From the Adobe Digital Editions blog: Today, we’re posting a how-to guide that explains how to convert eBooks authored using Adobe InDesign for compatibility with the Amazon Kindle and the Kindle Store. Because Amazon uses their proprietary AZW format, the Kindle doesn’t natively support the open EPUB standard. However, with a bit of open source software, it’s fairly easy to convert the EPUB files exported with InDesign into the Amazon-compatible MOBI format. Converting InDesign documents for Kindle compatibility requires the following steps: 1. Export InDesign document to EPUB2. Convert EPUB to Amazon-compatible MOBI format3. Preview on Kindle device (optional)4. Upload to Amazon store For...

From their site: Until recently, the Indesign EPUB features for creating e-books felt tacked on. Features were missing that just made the solution lacking as a whole, and you'd invariably have to use other tools to hack at the unzipped EPUB code to really have it render the way you want within e-readers. Indesign CS5.5 looks to fill these workflow holes: covers can now be embedded, flow can be strictly controlled, and it looks like one app can finally handle the e-book creation process from start to finish. ...

From IndesignSecrets.  For full details see the article: InDesign CS5.5 brings many improvements to the creation of EPUB files. A posting hererevealed some of the improvements. However, recently I ran into a bug which occurs when exporting EPUB out of InDesign CS5.5, which does not occur in InDesign CS5. It has been described as a WebKit encoding bug. I was working on creating two eBooks, and I had started them in InDesign CS5. When InDesign CS5.5 was completed, I happily opened them in the new version because using CS5.5 required a lot less postprocessing of the files. The chapters passed EPUB validation,...

How expensive should it be to publish an iPad magazine app? If you said it should cost at least £7003 ($11,537) per year, then you’ll like the deal Adobe is offering with the latest version of its Digital Publishing Suite, the iPad magazine InDesign plugin. Designer Elliot Jay Stocks blogs about Adobe’s pricing scheme, which involves a £3636 platform fee plus a minimum of £3367 set toward the .16 per issue Distribution Service Fee Adobe charges.This is in addition to the cost of the software itself, which doesn’t exactly come cheap, and the 30% fee Apple charges for...

According to the ePub Books Blog, Highlander is offering two one day session in March and April in the UK, at 350Pounds. The course covers (among other things): * Overview o EPUB vs. PDF o Supported devices o What is kept and what is lost in EPUB? * Overview of InDesign long documents * Adobe Digital Editions reader ...

Michael W. Perry, author of Untangling Tolkein, posted a thoughtful comment to the article iBookstore is a “dismal failure” says David Winograd of TUAW. The issues he raised are interesting enough that I thought the comment should be reprinted in full here. His comment follows (blockquotes omitted): TUAW is right. Unless we get surprised at the upcoming Oct. 20 event, there’s little evidence that Apples care much about their iBookstore. They’ve yet to create a Mac version of iBooks, much less one that is as multi-platform as the Kindle. They have nothing like the ability I have to download...

From the Kindle Daily Post: Today, Amazon launched a new tool which allows publishers to more easily make books available for Kindle by converting Adobe InDesign® files directly into the Kindle format. For you publishers out there who build your books in InDesign, this will make creating Kindle books easier than ever. Having personally used the InDesign plugin for Kindle, I can honestly say it’s one of the easiest ways to create a Kindle-ready file. It’s literally just a few clicks from an .indd document to a Kindle book. You select “Export to Kindle”, pick a...

David Blatner of InDesign Secrets has a review of a new program that will import SVG (scalable vector graphics) into InDesign. He likes what he sees: While Adobe’s Digital Editions software supports Flash, a number of other epub readers don’t. LIke, um, most of them, including iBooks on the iPad. So what is an epub publisher to do with vector graphics? Usually, they just get rasterized (turned into bitmaps), which is pretty icky. Or, you can hand code a link to SVG into epub, which is even ickier. But check this out: A third-party developer has recently come up with a...

Terry White has an article in Adobe how-to magazine Layers looking at how to export documents from InDesign into EPUB format for use with Adobe Reader or other e-book devices. I don’t have nor have I used InDesign so I can’t really say how good the instructions are. However, the first half of the article talks about the rise of e-books and e-magazines, discussing the Kindle, the Kindle app for iPhone, and the Zinio e-magazine reader. White doesn’t really mention many of the other e-book options apart from these, but at least he does agree that the PDF...