I was talking to my author friend, Guy Stanton III, today and he shared this with me. Many of you already know this, but it’s worth a mention anyway. You know what’s really ironic, David, about combining all the books into one boxed set? I will make more money on the sale of the boxed set than if I had sold the entire series individually, but what’s even cooler is that the customer is going to pay … Continue reading →
For example, I got this official word today: “Yes, Kobo now accepts FXL EPUBs exported from InDesign and they can be put on sale, they have confirmed the same. The FXL EPUB output from ID also renders correctly on a Kobo device.” Now that is certainly good news which is to be added with the existing iBooks acceptance of ePUB3 books. But the real change has happened more subtly. All distributors now accept ebooks with embedded fonts I … Continue reading →
This posting is a slight expansion of a comment made by Michael Perry of Inkling Books on my “Designing ePUBs With InDesign” New Release posting this morning Michael has been a long-time friend of The Skilled Workman, and his comments have made this a much better blog. He is much closer to a traditional publisher than I. His opinions are worth analyzing and I agree entirely. As you can see in his comment, Amazon is not interested in … Continue reading →
CC 2014 virtually redid ePUB export—adding fixed layout & radically improving reflowable ePUBs Indesign has always been the best software for publishing: print & ebook. I have already posted quite a bit about the new software. Most of the improvements seemed to be focused on we self-publishers. But my book is also redone— in places quite radically. A review by Mary Campagna Findley for the CS6 version “David Bergland has challenged me to think beyond the writing, editing, and cover design … Continue reading →
Although the large changes in ePUB export are seen in the fixed layout variety, what they now call reflowable ePUBs are also improved. They have their own dialog box and they are a separate choice when you export. You now add the metadata in the export reflowable ePUB dialog box. This saves time and hassle. Our control over placed graphics is much better, as long as you stay within the rules. Inline graphics are all rasterized or … Continue reading →
This is probably the big news for InDesign CC 2014. Although there have been many improvements to Reflowable ePUBs, they are incremental. The ePUB FXL has the possibility of being almost revolutionary. So, how big is this change? It is very hard to show the differences because the layouts are so different. But, let’s look at two examples where I did the best I could to get the same content side by side. In this small-sized screen … Continue reading →
Click to enlarge As you know, I am convinced that you are hurting your chances with your book if you do not use InDesign in the production process. This is even more true now that InDesign CC 2014 has added the direct export of fixed layout ePUBs. Plus, no one exports the quality of PDF produced by InDesign for print and downloadable PDFs. InDesign now has five ebook export options Actually, with all the options, there are even … Continue reading →
Mark wrote another strong article calling iOS8 a game-changer because iBooks will now be installed as part of the basic operating system. I doubt it—for a very simple reason. The iBooks Store is a lousy interface Let me just give you one example. My preferred genre is Christian epic fantasy. It’s not listed in iBooks genre so I try to search for books tagged like this. I get a list of heathen authors whose name is Christian [like … Continue reading →
Released, January 15, 2014 for InDesign CC9.2 By now many of the sites have listed the book. As usual, we are still waiting for iBooks approval. But it’s up at Amazon in print and Kindle. Kobo has it listed. The rest are all in process. The best option for ebooks is the link below where you can get an archive with a downlaodable PDF plus a DRM-free ePUB with fonts embedded. This will enable you to load … Continue reading →
Yes, this is a totally unfounded rumor just started by me. But what if? Would this give Amazon some competition for Kindle? The iBookstore may be the best quality, but there is no indication that it will ever take off like the iPod did. It goes along with this other unfounded rumor. Why doesn’t Smashwords buy Nook? Other people are obviously having similar thoughts. God forbid that dying Microsoft would do it, or Google. So, what are … Continue reading →
