07-22-2018, 01:29 PM | #16 | |||
Bookmaker & Cat Slave
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Quote:
Nonetheless, Wombat, I would never--or pretty much never--charge the same for a Word file as a PDF. We do the old-school way, with PDFs--Abbyy, clean-up, build a new PDF from the new Word file, run compare, fix anything that isn't a perfect match, lather-rinse-repeat until we get a perfect Compare. THEN start the book building, from the final Word file. I don't see how you can charge the same, for that. (I wouldn't mind charging for word-processing files what we charge for PDFs, no two ways about it.) I mean, you must have a rockingly gracious and well-heeled clientele, but mine would run for the hills and Fiverr. (I've lost track of the number of times I've had to--patiently--explain that we don't just use machines and push buttons.) Quote:
Style mapping, IF IT WORKS, would be most welcome, but honestly, everyone who works in the business already does this through the expedience of naming conventions. I mean, who doesn't already have INDD templated styles, that map to existing CSS sheets? And really, even if you don't, regex is your friend. Quote:
I would say this--there's really no such thing as an easy, insta-conversion. Certainly, not any longer. If a file is that easy, the author/publisher has probably already done it themselves. We're doing fewer books these days, because almost every book we get takes longer to do, is harder to do, and costs us more time and the client more money. I've recently been known to say that the books are worse and the clients as well. By which I mean not that they are awful people or whatever, but the folks who were tech-savvy published their books in 2010 or thereabouts. Then the next wave--somewhat less tech-savvy, but game to learn. Then the next, and so on and so forth, until now we get the folks who have hotmail, yahoo and aol email addresses; who don't know that a file extension means anything, and we are also getting books that couldn't have been converted in 2010, or even 2015; tables, columns, sidebars, languages with glyphs that weren't supported, plays, etc., etc., etc. The combination is, IMHO, exhausting, and honestly, not wildly profitable. I'm actually in the process of writing YAFAQ (Yet Another FAQ), containing more and more entries that people won't google themselves, apparently, Spoiler:
and I'm building a chatbot to answer common questions, just so I don't have to do that any longer ("do I need an ISBN?" " How do I register my copyright?" "Is the 70% royalty mean I've got to be exclusive with Amazon?" and ad infinitum.)
Hitch |
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07-22-2018, 02:02 PM | #17 |
Klak
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my professional background is in print design and indesign is print layout program, however from my experience it works very well with little help of couple scripts and method i have described before.
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07-22-2018, 03:21 PM | #18 | |
Bookmaker & Cat Slave
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Quote:
Hitch |
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07-22-2018, 03:31 PM | #19 |
Klak
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@hitch i get badly formatted third-parties indesign files.
of course, i use a lot regexing to make proper simple reflowable epubs, but it is not like it's very hard. |
07-22-2018, 05:32 PM | #20 | |
Bookmaker & Cat Slave
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Quote:
Perhaps it's just that most of the INDD Files that grace our doorstep are heavily-formatted, too. If we had a boatload of fiction files, I might be cheerier about it. :-) Hitch |
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07-24-2018, 07:02 AM | #21 |
Klak
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well, if you want to outsource some of that work...
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07-24-2018, 10:07 AM | #22 |
Bookmaker & Cat Slave
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