Quote:
Originally Posted by spindles
Do you have the source document used to create the PDF, or was it originally authored in Acrobat?
|
The source format is QuarkXpress. For some reason, the program requires you to create the layout for HTML or print beforehand. At least this is as far as I know.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ratbastid
PDF is meant to be an end format, not a transport format. [...]
|
I understand this completely. What's amiss here is that many book publishers digitize their lists into PDF, but now we have Amazon asking for HTML.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by ratbastid
HTML makes very very good sense as a format for mobile books. It's the standard for web pages. Remember that it's not a FORMAT per se (at least, not the way PDF or MS Word .DOC is). It's a MARKUP LANGUAGE that the display device can interpret and render in whatever way is best for its own particular display idiosyncrasies.
|
This I understand too. The Kindle isn't just for reading books.
Quote:
Originally Posted by guyy
I'd rather have pdfs than html. I guess i won't be getting on-line books from amazon. Still.
|
Yeah, I know. But Kindle users are getting their shit in HTML whether they like it or not. Just remember that there is a difference between Kindle books and other e-books Amazon offers.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by guyy
As ratbastid says pdf and postscript, from which it stems, are for printer and screen output. All my writing is in pdf and ps, but i get that output from TeX and LaTeX. If i want html instead of pdf, i run my files through a different engine. Is it possible to go back to the source files?
|
As I said above, Quark is wonky when it comes to this HTML "thing."
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by guyy
I wonder if an html wrapper for your pdfs would work?
<html>
link to pdf
</html>
|
This bring up what I've come to as a conclusion. When it comes to code, Kindle thrives on simplicity. It is HTML with very limited CSS compatibility. I found this as a sample as posted by an Amazon DP guy in their forum:
Your Title Here
Note the CSS "standard." Streamlined, and it uses such considerations as relative text size rather than fixed, so users can control text size no matter what.
This is the bottom line (after some more thought and research): There is no automated process for making Kindle-ready books that don't look like shit. What this means is that publishers will have to basically re-edit and/or re-jig the layouts of each and every book independently. *groan* There is currently no way around it, and this is why I'm seeing "Kindle conversion" services popping up on the Web. It's not difficult to do yourself, but it is time-consuming, especially when you have around 200 titles.
Quote:
|
Another possibility is to go pdf --> plain text --> html
|
This might be the first step of converting a PDF book into Kindle format. This I can do, but it's more or less opening up a can of worms, especially with non-fiction titles.
The thing to realize is that if we're selling these books, we must have a quality standard. The text must be readable as a book, whether it's digital or not. We can't just spit these out in txt and hope our readers are fine with it as is. I don't think it'll work on its own.
Everyone, thanks for your feedback and suggestions. I now have to go shop around for affordable Kindle conversion services.