24 Responses to “Ebooks from InDesign: Twenty Things to Consider”

  1. Mateo says:

    Muchas gracias Felipe. Molto obligado.

  2. Nice and thorough. Some of these points, taken individually, would make a great stand-alone post.

    For #13, the sidebars on the left (“box with text to contour” I think means “text frame with text wrap applied”) … to make that happen, you need to select the sidebar frame and choose Custom Layout: Float Left from Object > Object Export Options dialog box. This dialog box has many other useful features for EPUB … perhaps in a Part 2?)

  3. Hi, Mateo
    I’m glad to hear that it was useful to you
    regards

  4. Hi, Anne
    Yes, much better sentence.
    The Object Export Options is a great feature since the last released from InDesign.
    I will think about part 2

    regards

  5. I’m really impressed you can write such an excellent post in a second language! (how do you say “text wrap” in Spanish … or is it Portuguese)

  6. Ugo Riverón says:

    It is said ¨Contornear texto Anne Marie¨
    Regrards !!

  7. Felipe says:

    Hi,
    Yes, the original post is in Portuguese.
    Text wrap its said “Texto em Contorno”.

    See the link of post in mu blog – http://dualpixel.com.br/labs/20-recursos-indesign-para-ebooks

  8. Joanna says:

    Hi there,

    Excellent tips! I could not find many decent articles about EPUB works in InDesign.

    I have followed most of the points! However, my book shows blank on iBooks or any iOS device. It opens, but pages and book cover are blank. Works perfectly on any other reader. Any idea why?

    Thanks again for great tips!

  9. Felipe says:

    Hi, Joanna

    Really, its a strange.
    Try export in ePUB 3 and validate it in http://validator.idpf.org/.

    Please, if doesnt work yet, let thu link here, then I can see it better

    Regards

  10. Joanna says:

    Hi Felipe,

    I have exported as sPUB 3 and validated it with no errors.

    I am losing my mind :)! Here is a sample of my book: https://www.dropbox.com/s/56xh7zfq8tdzeym/Book%20Sample.epub?dl=0

    Thank you for your time,

    Joanna

  11. Felipe says:

    Hi, Joanna

    Your ebook works fine for me in iOS e MAC OS.

    Best regards

  12. Joanna says:

    Ohh that is great! Thanks for having a look!

    Looks like something wrong with my device then!

    Thank you for your time,

    Joanna

  13. Derek Winckles says:

    First bit of excellent advance I have found on the web. No much information regarding epub3.
    Has it fallen by the wayside!

    Derek

  14. sara says:

    Hello, any advice for someone whose indesign crashes everytime I export to epub (reflowable)? I’m at a loss…

  15. Hi,

    First, you can try to know if the problem is with file or with InDesign. Try export a new document to ePUB, if crash the InDesign, the problem probably is it indd. Then, try update it; reset the preferences or reinstall the indd

    If the problem is with file, save it as idml and open it again. Try export the file.

    Hope to help with some ways to solve

    Regards

  16. Janet says:

    Excellent article! One setting in “Object Export Options > EPUB and HTML tab” that I can’t find any clear information on is what the setting descriptions are for “epub: type” with a drop down menu of 6 categories, each having a drill down menu of settings. I’m using ID CC 13.1 on Mac. The default setting for the “epub: type” is blank. Many of the options are fairly easy to understand… ex. frontmatter, footnotes, etc. I can’t find any discussion online on how to use these settings for EPUB. In particular, for images that are within the main body test. Should there be something in this field? Thanks!

  17. Janet says:

    *text, not test

  18. Dot S says:

    I get validated perfectly on the validator site but on Flight Check, I get Best Practices warnings:
    “This EPUB does not define the beginning of its main content. Some reading systems use this setting when a reader opens your book for the first time or wants to navigate to the beginning of the book.”
    and
    “Your landmarks nav does not set all of the recommended document locations (which are cover, toc, and bodymatter).

    Missing: bodymatter”

    The first body copy box is assigned body matter in Object Export Options. So weird.

  19. Laura Brady says:

    It must be part of a thread. If that frame is threaded to a frame on any preceding page the body matter tag won’t hold. Search for an article on this site called “Trojan epub:type” for a solution.

  20. Anaïs Blues says:

    Grandioso artículo, resumiste mucho de lo que he aprendido haciendo pruebas, por el momento estoy trabajando desde Indesign y luego corrijo algunos detalles con Calibre y me ha funcionado muy bien, pero espero aprender lo suficiente de programación para hacerlo de cero. Muito obrigado!! saudaçoes do Mexico

  21. Hi,

    Here a link about ePUB type structure. This is important to apply semantic to some parts the book, as you said frontmatter, footnotes. Always applied with object style or object export options

    https://idpf.github.io/epub-vocabs/structure/

    For image I suggest apply the tag and for captions

    Regards

  22. Gracias.
    Read more about eBook/ePUB and InDesign from our blog – http://labs.dualpixel.com.br/category/ebooks

    Regards

  23. Sam Holmes says:

    Hi, is there a way of having a button in ePub format to perform ‘go to previous view’, so like a ‘Back’ button. In InDesign its PDF only and there’s no option to do this anywhere for ePubs, very frustrating.

    Thanks 🙂

  24. Aaron says:

    You wrote, “If you use any version of InDesign from Creative Cloud, you have no technical reasons to continue exporting as EPUB 2. … And do not worry because EPUB 3 is compatible with older readers and ereaders which only support EPUB 2.”

    This is patently not true of BlueFire Reader on iOS, where a <60 page EPUB3 file comes in as an unreadable 485 pages, with crazy zoomed-in text. Although discontinued in 2019, my client still uses this app, so I have to produce EPUB2 format.