June 25, 2008

Reality Check

What to expect from

automated conversion to eBook

Mark Gross

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About this Presentation

• Recent eBook survey results

• A very quick intro to eBooks

• Conversions from HTML & PDF

• Limitations of automated conversions

• A suggested approach

• Things to keep in mind with special content

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About Us

• Providing publishing and XML-related services for 30 years, successfully

converting over a billion pages

• Privately held woman-owned small business headquartered in New York City

• Expertise in large complex conversion projects

• Substantial experience in managing multiple vendors for large-scale projects,

with automated tracking and reporting of data throughout

• Sophisticated quality control workflow with both automated and

human quality control steps to guarantee accuracy

• Publish a monthly newsletter devoted to SGML/XML and

Electronic Publishing topics with a subscriber base of over 7,000

• Wrote the data conversion chapters in The XML Handbook and

the Columbia guide to Digital Publishing

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Highlights From Our Recent eBook Survey

• Majority (63%) said the next book they publish will be an eBook

• Accuracy is the top issue, rather than cost and turnaround time

• Not just novels - 75% are planning eBooks for complex books

• iPad and kindle users lead (44% & 36%), with others far behind

• Most want their books to work on everything – ePub, kindle, and more

• Most respondents (65%) are currently earning money from eBooks

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Very Quick Introduction to eBooks

• ePub is the emerging standard used for most eReaders

• Mobi is also a large player, but proprietary to Amazon Kindle

• ePub is evolving

• ePub is supported differently by different eReaders

• eBooks are publications and need care in their production

• There are no “Silver Bullets”

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Things to Keep in Mind When Converting from HTML

• Smaller screen size

• Large tables may not fit

• Not all Character Sets supported by all devices

• MathML not supported very often

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Some Things to Keep in Mind When Converting from PDF

• Page layout concept

• More than one column

• Index – is linking

necessary?

• Objects mid-paragraph

•

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Converting directly may lead

to problems …

Handling of Objects Mid-Paragraph

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What Happens in an Automated PDF Conversion

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Source Document

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Product #1 Automated Conversion Output

• Chapter header found mid paragraph

• Multiple links to the same chapter heading

• Emphasis not retained

• Paragraph breaks do not match source

• Lots of extraneous data

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• Footnote Linking Character captured as plain text

• Indented formatting not retained

• Missing random characters "ex" vs. "exact”

• Emphasis not retained

Product #2 Automated Conversion Output

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• Extra spaces around punctuation • Missing spaces between words

Product #3 Automated Conversion Output

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• PDF repeating header captured as plain text repeatedly

• Merged paragraphs

• Unnecessary hyphens

Product #3 (cont’d)

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Approach to Converting PDF to an eBook

1 2 3

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Log and

Review

Materials

Zoning and

Text

Extraction

Image

Cropping

Proofreading /

Clean-up

Styling /

Pre-Tagging

Convert to

HTML

9 8 7

Validate ePub

Creation

Edit CSS

Based on Look

of Source

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Final Delivery

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Final Quality

Control View

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Intermediary Word Document (after pre-tagging and cleanup)

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Final ePub Output

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Tools for ePub Validation

ePubCheck – validates against ePub standard

code.google.com/p/epubcheck

ePubPreflight – checks for device-specific issues

threepress.org/document/epub-validate

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Things to Keep in Mind with Special Content

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Math as Images – Changing Font Size Doesn’t Change Images

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Unicode Symbols Will Adjust with the Font Size Change

Large Tables

Table as Text (searchable but cut off) Table as Image

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When Layout Matters

Testing Materials Poetry

Letter Recipe

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When Layout Matters (cont’d)

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Things to Keep in Mind when Converting for Kindle

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Some Notes on the Kindle

Traditional Kindle

• Designed for reading long documents

• Designed for simplicity

• Has some features that others don’t

• But also missing some features that others have

• Therefore, need to design the conversion differently

Kindle Fire

• Supports the KF8 format, allowing for more styling, the

Float CSS style, Drop caps and some HTML5 tagging

• However, new features are not backwards compatible

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Glossary Definitions

iPad screenshot Kindle screenshot

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Use of CSS “Float” Style

iPad screenshot Kindle screenshot

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Use of Borders

iPad screenshot Kindle screenshot

Color/Spanning/Large Tables

iPad screenshot Kindle screenshot

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Kindle for PC

Actual Kindle Device

Importance of Viewing on the Actual Device

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Kindle for PC

Actual Kindle Device

Importance of Viewing on the Actual Device (cont’d)

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What We Learned

• For most materials, automated conversion isn’t ready for

primetime

• Since different devices render differently, multiple outputs are

recommended

• Special content requires special attention

• Review your converted content on it’s intended device

• It’s your book – it’s worth the effort to make it come out right!

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Questions...

& Answers

Data Conversion Laboratory

61-18 190th St., 2nd Floor

Fresh Meadows, NY 11365

Telephone: (718) 357-8700

Fax: (718) 357-8776

Web: http://www.dclab.com

Mark Gross, President

mgross@dclab.com

718-307-5711