Creating epub documents... Need some help.

[spacescape]

Received a call from a client discussing turning a couple of 1000 page books created in indesign CS4 into a epub document. I told her to give me a day or two to see if it's as straight forward as they think it is and to address any concerns. I do know XHTML and CSS... However, when I was messing around with exporting in ID tonight I noticed that formatting gets very messed up. Text is pretty good. Just very concerned about the images and graphics. Especially when graphics really need to stay formatted to the original document. Just seems as if you need to reformat the type after you export the document to an epub document. If that is the case I might need to turn down the work.

Anyone have any advice? Links?

I'd like to take the job but need to decide if this is something I want to take on or not.

Thanks much!

[graylocks]

i posted a notice the other day about BookBaby. they have a free ePublishing guide that might give you some useful insights about the epub format.

BookBaby

[Carm]

Sigil - Works great. I have used it to reformat PDFs to ePUB.

Very tedious work. I would not accept the job, unless you have a lot of time on your hands for the project.

ePub format is zipped XHTML,CSS, GIF files.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB

Sigil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigil_%28application%29
http://code.google.com/p/sigil/ Site Cross Platform.

I use Sigil for ePub converted books and use the books on an iPad and Nook Color.

[spacescape]

So basically (from what I'm reading) a *.epub is basically XHTML package w/ CSS stylesheets and images embedded into the documents. "If" images are not inline with the text (not simple formating) you'd need to set up your style tags <style> </style> and adjust the CSS stylesheet for those styles. So, if the 1000+ page document (remember, there are at least 3-4 but more like 30+) you'd have to pretty much setup the style tags for each text style and tweak the images as needed.

Tons of images so that's what has me a little hesitant to take on the project.