Case Study: lost print files to ebook

In my time I’ve unravelled lots of interesting problems. Some are workarounds often constrained by time and/or tech. Occassionally there aren’t sufficient in-house resources or a supplier has let the client down. Often it is repurposing old content for our digital era.

Print is lovely but it can be expensive or it may take too long. The piece may not require printing. This was the case with a book published by The Association of Jewish Refugees titled Continental Britons. It tells the story of Jewish men and women who arrived in Britain seeking a new life as World War II broke out. The book that accompanied the first exhibition only existed in print form with incomplete archive files and the AJR wanted it to be re-editioned as an ebook.

I spoke at length to the AJR about the options and we agreed on a fixed format ebook. The book contains lots of full page images that are linked to certain parts of the text. A reflowable option would have made this awkward. Fixed format also best represented the previous edition so it looked familiar and was easy to read for the audience.

I took the Word files supplied by the client and flowed the text into Adobe Indesign following the page plan of the original book. In the meantime I asked Gill from Nexus CPP to arrange for the photos to be scanned as time was important on this title. I left blank pages for the photos whilst I designed the text to follow the same page breaks as the past book so the photos matched the text. I set the text in Mr Eaves, a legible and clear sans typeface which reflected (and improved on) the sans font used in the past edition.

When the photos arrived, I used Adobe Photoshop to tune them up, crop and position into the pages. I then keyed in the captions and added these to the text. I also created the front cover, redesigning it a little to include the images from the back cover of the print book (ebooks do not have back covers).

The next step was a proofread of the file to check all was in order before it went to the client. Whilst they were reviewing, I ran a technical check to ensure the files were reliable. All the photos were scanned at high resolution but the software can export to the appropriate ebook specification. I highly recommend that one prepared for print too. It’s better to have high resolution files in case you need the, and get the software to compress over the expense of two lots of scanning.

I took in the client’s corrections and exported the file to fixed file ePub and Mobi files a week ahead of the agreed dates. As it’s produced in Indesign, I can also produce a set of print PDFX files ready for press if required.

You can view an extract of the book here and this is what my client had to say

So pleased to have been recommended to turn to Hello Lovely in our time of need. She took the project by the horns and nothing was too much trouble for her, however great the obstacle, as she found a way around everything. The work was produced very quickly and professionally, and Berenice is a delight to work with. She responds super quickly, too. Thank you very much. Hope to work with you again soon.