Friday, October 28, 2011

Ebook publishing is way too complex

It is breaking my heart, my nuts, and my brains that ebook publishing and even just ebook creation is so damn complex.

I've been listening to a nice podcast called Ebook Ninjas, and it's getting very clear that there are just no reliable and simple ways to convert a book (unless it's a dead simple book with no tables, graphics, etc) to the various ebook formats. There are apps which can make attempts, but it seems you always have to know the code (HTML basically) and get in there and mess with it, in order to get a professional looking ebook produced.

It is just so typical of this messed up world. There are millions of readers wanting to buy ebooks, there are hundreds of thousands of authors wanting to write them, make them and sell them, and there are tens of thousands of publishers wanting to publish them. And yet nobody has yet come up with a system which a normal person can learn to use easily.

It really should not be so difficult. We have had e-commerce for fifteen years at least, we have had publishing for centuries, we have had book formatting for as long, electronically for decades, and digital and conversions for many years. What is taking so long?

The only simple way I know is to take your book, if you have a Mac, select "print", and "print" a PDF file. This I admit is really amazingly simple, and it's totally cross-platform. And then sell the book on Lulu or just via Paypal.

But it does not work well with the small screens of Kindle and such readers, which is a huge hole in the method, to say the least. Maybe the problem is that Apple has shown no big interest in ebooks*, and Apple is the only company who has had real success in making things simple to use. One suspects that making things simple is the most complex thing of all.

Update: Bruce said:
I agree, what Pagemaker did for DTP, what PageMill did for HTML, has not been done for ebooks yet. However...
Numbers, by Apple, does have a save to epub option. Simple, but I don't know how well it works.
From MS Word it looks like the best option is save to HTML (use option of "filtered" on PC or "display" on Mac) and import to calibre. Calibre itself is complicated, but does offer lots of control and many file types to save and convert documents to. 

Yes, and I hear Pages saves to ePub now, and it's good enough that TidBITS uses it, so it must be pretty good (their books are complex enough that they don't publish in Kindle format, I think. [See below]) (They can get away with this because they publish technical how-to books with an Apple slant, so if a reader wants the books on an ereader, he probably has an iPad.)
Update: I asked Adam Engst from TidBITS about this, and he says:

[Apple] Pages does produce reasonable EPUBs, and we don't hand tweak them after the fact. We could run the EPUBs through the command-line kindlegen program from Amazon to turn them into Mobi files, but there were problems when we did that, so we have O'Reilly's conversion house do the conversions still. So our books are available in Mobi format, but it's nowhere near as good as the EPUB.


Unfortunately then there's the split between the "universal format" ePub and the actual best-selling format, the proprietary Kindle format. Generally you can't ignore the latter if you want to sell, sadly. (And of course many want copy-protection, which splinters ePub into many groups.)



*I wonder why Steve Jobs seemed so dismissive of reading. ("People don't read anymore.") I can't imagine he was not a reader himself, and in most aspects Apple seems to mirror Jobs' mind. Maybe he was really only intensely interested in making products which "everybody" would potentially use?
If so, that's notable. Sort of noble in itself, I guess. But on the other hand, many worthwhile activities are really only enjoyed by minorities, like fine art or, indeed, serious reading.

12 comments:

Bruce said...

I agree, what Pagemaker did for DTP, what PageMill did for HTML, has not been done for ebooks yet. However...

Numbers, by Apple, does have a save to epub option. Simple, but I don't know how well it works.

From MS Word it looks like the best option is save to HTML (use option of "filtered" on PC or "display" on Mac) and import to calibre. Calibre itself is complicated, but does offer lots of control and many file types to save and convert documents to.

Tony said...

I'm not sure why you think ebook creation is supposed to be simple. Well published books maintain a level of quality that goes beyond the story itself. This includes presentation, and publishers have been learning how to do that for years. How can you expect an amateur to know and address all that needs to be done to produce an ebook that meets these expectations.

I've read dozens of "free" ebooks -- or at least I've tried to, but I've been stopped in my tracks because of poor editing and/or presentation. Even a compelling story is not enough to get me to continue reading in the face of unskillfully presented material.

Yes, I said skillfully. Those who produce quality books -- both paper and electronic -- have a skill that they studied and practiced years to learn. These skills enhance the author's words and contribute to the reading experience.

Why should you expect to perform my skill without the apprenticeship I've put in?

You'll find a piano in the lobby of many fine hotels, but thankfully, not every guest stops to play it. We all carry a tune in our heart, but most of us know we don't have the skill to foist it publicly on our unsuspecting fellows.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Good points. But if one already has a well formatted book for print, I think it ought not be required tons of fresh education and training to convert it to an ebook. It's all based on predictable factors. The software ought to be able to take care of all the mechanical things without introducing lot of new line ending problems and such things.

Tony said...

In a perfect world perhaps, but print and ebook are two completely different things.

In print, the designer controls everything -- fonts, sizes, positioning for every page. And the designer can uses many different tricks, smoke and mirrors, and hacks, to get things just looking just so.

On the other hand, ebooks are flowable documents that behave differently depending on what device is being used and what settings the user employs.

There are simply too many variables in taking a document designed for format and making it apply automatically to the other.

That said, a properly (and, most importantly, consistently) formatted novel is fairly easy to turn into an ebook. It's much more difficult for a book with lots of formatting challenges: lists, tables, callouts, quotes, boxes, etc.

You will be happy to note that in the last few years, our print designers have become cognizant of the need for ebooks to be created from their work, so they have started taking steps to complete their work in such a way that it more easily translates into electronic format.

I think you're oversimplifying when you say it's all based on predictable factors. In my 25 years experience designing books, I've never found two formatters who would handle the same challenges in the same way. There are myriad options for positioning, sizing, and kerning text for a printed page. No two designers apply the tools in the same way.

Quick and simple "ebook conversion" is just not possible in my opinion. If you want a professional job, you want a human being to look at the work and make the decisions that need to be made for best results.

Computers aren't that smart yet.

Bruce said...

"Unfortunately then there's the split between the "universal format" ePub and the actual best-selling format, the proprietary Kindle format"

I think this is Amazon's fault more than anyone else's. Did you know they are coming out with a new eBook format for their color reader? If they act like Microsoft did with Word during the 1990's, expect a new ebook format every year or two from Amazon.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Well... a new format for the new screen is hardly gratuitous.

Tony, I hear you.

Timo Lehtinen said...

Well... a new format for the new screen is hardly gratuitous.

Huh? We are talking file formats, right?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Update to post, from TidBITS:

"Pages does produce reasonable EPUBs, and we don't hand tweak them after the fact. We could run the EPUBs through the command-line kindlegen program from Amazon to turn them into Mobi files, but there
were problems when we did that, so we have O'Reilly's conversion house do the conversions still. So our books are available in Mobi format, but it's nowhere near as good as the EPUB." -- Adam Engst

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

File formats, yes. It's my understanding that the Kindle format is quite limited, and I can see the need to accommodate more complex layouts for color screens and larger screens (Ipad and Kindle Fire, maybe a larger Fire later).

Bruce said...

An important question regarding ease of creating ebooks is, does Amazon provide the creation tools exclusively, or do they provide the file specifications so that other people can build ebook creation tools? It doesn't look like Amazon encourages developers of book creation software to include Amazon file formats in their apps.

The IT profession had to hold Microsoft's feet to the fire to get them to disclose their Word document and other MS Office file specs. As the biggest seller of ebooks, Amazon now is in a similar position as Microsoft was in their prime. I hope Amazon will do a better job with file formats than Microsoft did.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Good point. Amazon's command-line software is the only one I've heard of which makes Kindle books, at least readily. I'm not sure what the pros use. But it's complex enough that TidBITS, gearheads if anybody is, leaves the process to O'Reilly.

publish a book on kindle said...

We should always keep a basic format for an eBook.