Hands-on with .epub

Michael Jensen | 02/24/2010

I recently constructed an .epub eBook using free tools, to see how it would work—how easy it might be, how attractive I might make it, how the more-complicated typographic elements of the Web (right-align callouts, tables, divs) might be represented in the .epub ebook format.

InDesign, and a few other professional typesetting/formatting systems can produce simple ebooks fairly easily, but I wanted to understand a bit more deeply what it entailed, hands-on.

The first time doing anything is the hardest, of course, and while I’d overseen the production of ebooks, I’d not gotten in with nuts, code, and bits for years. I tried out a number of awkward free systems, and built my own files from scratch.

So far, the best tool right now for experimenting with ebooks is probably Calibre—an opensource and free ebook management (but not editing) system.

Calibre reads many file formats, and can also export many formats—which means you can take a well-formed HTML file, read it into the system, add metadata to it, view it within the (forgiving) Calibre reading software, and then save as an .epub format file, one functionally ready for pulling into an ebook reader.

I say “functionally” because ebook-reading software (not the format itself) is at a similar stage of development to what browsers were back in 2000—when Netscape displayed the same Web page differently from Internet Explorer, or other internet browsers.

Today, the same file that renders well in Calibre or Adobe Editions may not render well in a Sony Reader, or on an iPod with Stanza. Text-wraps around pictures, for example, don’t translate, nor do most typographic niceties. I tried a variety of experiments to test the boundaries.

With the .epub I was producing, I ended up having to rethink how to represent the pictures-and-captions that littered the text, even to the extent of moving their placement, in order to achieve a sort of lowest-common-denominator, very-simple linear presentation—a poor cousin to the print experience.

That will evolve, of course—ebook reader software will improve, and become more consistent across devices—but for now, as you experiment with digital export, choose a few straightforward texts, get someone on staff to experiment with Calibre, and then try reading it into whatever ebook reader and software that you have available.

Lowest common denominator simplifying may not be optimal, but at least you won’t have grumpy customers.

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