I’ve used PB a ton and never had this snag. I export my eBook and upload it to KDP. When I review it there, all the apostrophes and quotations marks result in odd special characters (looks like coding). I’ve exported and re-uploaded multiple times without any change. I called KDP and they are having their “technical team” review it, but expect it to take 5 days. Not sure what to do next. I tried changing the theme, reviewing the theme options, searching and replacing the apostrophe with another font apostrophe, and no change.
I’m having the same exact issue. Never had a problem with PB. Weird symbols are appearing where there are apostrophes, quotation marks, and end of endnote numbers.
It’s like there’s an encoding issue taking place with PB. The weird thing is that I run the eBook through Calibre and convert it to Mobi. The output file is relatively okay but it’s not as good as the eBook.
If this doesn’t get resolved soon then I might have to look at an alternative platform to make my books. I’d hate to stop using PB since I’ve used it for many years.
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Yep. I will have to look for another platform as well. Which is pretty tragic because I have a book in pre order on Amazon. I might miss my deadline because of this issue.
Is there any support for PB that we can contact?
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I wanted to see if there was an issue with Amazon, so I uploaded an old eBook file (.epub) that I made a couple of years ago with PB into Kindle Previewer to see if the same issues would come up. The old file rendered perfectly, so it looks related to PB and not Amazon.
I think this is their support link: https://pressbooks.com/report-a-bug/
Update
My issues are with ePub generated on pressbooks.com I have access to a separate install of PB on AuthorLab. It seems to be a little bit older install. The files generated from there do not have the same issue. I had the option of exporting ePub 2.0 and ePub 3.0 on that site. The files rendered fine on Kinde Preview.
But I need to generate the files from PB because the theme I want to use is installed on there. I don’t have access to that theme on AuthorLab.
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Hi @Patrick_Riecke and @anonwriter, thanks for your description of this problem. We’ve been able to replicate the issue and have filed a bug report which our team is now investigating. Until a fix has been released to production, we’ve found a workaround that may be helpful. It’s possible to use Calibre to convert your EPUB to an EPUB (rather than to MOBI), as strange as that sounds. The outputted EPUB file can be opened in Kindle Previewer or uploaded to KDP without encountering this bug.
I have the same problem. It’s already ruined our promo launch of my latest books. So sad, because Pressbooks was an awesome tool.
Does anyone know if this problem is being resolved?
I downloaded Calibre, as per “bug report” suggestion, but it distorted all of the illustrations throughout the book.
This is gone from bad to really bad. My book launch was the first of Dec and the impact on my reputation is incalculable, now two weeks into the launch and the only books that got out were glitched.
@palanshia We have identified a solution to the encoding bug and are testing it with Amazon KDP this week. If all tests pass, we hope to push the fix to production as part of next week’s deploy. We recognize and empathize with your frustration, but you also have to understand that this bug was only reported to us on Friday of last week by Patrick. We can only go as fast as we can go.
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Huge thanks for your update!
Problems happen… it was just probably the worst timing, eh? The Christmas market. Will you publish here when the update is working bug-free?
Once again, thanks.
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Yes, as soon as a fix has been released to production, we’ll publish a note here. I’m assuming both you and @Patrick_Riecke are using pressbooks.com to create your books and generate your export files. If that’s not the case, let us know which networks you’re using?
@SteelWagstaff yep, that’s how I am using PB. Thanks for taking a look at this and providing updates.
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Yes, I’ve got 2 book in 3 languages, 2 prequels in 2 languages… all done with PB. It’s has been remarkably effective tool. It has its drawbacks in style (indices, for example), but those are tweakable in Adobe Pro.
Dear SteelWagstaff,
Any news about the solution to the eBook formatting?
I just got another complaint and a book return due to the glitched cyphers. This kind of problem is really really grave for an authour and publisher.
Hoping that something clear and positive has happened in the last 5 days!
Thanks for the tip.
But, alas, all the illustrations in my eBook were distorted badly. The texts were back to normal though. Calibre does not seem to be the solution to the PB problem.
@palanshia We’re on track for what Steel mentioned upthread: the bug fix will be pushed to production this coming week and announced here. Converting in Calibre is only a temporary workaround that worked for some users, but not all. The actual bug fix will make it unnecessary.
Thanks for the really quick response!!
“This coming week…?”… means that we’ve totally lost the pre-Christmas market, correct?
@Patrick_Riecke @anonwriter @palanshia Hi all, writing to let you know that this bug is now fixed. All new EPUBs generated on pressbooks.com won’t be affected by this problem when uploaded to KDP or viewed in Kindle Previewer. Many thanks for bringing up this issue and for your patience while we worked to fix it.
Dear ThomasWeidemann,
THANKS!
Do you know if the glitches in the pdf were also corrected? In my German version, the entire doc was riddled with missing letters and spaces put where they shouldn’t be.
Merry Christmas and thanks again!