We have just completed the first phase of a major ePUB production project for Editions Jouvence, one of the top100 publishing houses in France. The customer’s requested us to convert from InDesign files and produce files ready for iBookstore distribution.
A few lessons learnt:
- InDesign will never be able to produce market-ready ePUBs. Manual fine-tuning is inevitable.
- Sigil seems an excellent tool for this manual post-editing work, but requires deep understanding of CSS.
- Therefore it is better to start the work with Dreamweaver and use Sigil in the final phase only.
- With the combination of the above tools it is possible to produce neat ePUB layout close to the original, print one, but iBooks ruins the outcome.
- Adobe Digital Edition still provides much better ePUB rendering than iBooks 1.1. However, iBooks 1.2 is promising. (See my earlier post on this.)
- The production of e-books requires a new way of thinking on the publisher’s side as well. This learning procedure takes time and plenty of cooperation effort from both the publisher as a customer and the converting service, like us.
Any further lesson?
