner than I am then I'm sure her book would have been quite helpful. So thank you, still, for the suggestion!

And I will most certainly take your other suggestion and check out some of Jellby's stuff -- just like with web design, the nice thing about epub design is that if you're stumped on how to do something, you can just find someone who can and then just look at their code and learn how.

Thanks!

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

As for your original question, a SVG wrapper should work on most devices. The code has been stated several times, usually in relationship with covers.

Interestingly, I am already using an SVG wrapper to do my full-page images -- I found it on some website somewhere before I joined here, although I don't remember where that was now, unfortunately. The person posting the "answer" did have a bunch of comments from people thanking him profusely for his solution, though -- however, I discovered in the end that images still "break" across pages in Kobo. :/

How do I find that code you mentioned? I'd naturally love to try it out, but if I search for "full page image" in here I get so many hits that it seems like I'd have to then search through (one by one) a thousand messages to find the answer.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Interestingly, I am already using an SVG wrapper to do my full-page images -- I found it on some website somewhere before I joined here, although I don't remember where that was now, unfortunately. The person posting the "answer" did have a bunch of comments from people thanking him profusely for his solution, though -- however, I discovered in the end that images still "break" across pages in Kobo. :/

How do I find that code you mentioned? I'd naturally love to try it out, but if I search for "full page image" in here I get so many hits that it seems like I'd have to then search through (one by one) a thousand messages to find the answer.

For discussion the forum is great but for information give our wiki a try. Ebook Covers

Dale

[Psymon]

Thanks, Dale -- and everyone else -- for your help! My apologies for being slow in replying, but some stuff came up recently in my life that needs to be addressed, so for the moment I don't have much time to spend on this. Hopefully I'll be able to get back into it more in a few weeks.

In the meantime, thanks also for pointing me to that "Ebook Covers" page -- I'd seen that, but I guess I didn't realize that what it describes is also applicable to any full-page images one might want to display in middle/body of one's work, too.

Interestingly, however, I've already been using essentially the same code that's shown on your wiki page about that, except that what I've been using also has some additional styles and stuff that takes into account that "some e-readers insist on adding margins and other padding to each page" (to quote from the following site where I got the code I'm using from)...

http://denis.papathanasiou.org/2011/...image-element/

Like I said, and as you can see, this seems to be pretty much the same, but "better".

HOWEVER, that's also exactly the code that works great in iBooks (on the ipad), but "breaks" in Kobo, with those large images getting cut in pieces over separate pages.

I haven't tried any other readers -- although I noticed in your sig, Dale, that you're "currently using an EZ Reader or a Literati". Maybe I should check those out, too, if only to see how else my experimental first epub is totally falling apart.

Once again, thanks so much for all your help! I do have some other things to address in my life at this time, but even if I "disappear" for a while I will be back once things settle down again... I hope.

[susan_cassidy]

Of coure, the page size on an iPad is much larger than on an e-ink reader. Could that be the problem? I think 600 x 400 pixels, or similar, is the max size that a 6-inch reader can handle.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Oh, I didn't realize that about Apple devices, that they don't comply with the epub standards -- I just assumed (mistakenly) that, if anything, they did moreso than other readers. My bad! One should never presume.

As for Liz Castro's book, I managed to find (quite easily) a copy in PDF format. I browsed through it, but it would appear to be less-advanced than I think I need -- I don't really see anything in there that I don't already know. And forgive me for saying so, but I was quite put off by her horrendous sense of typographic design -- to make an analogy, she might be a good car mechanic and is able to get all the "inner workings" running smoothly, but on the outside her book is an Edsel. Seriously, that's one of the most awfully-designed publications I've ever seen (not only in the PDF, but amazon let's you "look inside" and what you see is basically exactly the same), which, quite frankly, leaves me questioning her as being some sort of "expert" in the field. :/

Please don't hate me for saying so -- I do appreciate the suggestion, and if I was more of a beginner than I am then I'm sure her book would have been quite helpful. So thank you, still, for the suggestion!

And I will most certainly take your other suggestion and check out some of Jellby's stuff -- just like with web design, the nice thing about epub design is that if you're stumped on how to do something, you can just find someone who can and then just look at their code and learn how.

Thanks!

I don't hate you; but if you're that advanced, your images shouldn't be breaking across "pages" in a Kobo. I'm not trying to be snarky, but it sounds to me like you tried a variety of tricks to suit a single device; they worked fine on an iPad in iBooks, but not anything else. One of the simultaneously both most fundamental and at the same time advanced things you can do with an eBook is to have it work properly across all devices. That's why I referred you to Castro's book. Maybe what you want to do--none of us can know, as we haven't seen it--can only work on iBooks. {shrug}. Knowing how to do something like make an image display full-page across devices shouldn't be as hard as you're saying it is.

Hitch

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

Of coure, the page size on an iPad is much larger than on an e-ink reader. Could that be the problem? I think 600 x 400 pixels, or similar, is the max size that a 6-inch reader can handle.

A standard 6" reader is 600 x 800 pixels. A few are higher resolution. 600 x 400 would be poor for a 6" reader.

Dale