Is there a pdf->epub option that keeps the design better

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by DNSB

an author had gotten rights to her books back but the only copies she had was PDFs the publisher had sent her years back.

How does that happen?
How does an author write a novel, spend considerable time and mental energy on it, then not have a copy? Do the publishers demand all copies to be handed in? Does the author have to buy their own book to read it?
Or is it a case of bad luck and copies were destroyed in some disaster?

[Quoth]

The publisher might have edited etc.
She might have used a PCW8256, Wordstar, Wordperfect, orphaned MS Works, orphaned Word for Dos, earlier orphaned Word for Windows, Wang, or even a typewriter.
Depends how long ago.
Novel might be on floppies (8", 5.25", 3.5", 3"), Zip drive or whatever.
OS might be CP/M, DOS, RiscOS, BBC Micro, Apple II, Xenix, Apple Mac OS 9 or earlier.

Authors are not IT experts and even to end of 1980s work might be typed for submission.

Some authors published even 60 years ago might be alive and republishing. Though wordprocessing "arrived" in early 1970s on dedicated systems it wasn't generally available till late 1970s Wordstar on CP/M. DOS based word processing wasn't affordable till late 1980s even though IBM PC came in 1981. That's why so many PCWs (dedicated WP with DMP, later cheap daisy wheel) with Locoscript sold. CP/M was included but a CP/M wordprocessor was extra.

Some published authors STILL write long hand and pay someone to type it up.

Or her version computer files might have got lost. I've lost two works in the last 45 years. One was a History of Communications written in 1986. It might still be on a 3" disc, but I think the disc got lost moving from abroad. The other was a ST-TOS fan-fic I wrote for my son in the early 1990s. There should have been a backup. There were multiple paper copies. But by 1998 it was missing. Fortunately neither of those is really important. And I was expert at IT & backups etc by 1983, using CP/M, DOS, UNIX, ISIS 2, OS/9 (not the Apple one) and VMS by then.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Karellen

… then not have a copy? Do the publishers demand all copies to be handed in? Does the author have to buy their own book to read it?
Or is it a case of bad luck and copies were destroyed in some disaster?

No, the publisher wants only one copy. Originally typed with double line space, later in MS Word format (from some time in the 1990s).

Mostly the publisher supplies the author a free proof (earlier was galleys) and often a few free from print run. With Vanity or POD the author has to buy a copy. James Joyce is over rated now and did very few books. At least one was Vanity published with a Paris bookshop paying the costs, because he was more honestly rated then.

It's really easy even now to have no copy. Even easier only 20 years ago and totally easy 40 years ago.

As an aside, there are almost no lost BBC episodes. No Dr. Who was lost! The BBC deliberately destroyed 16mm flim and reused tapes (to save about £85 a reel in mid 1970s! vs £thousands in production costs per episode) .

It's easy.

[NovelFan]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Export or copy/past text layer to Word/LO Writer and edit, then proof.
What Tex2000ans, Karellen, j.p.s. and DNSB write.


I actually convert a PROPERLY Styled docx to epub in Calibre without ANY editing of CSS (except images CSS after final proof of text) and then proof read / annotate on a Kobo eink.

PDFs are only a source for old PD that's only been scanned and OCRed by someone else. Madness for anything else, except piracy.

So the goal is conversion pdf->docx->epub.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by NovelFan

So the goal is conversion pdf->docx->epub.

That is one way, yes.

If you are more familiar with Word/LibreOffice and fine with editing in DOCX, you can do that.

The key thing is, using an OCR program that can figure out the PDF text/layout/formatting, and give you a clean document you can work from.

Having a GUI, where you can quickly compare original vs. converted is also a HUGE TIMESAVER. (Like I showed in those "magnified" Finereader examples... Left = Original, Right = Converted, Bottom = Zoomed-in Version of PDF.)

The better your OCR is, the more time you'll save on all those later steps. Think of it like a pyramid. If you have garbage foundation, you're going to be spending so much more time on all those later steps, trying to correct the errors you introduced in the beginning. The more problems you can squash EARLY, the better off you'll be.

Originally Posted by Karellen

How does that happen?
How does an author write a novel, spend considerable time and mental energy on it, then not have a copy? Do the publishers demand all copies to be handed in? Does the author have to buy their own book to read it?
Or is it a case of bad luck and copies were destroyed in some disaster?

Yep, Quoth is exactly correct.

You only handed in the "first draft" document. Publishers took it from there, then did all of their bells/whistles to it. Editing, layout, Indexing, etc.

In the olden days, you'd only get the physical Print proofs + a final copy.

In the newer days, authors might get handed the digital PDF.

But almost never would they get the actual, original, completed source files. (InDesign, Quark, etc.)

- - -

Publishers then go out of business, change buildings, fire/hire new people, etc., losing the originals.

Authors also do a horrible job with backing up important files too, so while the physical book might have survived and still be sitting on their shelves... the old PDF copy might have been completely lost (on an old laptop that broke, hard drive died, old computer got tossed away, etc. etc.).

- - -

Side Note: If you're interested in decades of publishing, also see this fantastic documentary:

• "Linotype: The Film" (2012)
• IMDB + Trailer

Back then, you'd only print X copies, then poof... the original pages would just disappear. They wouldn't store those things indefinitely.

- - -

Originally Posted by Karellen

How does that happen?
How does an author write a novel, spend considerable time and mental energy on it, then not have a copy? Do the publishers demand all copies to be handed in? Does the author have to buy their own book to read it?
Or is it a case of bad luck and copies were destroyed in some disaster?

Heh, in many cases, the author/publisher might send me a book I worked on.

But there are plenty I've worked on (with my name in the Acknowledgements) that I don't have.

Same with journal articles, etc. etc. These things just get lost in time. Takes up too much space, you "have a digital copy of it" so you threw away the original, etc.

Look at all the reasons why people get rid of their physical book collections, even though they might LOVE books.

- - -

Side Note #2: Same exact thing with film/TV. Just today, an article came out about 2+ lost old "Doctor Who" episodes being found:

• The Guardian: "Lost Doctor Who episodes found – but owner is reluctant to hand them to BBC" (November 11, 2023)

These things get lost and buried in someone's collection for over 60 years.

Side Note #2.1: If you're interested in that, you might also be interested in this great video:

• Tested: "How a 100-Year-Old Animated Film Is Restored!" (December 15, 2022)

Side Note #3: And if you're interested in other old magazines being lost in time... see the fantastic article:

• "Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami" (June 5, 2023)
  
  • And the "Hacker News" commentary/discussion on it.
    

and his podcast episodes about it:

• Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It: "The Computer Shopper Episode"
• "The Computer Shopper Aesthetics Episode"
• "The Last (?) Computer Shopper Episode"

Computer Shopper was this monthly magazine from 1979–2009. An absolute treasure trove of information + articles over decades... completely lost in time.

Jason Scott is one of the top archivists at the Internet Archive (Archive.org), so he was describing this enormous undertaking of digitizing these. After many years, he finally got his hands on nearly every single copy of the magazines.

And, in the Hacker News comments, you can see all sorts of authors and people coming out of the woodwork, thinking their old articles and things were completely lost. They then discuss some of their influences too, and awesome that these things are now possible to be rediscovered.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Karellen

How does that happen?
How does an author write a novel, spend considerable time and mental energy on it, then not have a copy? Do the publishers demand all copies to be handed in? Does the author have to buy their own book to read it?
Or is it a case of bad luck and copies were destroyed in some disaster?

As far as I remember from our conversations, she did the originals in WordStar and the computer and files are long gone (mid-90's era). She did have physical copies and was prepared to have them converted to digital format but was saved from that when the publisher located the PDF files that they had generated. I hadn't seen a file flagged as PDF1.0 in quite a while.

Her physical copies, as far as I know, were courtesy of the publisher so she could do a final check for any errors before the print run and possibly some free author copies of the print run.

I don't think it was so much as a disaster as moving computers and not everyone being paranoid about backups. In the early 2000's, ebooks and indie publishing was not really a popular item with most authors.

[jackm8]

Best look for pdf to epub would be a fully manual conversion. It's not impossible, but does require quite a bit of work and knowledge of programs.

First you'd need to rip all the text from the pdf file, import it into text editor like word or indesign, then rip images as separate files, and put them next to the text in about the same place.

[Karellen]

Thank you @Quoth + Tex2002ans + DNSB

That is all very insightful. It's interesting to understand a bit about the author/publisher relationship.
I can understand the source material from decades ago being lost over time.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by NovelFan

So the goal is conversion pdf->docx->epub.

Or it could be PDF > ePub given how good Sigil and calibre are for editing eBooks.

[Shohreh]

I just tried feeding Abbyy FineReader a native PDF followed by a bitmap PDF (ie. set of scanned pages, with an OCR layer on top) and save them as EPUB files: In both cases, it did an amazing job, with only a few wrong carriage returns.

Much nicer than open-source solutions like poppler or even mutool, that both require more tedious editing.

But then… the price isn't the same.