![]() I know that it can't be because no ID user is going past Word-level, auto-convert basics I doubt that it's because the real, skilled experts doing advanced work don't bother to share their findings. I am very much not b*tching pointlessly or throwing up my hands because a 5-minute search didn't give me an answer this is a long-standing, widespread problem I've found in the Kindle development community. Well, I kept poking at the problem, found a fairly simple cause in the interface of ID and CSS formatting, and fixed it. What I got back was 50% unhelpful (stories about similar problems and solutions that did not apply), snappy lists of links to other discussions or articles, none of which had a solution and/or were as much as 10 years out of date, and brief replies from users with very high rankings (thousands of posts, likes, accolades, etc.) that "oh, that can't be fixed." This seems to be one of those areas in which current, accurate information is hard to find, and asking brings many replies, most citing or quoting outdated information (or, more frustratingly, answers that don't actually address the question).įor example, I had an annoying problem with tables converting from ID to Kindle. I have not gotten useful answers to a number of fairly straightforward but "non basic" questions in any of them. I've been a member of this one since it was founded, and I've visited most of the other Adobe/ID communities as well. Thanks, but I was including both of those communities in my assessment above. and I wish there was a better resource or help community from which to learn. But as I said, I have questions and hurdles and so forth even at this level. And I just did a montrously complex book, 450 pages of myriad formats, illustrations, tables, and more - something way, way beyond any tutoral or information article I've yet seen. Even my simplest Kindle productions are carefully find-tuned to make the most of the medium, without relying on default formatting etc. I tried and discarded the Amazon plugin it's for the Word-to-K-in-5-minutes crowd at best. have I missed a good, evolving, complete source for pro information and more complex publications? Or is the field of both users and gurus only interested to the level of this basic, often sketchy, frequently wrong/outdated/inapplicable material?įWIW, I've been doing print+Kindle editions for almost ten years, and take a very comprehensive approach of careful ID formatting, a complete conversion CSS file, and a huge bag of tricks I've learned myself to go along with the information I've gleaned from other sources. (And yes, it's all very much a moving target, and one that jumps all over the place!) and stop.Īnd on top of it all, too much of the information is inaccurate, incomplete, takes awkward paths to get to a result or is just wrong something that worked for the writer but can't be replicated in a general sense, or because either ID or Kindle has changed. ![]() The material out there tends to repeat the same worn basics about how to anchor illos and ensure you get a clean Kindle TOC. Even Amazon's plugin stopped at 0.90 beta development some ten years ago.įurthermore, very little information about the process goes past flowing-text layout (novels, simple textbooks, a few inline illustrations). Most dates back to 2010 or so, with a few articles in the 2015 or so era. users who are perhaps savvy at publication for print/ID but new to Kindle-izing. Nearly all of it is for novices, newcomers, first-timers, etc. The vast amount of information on Kindle publishing for pros, and using InDesign, is not a great deal better, and the majority of it is greatly outdated. The vast amount of information on Kindle publishing is amateurish and incomplete: it's aimed at authors who need to get their Word file into Amazon's hands without much technical knowledge or skill. Recently, in redoing a complex book from print to K, I had many issues and problems, and in trying to find answers, I came up somewhere between annoyed, shocked and appalled at how scattered the information on this topic is. but I know I am still fumbling around in many ways. Designing publications for Kindle is becoming a larger and larger part of my workflow, and I now routinely do books for both print and Kindle as a matter of course.With 30 years of experience and using ID since at least CS2, I've worked out most of the process ot my own satisfaction and taste.
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