Last year I released by my book – BloodLoss – Ten Twisted Tales on Amazon. I used Adobes InDesign CS6 with the Kindle plug-in to render an uploadable mobi file. Things worked great – the world was at peace.

Now that I have some free time, I’m trying to render an ePub to upload to Nook Press. Just in case you didn’t know – Barns and Noble Nook reader uses ePub along with iBooks. Once you get your book successfully converted to ePub – you will open multiple marketing doors.

Those who are familiar with InDesign CS6 – it’s a breeze to create an ePub. You just right click on your book->export to EPUB -> you’re done. To test your file, you can use Adobes Digital Editions or download Nook Reader for the PC and review your book.

Yeah…. If it was only that simple.

The above directions are true. However, what you can view with your local readers (Adobe, Nook) verses what you can upload to Nook Press or iBooks is TWO very different issues.

Here is what I found out:

ePub Validation

Before you do anything – go to:  https://code.google.com/p/epubcheck/ and download the ePub validation checker. Otherwise, you will do as I did – upload a file to Nook Press – just for it to fail and say Unknown error. This checker will give you file-line numbers on what needs to be addressed.

For example:

 

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Seems my title is missing.

ePub 2.x

I exported my book to ePub 3.x from InDesign. I figured – the latest and greatest had to be the best. Not true. Nook Press just crapped out every time I uploaded a file. I dropped my file export version down to 2.x and Nook Press was ok with that.

Metadata

I have yet to figure out why InDesign CS6 doesn’t have a more robust way to enter ePub metadata. You will have to edit your ePub content.opf file and add extraneous metadata yourself. From the error listed above – I need to edit the content.opf file and add “title.”

Encryption

For some reason some fonts will be encrypted in your file. A file called encryption.xml will be in your META-INF folder. Nook Press will cause your ePub upload to fail if this file exists. If you delete this file – you should be ok. However, any custom fonts – will be lost. Still trying to figure this one out.

Editing you ePub

You will have to edit your ePub after it’s exported from InDesign. This means you will have to rename your *.ePub to *.zip. Then you can extract the contents (assuming its windows). Make your edits to whatever file needs editing and zip it back up. Once zipped up – rename it back to ePub.

Let’s do this now:

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Rename BloodLoss.epub to BloodLoss.zip

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Now, I’ll extract the files. In windows, just right click and select Extract All.

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The files are now in the BloodLoss directory.

The first file I’m editing is the \OEBPS\content.opf

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As you can see – the title and other information is missing.

I made a few extra edits and saved the file.

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Now, zip up the files.

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Mine was named mimetype.zip – had to rename it to BloodLoss.epub.

Now rerun your epub check.

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