Alternatives to PDF

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Tee Gee

I have just finished my first book using Scribus 1.5.1 but cannot upload it in its sla. format to Lulu and Kindle.

I knew I could  use a PDF but both these publishers do not reccomend this format, particularly for e-books. so I used a pdf converter to try and get over my problem but  to no avail.

I tried the epub conversion to publish a 'printed book' as opposed to an ebook in Lulu and it will not pass the validation issue for Barnes & Noble, meaning I can't get my PDF accepted.

Is there a way to convert my sla. file to any of the following:  MS Word DOC, DOCX  or EPUB file format?

Tg

mnawij

My only recommendation is that of converting the pdf file to word, html, or epub which B&N accepts into their manuscript editor.

I have not used these products specifically but I have used other products (for inDesign) by these companies with pretty good results.

http://www.recosoft.com/products/pdf2officepersonal/
https://www.pdftoword.com/
http://www.nuance.com/for-business/imaging-solutions/document-conversion/power-pdf-converter/how-to/convert-pdf-to-word/index.htm

I have used these apps to convert with moderate success.

Adobe Acrobat Pro will convert it to MS Word, but you will have to do quite a bit of editing fixes afterward.  Also, InDesign will convert straight to an epub, but there is a minor learning curve to get through.  There is a 30 day trial that you could download and give it a try.

https://calibre-ebook.com    (a lot of reformatting in an epub editor), which B&N has called "manuscript editor".

I would avoid the zillion or so free 'online' conversion sites unless you know that they are a reputable company.

I wish I could be of more assistance, I too have run into this problem a few times when my 'print' customers requested that I convert their books to epub...  If there is a better answer I would love to hear it also :-)

mnawij

Nermander

I believe you have created your book from the wrong end.

For an e-book the format should not be page oriented but instead more of a tagged format (like HTML), since an e-book reader will want to reflow the text according to the used screen size and resolution.

Scribus is a page layout program, intended to design pages with a fixed layout, no re-flowing.

So you should have written your book in an e-pub compatible format, and THEN made the layout for print in Scribus (if you do not intend to print there is no reason to use Scribus at all).


Tee Gee

Thanks guys

Mnawij, I tried a couple of the products you mentioned and they worked quite well but I would have had to do quite a bit of tweaking.

Calibre would have required virtually a re-write.

Nermander, yes I was getting round to thinking I had started things the wrong way round, so perhaps I will have to go back to my previous format of using Dreamweaver.

Unless anyone one can advise me of an Epub based self publishing system I could use.

I do have the consolation that all will not be lossed as I still have all my preparatory work done, so it will be relatively easy to use elsewhere.

I would like to say that I have now  tried Scribus and I quite liked using it, despite the odd glich or two  :-\

I think I will keep it on board for a while, who know I might find other reasons to use the format.

So thanks guys for your replies it is appreciated.   Tg

Nermander

There is the possibility to export the text content from a Scribus document (someone has written a script for that). But all formatting will be lost.

founder

Quote from: Nermander on March 25, 2016, 10:53:36 AM
There is the possibility to export the text content from a Scribus document (someone has written a script for that). But all formatting will be lost.

I have written a script in Perl for this, to bring the text file to the program from http://languagetool.org
Founder of PEGE - Planetary Engineering Group Earth https://www.pege.org
Founder and CEO of https://gemini-next-generation.house