Convert PDF Files To Epub and Kindle Books

Convert Indesign and PDF Files to Epub and Kindle Books

Convert InDesign CS to EPub, PDF and Kindle

When you have a completed Adobe Indesign book and want to market it for ebook sellers such as Amazon, Kobo, Nook and perhaps your own store; you will need to create various versions which include Kindle Format (AZW3), Epub, PDF and maybe mobi.

PDF Files
With all Adobe Indesign versions or Microsoft Word, you can convert the file to the pdf format. Indesign comes with the converter tool installed while Word needs you to install the addon in order to be able to convert the Word doc to pdf.

Epub Files
With Indesign CS4 and above, you can get a export all Indesign files to Epub. Indesign does a very good job at converting the files and maintaining the layout. Since the epub format is not decipherable or editable in an editor like Notepadd++, you may want to stick with Indesign which outputs almost exactly what you want. After testing various pdf to epub converters; none compare to creating an epub book with an Indesign file. However, HTML / CSS coders can always open the epub file with Notepadd++ and save it as a zip file. Then, the zip file can be extracted and you will see various folders and files which make up the epub file. The html code can be edited and adjusted as desired. After working with the files, you simply rezip the folders and files and rename the new zip file as an epub file. You must ‘Select All’ files and folders and rezip them. Do not zip the main folder which contains the files and folders. After the new zip file is created, you can edit it in Notepad and rename it to the epub format. In a nutshell, an epub file is a zip file with a different extension.

Alternatively, you can convert pdf files to epub files. Some converters can only convert into an image or text format while others can do both. Books that contain no images convert easily. Books with images is most painless with Indesign CS5 or Indesign CS6. AVS Converter does a good job at converting pdf files to epub, but you may find the layout is not as precise as you would like. However, if the pdf is all you have to start with; converting this file to epub format could be somewhere near your best option. AVS document converter can be downloaded here.  Convert Article #1. Convert Article #2.

More converting tips can be found here.

Sigil Download | Notes

Three Press Epub Validator

Epubcheck

Finally, when you make epub books or have them converted from a format like pdf, they may have some small errors. You can validate the code with w3c validator or Threepress and then you can fix the code errors with any text editor like Notepadd++.

More references:
Castro
Conversion extras

Kindle Format
Once you have a format like PDF or Epub, you can easily convert them to other formats with free open source software called Calibre. Calibre is available here. Alternatively, you can use other free or commercial PDF to Epub converters. See other converter.

Alternatively, you can use Amazon’s software called Kindle Gen to convert Epub files into a Kindle Book. Download Kindle Gen Here. For Indesign users, you can use a Kindle plugin to convert Indesign documents to Kindle format.“>

December 4, 2012 by kent