'see page' referrence problem in ebook

[mspelling]

hello!

i have a client that wants his print book reference the same on ebook format. the print book have this (see pages 347-349) and so on. Now, he wants the same on ebook format.

is this possible or are there any alternative? and how should i explain this to him.

thanks!

[BetterRed]

Moderator Notice

Moved to Workshop forum. This is not a calibre specific issue, and you should get a wider cross-section of expert opinion in that forum.

BR

[BetterRed]

And don't post the same thing in multiple places (Calibre and Sigil) - Read the Guidelines, there's a link at the bottom of every page

BR

[mspelling]

any help?

[DaleDe]

In our wiki, see Page numbers for the issues and some solutions. If you just want the page references to work as a link you can call them any page number or text that you want and then make the link go to the right page where the text is.

Dale

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by mspelling

hello!

i have a client that wants his print book reference the same on ebook format. the print book have this (see pages 347-349) and so on. Now, he wants the same on ebook format.

is this possible or are there any alternative? and how should i explain this to him.

thanks!

Yes, you could try explaining all the realities to him. Instead of promulgating the idea that an eBook works exactly like print. To do this, you have to embed each page number's ID, in the book. eg., ID=pg9. then you have to (realistically, for it to be usable) build a page index, so that people can go to the index to find "page" 48 or whatever. For the references, you have to then link to them to the matching ID, like (See page 37) would link to the ID=pg37 that you created. Of course, that's nearly useless, as each page in the print book will be 3-4 "pages" in the ebook. Which is why I said, you could try explaining the reality to him.

That's pretty much the only way to do it.

I certainly hope you discussed this, and the vast amount of extra work to do it, and included that in your pricing, upfront.

Hitch

[stumped]

You could also try explaining that any half decent e reader has this thing called search built in, which obviates the need for an old school painstakingly hand compiled and error prone index anyway.

And sometimes, there's this smart thing called X ray also, for when you forget who said what or which character is which

[mspelling]

do you suggest that we remove the (see pages) words/reference from the print for the ebook conversion or just leave it? because i think that will confuse readers.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by mspelling

do you suggest that we remove the (see pages) words/reference from the print for the ebook conversion or just leave it? because i think that will confuse readers.

That is your and your publisher's choice. I already explained that you can make it "work," more or less, through "real page number IDs" and links. If your publisher is willing to pay, you can even go a step further, have him/her mark up the original pdf, to point to where, exactly, s/he wanted those "see page X" links to go, and send the reader precisely there, using similar methodology--id's with links. (The back link is always a problem, tho.)

There are solutions--it all depends on how much money your client is willing to pay you to implement them. The one piece of advice I'll give you is, don't do that for free, unless you including this sort of linking in your base quote without realizing just how much work it was going to be.

If your client is like most publishers, s/he will decide that it's not worth "perfectly" linking all the "See page X" incidences. I don't see any reason to remove the "See page X" elements; in my business, we do link those. As I stated, we link them to the same place that InDesign or Word creates those links--the first position at the first line at the top of the page that contains the element to which the author is pointing, so the reader may have to skim a bit to find it, but...it's an imperfect world, right?

Hitch

[HarryT]

I have no particular problem, as a reader, with "See page X" hyperlinks in an ebook taking me to a location that's not actually labelled as "Page X" in the ebook. I think most regular ebook readers recognise that page numbers are rather a moveable feast.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I have no particular problem, as a reader, with "See page X" hyperlinks in an ebook taking me to a location that's not actually labelled as "Page X" in the ebook. I think most regular ebook readers recognise that page numbers are rather a moveable feast.

Yeah, exactly. Only people who've never seen an eBook before find it a bit discombobulating. And they're over it soon enough.

Hitch

[DaleDe]

I try to link to the actual information if known when I put in links. It makes the eBook even better than the paper book.

Dale