Notes for “Creating an eBook” Session at MAX Available
Colin Fleming, Senior Solutions Engineer from Adobe, is presenting a session this afternoon at the Adobe MAX 2009 conference in Los Angeles on “Creating an eBook.” He has posted his extensive “slides” from the presentation on Adobe Blogs.
The session covers some eBook basics about the readers available for ePub, and then discusses how to use InDesign effectively to layout and style a document both for print and for various ePub readers, including the Kindle and iPhone. I discussed a little basic information about creating eBooks on InDesignSecrets.com recently. David and Anne-Marie also posted a video podcast on the subject as well.
Colin includes some information in the slides which is not widely published (outside of hard-to-decipher specifications for the ePub format) about the conversion of InDesign layouts, the structure of an ePub file, and “Bending the ePub to Your Will.” He has posted the InDesign document, a PDF version, an ePub version, and a mobi version for the Kindle.
According to the Adobe MAX 2009 website, “when MAX 2009 ends, MAX Online will feature all MAX sessions from all three days, available for anytime viewing on October 11, 2009.” Since I’m not in LA today, I’ll be looking forward to streaming his presentation when it’s availble.
Sort of on the subject of digital books: did you guys do any posts on, for example, do’s and don’ts and/or tips & tricks for turning magazines into PDF format for the web? Currently I’m trying to reel in a new client, and besides a printed magazine they said they might want the same magazine published on their site as a PDF.
Before you ask: I did try searching, but the search returns results from multiple sites, not just indesignsecrets.com so I thought I’d just ask
I don’t recall that we’ve done that. Keep in mind that layout may need to change to horizontal because that’s the way people will view it on a computer screen. Or you can do two versions like InDesign Magazine. InDesign Magazine has been published solely as a PDF magazine, and its layout is a very good example to go by.
Here’s a link to getting a free issue:
http://www.indesignmag.com/signup.asp
How about this Podcast from Sept 29th?
http://indesignsecrets.com/indesignsecrets-videocast-7-exporting-epub-files.php
It helped me a lot.
Hey Roland — feel free to send me your questions and I can at least give you the benefit of my first-hand experience. I’m at tstone@indesignmag.com.
Terri Stone, InDesign Magazine
Thanks for the link Steve. I’ll check that out along with a handful of other mags I’m going to download from pdf-mags.com.
Terri, as soon as I have concrete questions (rather than the one I already posted) I’ll definitely send you an email. Thanks
Colin’s entire presentation (including audio and video) is now available online. See this post for a link to it and to others of interest to InDesign users:
http://indesignsecrets.com/indesign-session-videos-from-adobe-max-2009.php