Good designer to convert PDF to ebook?

October 8, 2013 9:27 AM

I have a PDF that I'd like to convert to ebook format. It's straightforward - body text with just a handful of images - but the ebook needs to have the same font and style of the PDF. (I also have it in InDesign, if that helps.) I'm looking for a designer, or design agency, who has worked on ebooks before, who can take this on. Any recommendations?

Other notes:

- I know I could probably learn to do this myself, but given my workload I'd rather hire someone who already knows how - and will do a better job than I would.

- What I'm looking for in a designer or agency: responsive (answers emails), reliable (does what they say they'll do), and has a good design eye (has worked on ebooks before and knows how to deal with font and spacing issues in ebooks).

- Work would start immediately.

posted by mark7570 to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I'm in the process of converting a book that I self-published in hard-copy into an e-book, and let me tell you: you can basically kiss your formatting and style considerations completely goodbye. Why? Because one of the main features of the ebook format is that users can choose their own font and size settings. Further, the same file needs to be readable on an arbitrarily large number of screen sizes and form factors. All you really get to control is copy editing, paragraph divisions, and the occasional hard pagination with page breaks. Hell, the kindle format doesn't even support custom indentation very well!

If you want people to be able to read the same thing electronically as they can in hard copy, you'll have to stick with the pdf. Other than that, the features and constraints of the medium just doesn't permit what you're looking for as far as I know.
posted by valkyryn at 10:09 AM on October 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

http://www.odesk.com
is an online free-lancing site. I've heard of people doing that type of work on there.
posted by thylacine at 4:26 PM on October 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Memail me and I'll give you some names.
posted by libraryhead at 4:46 PM on October 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

ePub not only allows you to specify fonts, it actually allows you to embed fonts and to even obfuscate the files. It's part of the standard.

It is not going to be possible to reproduce a PDF as an e-book. They are different animals.

This said, you should be able to get someone to do a decent job. There are tons of people out there doing this right now and even some free services.
posted by cjorgensen at 5:43 PM on October 8, 2013 [1 favorite]