Creating PDF-based ebooks

On Oct 3, 2005, at 3:01 PM, ragused wrote:

> As a small nonprofit publisher, we are attempting to "publish" our
> books in PDF form but are having trouble with the final PDF
> printing the same on all printers and platforms. We are doing our
> work in In Design and Illustrator, creating the PDFs right out of
> In Design. We then compile several PDFs in to one large PDF using
> Acrobat. This final PDF is both sent to a printer and made
> available as an eBook. The variable printing issues we're having
> aren't consistent. Question--Does a good resource exist for
> publishing large eBooks, or is there PDF preflight software that
> checks the basic integrity of a file for working on most platforms?
> How do Take Control publishers get the books to work so well on all
> platforms and printers?

You might be running into a problem if you're using the same file for
downloadable and printed versions, a version that's downloadable for
the general public will not contain enough information for the
printed version and will not be high res enough. Are you using the
Distiller to create "Press Optimized" files and not the PDF Writer
for the stuff you send to the printer? The Writer does not create
documents that are high res enough for imagesetters. The writer will
be great for the downloadable version, but not for imagesetting.
There are different job options you can set in Acrobat, and make sure
you use the appropriate one for the format.

PDFs are widely accepted by printers, but most printers tend to
require different specs; when preparing any materials for output,
it's imperative to follow your printer's specs TO THE LETTER.
Although PDFs are device independent, different presses have
different requirements within the boundaries of the format. And ask
the printer for the job options settings that are required.

A few tips that might help:

Compile the document, making sure everything in it conforms to spec,
then Distill the whole shebang using Acrobat. It will give you more
of a safety margin to create two versions - one to send to the
printer, and a lower res version for downloading.

Make sure all the graphics are contained in an appropriate format as
well. You can run into trouble here with the ebooks, as you'll need
high res files for printing (don't forget they must be CMYK, and that
you must follow the printer's requirements - check the required
resolution, compression method, etc. - some printers don't want jpgs)
and low res for downloadable books. So it might be better to prepare
one version for printing and another for download - you can use 72
dpi RGB for the downloadable version.

Fonts can be the #1 cause of problems. Make sure you include any
fonts, and remember that you cannot mix font types within a document
- OT, TT and PS cannot coexist on imagesetters. And don't depend upon
your printer having all your fonts - Adobe Garamond is different than
Berhtold Garamond, Apple's version, etc. Make sure your printer
supports the font format (some printers still don't like TT or OT),
and of course, check to see the fonts didn't get corrupted.

If you have bleed areas, be sure they are showing in the PDF - it
doesn't do this by default. make sure you can see the correct crop
marks on the pages that bleed. Not all printers will look for the
hidden bleed areas.

If you're using spot color, be sure you include the appropriate
information.

Check to see of the printer wants a portable job ticket in the file,
and that you've completed the required job sheet completely.

If you can afford preflight software, like FlightCheck or others,
it's a good investment if you're going to be doing a lot of printing.

HTH,

Marilyn

>As a small nonprofit publisher, we are attempting to "publish" our
>books in PDF form but are having trouble with the final PDF printing
>the same on all printers and platforms. We are doing our work in In
>Design and Illustrator, creating the PDFs right out of In Design. We
>then compile several PDFs in to one large PDF using Acrobat. This
>final PDF is both sent to a printer and made available as an eBook.
>The variable printing issues we're having aren't consistent.
>Question--Does a good resource exist for publishing large eBooks, or
>is there PDF preflight software that checks the basic integrity of a
>file for working on most platforms? How do Take Control publishers
>get the books to work so well on all platforms and printers?

You're doing things a bit differently than we are, but I'd encourage
you to take a look at Apago's PDF Enhancer software, which can clean
up a PDF nicely, and, starting from a single large PDF, give you
another version that's much more compressed for online use.

<http://www.apagoinc.com/>

We use PDF Enhancer on all our ebooks, and it's a great help for
optimizing them for our uses.

cheers... -Adam

--
New Take Control ebooks! ........... http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/
       My latest ebook, "Take Control of Your Wi-Fi Security," is out!
_____________________________________________________________________
Adam C. Engst: I publish TidBITS, write books, and make sure the
acetidbits.com right people know each other in the Mac industry.
Me: http://www.tidbits.com/adam/ TidBITS: http://www.tidbits.com/

Selecting the right Distiller settings is key to generating reliable,
predictable PDFs. Additionally, what works well for print may not
work well for download and distribution.

For consistency, you generally want to use the PDFX-1a preset for
your print output. (Assuming you are dealing with either a 4-color or
a 1-color PDF document -- spot colors won't do too well with a PDFX1-
a conversion.) Ensure that ALL fonts are embedded and subset any font
at less than 100%.

For distribution, you may want to experiment with different color
management options. In general, no color management is ideal, but
YMMV depending on your audience. Again, embed and subset ALL fonts.
That can be a huge source of strangeness when people get it.

Image interpolation/compression should be minimal for the print
version (as it is in PDFX1-a) and high enough to balance file size
and quality for the downloadable version.

--Nik

----
Get your biz on at the Vicarious MBA!
<http://vmba.inik.net/>

I also create illustrated, interactive PDF based e-books for beginning wind instrumentalists.  

When I make a PDF from an InDesign file, I always use Adobe’s PDF printer, which does a better job than the built in Apple PDF conversion.  

If you are preparing a document for home printing, then it’s virtually impossible to achieve the same results on every printer.  As every printer is different, you’d be on a hiding to nothing trying to cover all the profiles.  The best you can do is to choose a color management that is available on most computers, (I use Adobe 1998) and instruct your users to set their Acrobat color management to the same setting.  I doubt that many non-professionals would want to fiddle around with their Output Color Settings before printing, but, if you want to give them the opportunity to do so, you could put a small paragraph explaining how to do it when they’re at the print dialogue box.  If the color management isn’t critical, then simply leave it to the end-user’s default settings to sort out.

If you’re sending your print job to a professional printer, then you’ll need to prepare your document for CMYK printing, which is a very different jar of worms.  Your printing house should tell you what settings to use, and also which programs they use.  If they don’t, then ask them.  It’s also worth asking which platform they use, as most purportedly cross-platform programs aren’t all that cross-platform.  You’ll get something that looks like what you created on your Mac, but there’ll always be some annoying little difference that has to be sorted out, and it usually takes forever.  If I send anything to a professional printer, I always use the programs and platform that the printing house uses.  It saves so much fiddling about.

I would also suggest that you look in your Acrobat Help, which comes with every Acrobat.  If you do a search for “Color”, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that most, if not all, of the answers you’re looking for will be found in the search results.  The information in Acrobat Help is quite comprehensive and should help you out with your problems.

As you’re using InDesign, you should prepare one PDF for hard copy, and a different version for screen based reading.  Look in your InDesign Help for details on how to prepare PDFs which will be used in different ways.  It has been my experience that it’s best to start color and font management in InDesign, rather than trying to fiddle around with an existing PDF.  Think of it as a bit like negotiating an agreement before work commences, rather than being presented with a finished product which isn’t quite what you wanted.

Color Management can seem like a Pandora’s Box to the neophyte, but it’s worth spending the time to tame this dragon.  The most confusing thing is learning the difference between settings for screen based RGB and hard-copy, print-based CMYK.  Concentrate on screen based settings first, as it’s easiest to get right and probably what you’re most used to, and then move on to CMYK.

Regards,

Bob Hayden-Gilbert  
CEO iBegin® Interactive Software "Never practise alone again"™
http://www.original-works.co.uk

Just eavesdropping - very helpful comments.

I would like to start doing some PDF books in the near future. What resources (books, websites, etc.) would you recommend to get a person up and running with the least amount of hassle?

Further to my previous comments about color, I was poking around in the Apple Developer pages and found two useful URLs:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/GraphicsImaging/Conceptual/csintro/index.html

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/GraphicsImaging/Reference/ColorSync_Manager/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000259

Very useful stuff.

Bob Hayden-Gilbert CEO iBegin® Interactive Software "Never practise alone again"™ http://www.original-works.co.uk

I use InDesign to lay out the finished product and then export it to .pdf. You'll need Acrobat Pro to finish it off nicely, with book marks and interactive elements. I would not recommend putting in interactive elements in InDesign, as the resulting pdf will go looking for the original file on the computer that created it. pdf stands for, er, "Portable Document File" which isn't so portable if the file goes looking for other files on the original computer that created the file. Priceless. I wonder which brain-surgeon thought that one through? Probably the same one that arranged for InDesign CS2 not to be able to print over a wireless network. Again, priceless.