Just downloaded your ebook to my laptop and opened it with Adobe Digital Editions which reads epub files (don’t have an iPad) and sadly it doesn’t display properly. Only shows part pages, text is misaligned and some pages have a large black box superimposed upon them.

Do you have any idea if this Is just an ADE problem, or does it mean Blurb ebooks can only be displayed on an iPad and not any other epub reader? Would like to know as I’m about to purchase my Blurb books as ebooks.

Looked at your book in Blurb preview mode to see it properly – loved it, beautiful pix.

Wendy

The way I read the announcement of the new ebooks it made it clear that this first version was for the iPad and iPhone only, though they are working on future version for other platforms.

…..Tony

I should clarify that I have ONLY tested on the iPhone and iPad. as Tony said, it was my expectation from the beginning that these would only display properly on those devices. While I understand that the ePub format of the file technically makes them compatible with anything that will read an ePub file – I don’t have any expectation that it will display properly in all readers. Maybe someday – but because every reader will have its own quirks, that will be problematic. Having worked on similar projects in the past, I can say it would almost be a miracle. I’m personally happy with this first step.

If you click the link to my book download page above and then click the link to download the book from an iPhone or iPad – it will take a while for the device to download the file and then you will be prompted to “Open in iBooks”. When you select that option it transfers the downloaded book directly to iBooks. I’ve done this on iOS 4 on one iPad and in iOS 5 on and iPhone and an iPad and had no problems. ( I suggest only doing this connected to Wi-fi though – the file is 20 MB – so that should be a given). You also, obviously, have to have the iBooks app installed.

While clarifying I should point out that my book is purposely very simply designed, it’s almost like a Flickr slideshow with all the text turned off or even an iPad/iPhone slide show. One big photo on black, next big photo on black, some fill the page, some don’t. No text – not even page numbers. I took a hard look at some of my favorite photobooks and decided on this route, the emphasis is on the image, the design is invisible. My first Blurb book was 300 pages of random page layouts to see how they looked and to check the print quality of the images, second book was single images of different sizes in different positions, with text on the page. Third book was single image centered on one page on black – text on the opposing page on white. I finally arrived at this non-designed book after all this. It just happened to turn out that the square format and large isolated images fit the screen format of iOS devices nicely.

I appreciate the kind words – and definitely – I only expected my book to look right on an iPad or iPhone, I can’t vouch for anything else – but I will check other things just to see.

Link Again:

http://www.aculinaryphotojournal.com/kentucky-a-culinary-ebook

I am wondering why I would have to paid to see my book on my ipad ???

Look, I can see my book on a PC for free why do we have to pay for Ipad?

Thanks

Hi jasonvin,

Our ebooks are best viewed in Apple’s iBooks app. Any other third party app may not display the book correctly.

-Craig

I have gone through the process to sell an ebook on blurb and had to accept some apple store TOS on the way.

Why is this? Is the book submitted by blurb to apple store? Support says something different but has not answered my question. If I need to submit the file to Apple directly why is Blurb requesting me to accept the 30% commission taken by Apple etc?? I am confused.

Hi editionh and Martincreese,

When talking about selling your ebook there will be two eventual ways to do so, one is on blurb.com and the other is Apple’s iBookstore (this option is not yet live). If you choose to sell in the Apple bookstore Apple will take 30% of the earnings (if you only sell on blurb.com you keep 100% minus the PayPal processing fee).

 
Martincreese- The same copyright applies to ebooks as your printed book (you own the images).

Hope this helps to clarify.

-Craig

Hi tismark,

When sharing digital content  there will always be the risk of copyright infringement. Unfortunately, there is no surefire way of preventing this from occurring. Keep in mind that you still own the copyright to your content so this should provide some solace when sharing an ebook.

The only way to completely prevent people from stealing your content is to not share it in the first place. But as you can probably guess, this doesn’t exactly help with spreading the word about your work. It’s an issue that all artists will face and one that we can’t really help with unfortunately.

-Craig

Hi Blurb
I have had complete satisfaction with my eight hard copy books (78 copies) published to date but I am disappointed with conversion to ebook—
Font substitution occurred.
PNG files do not show transparency.
I discovered this issue only after receiving my ebook and then searching the FAQs where you list the acceptable fonts and mention the PNG issue.
If these details had been on your ebook information page I could have amended my book to comply before uploading.
I know this is still a work in progress and commend you for your initiative in taking book publishing to the elevel. I look forward to further refinements.
Alex

When I order a Blurb ebook I get an epub file. Epub is supposedly an open format. The benefits of the use of an open non-proprietary format are so substantial for customers (i. e., none of the frustration expressed in this forum) that one can only assume that Blurb has some Microsoft-like interest in making its eBook format proprietary.

Until Blurb corrects this (if past performance is any indication it will take years) folks will be searching for alternatives. A little Googling suggests that for the price of a small Blurb book one can buy software that will convert pdf files to epub files (I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has done this from InDesign or Quark). If I can do this successfully my next book will be distributed at cost as a generic (non-Blurb) epub file.

 P.S.,  Add the Firefox epub reader to the Blurb unsupported list.

I love the way my books look on the iPad.  What’s really cool is you can even show them on your t.v.! In my opinion the books are a bit too small on the iPhone.  It’s going to be really great when they are available on more devices! 

Well done!

I am thinking of producing an app/ebook in order to sell it. There are several commercial (and by factor 1000 more expencive) services to do so. Like www.magbooks.com 

On the first sight I can’t see I difference in performance, so I would tend to the redistributable Blurb epub solution, but:

How can I sell it in the Istore and make sure that it won’t be redistributed by "my" clients ? The problem with the Blurb shop is:that it isn’t that handy as the Istore (to the mayority) of Apple users

Thanks, Sebastian

Just made my first ebook and I am very impressed.

Can I ask how you manage to link to it in the first message on here, it’s not a link direct to blurb so did you somehow copy the file and upload it somewhere else?

hi there, i have created my book as an ebook but it wont open on my mac, any ideas anyone?

I was delighted with my first attempt at converting to an Ibook, I read that the font needed to be changed and spent hours and hours converting it, (tho booksmart actually made this quite difficult, inserting lines and spaces where there shouldn’t be any) The pictures and print were beautiful and clear, HOWEVER the Iaook has font marks on the pictures which apparently can’t be eradicated until you get the optimise tool and there seems to be no idea when this will be available, tho I was originally told it would be June, and marketed my book as being availalbe then! And NOW, just when I reconcile myself to the fact that although it is slightly substandard I will go ahead and sell it anyway, I find I suddenly get download failures. This could be a very good option, although for customers I think it needs to be made much clearer that it will only work on IPads (I doubt it would work well on an IPhone either) as many customers will probably not realise UNTIL AFTER they download to their Kindles, Nooks or whatever, and will blame the author. So I really hope Blurb will get this sorted out quickly as my book is time sensitive and this idea has wonderful potential. But, I do have to say a thank you tio Blurb as without them I would probably not ever have self-published. It may not seem like I,have sold many books but 48 iant a bad start. The Ibook option would, I think, boost sales considerably, but PLEASE get it working again quickly! I NEED it!

I wish there was a timing bar so that I could see how long the ebook conversion is taking. I’ve sat here for 15 minutes but have no idea if the book is really converting or not apart from a small spinning wheel.

Hi pizor,

You may have a large ebook that the iPad is taking time to process (even though it doesn’t appear to be doing anything). Try downloading the .epub file to your computer, then import that file into the iTunes account paired with that device (and then sync of course). If you continue to have trouble let us know.

-Craig

Note: Locking post due to age.