Validate and edit the EPUB

- [Instructor] Once you have created your epub file and you've tested it on various devices to make sure it's reading right, you need to do one more step before you start selling it or trying to upload to the ibookstore or the kindle store and that is to make sure it is a valid epub. It's called validating the epub. What does that mean exactly? Means that you are testing to make sure that the inside of how it's constructed and the HTML and CSS is marked up conforms with the epub specifications.

Here is the in-design document in this chapter and I fiddled with it a little bit, but if you take this file through from exercise files and export it to epub 3 reflowable you'll end up with a valid epub. So, let's go ahead and do that right from in-design. File, export, epub reflowable and I'm going to save it right on the desktop. And just accept the defaults. One thing that I want to make sure that you do is to add metadata. In whatever program you're using to create your epub, there'll be a place where you can enter the title, the year that it was published, that kind of information.

And some of this is required by the epub3 spec. Just click okay and it exports and then opens up in ibooks. But I'm going to jump here to the Finder. Let's hide others just to keep things clean. I have an application here called EPUB checker. And this actually includes the validation program. If you go on the web and you search for EpubCheck, you'll find that it's actually a program that needs to run from the command line.

Which is a little too geeky for me. But this is EpubCheck 4.0.2., it's on Github. And this makes sure that it conforms to the definition of how EPUB 3.1, that's the current spec as I record this, should be written out. So, all this information here it just makes sure that it is an epub that complies with the standards for epub 3. Instead of having to figure out how to run this code thing from your Windows or Mac computer you can download this free utility from a company in Germany.

But if you scroll down, you'll see that there is a Windows download and a Mac download and a Linux download all in English. And I've already downloaded that and installed it. And I'll show you how it works in a second. If you don't want to bother with that and you have a small epub, you could go to this webiste, validator.idpf.org, and you can upload your epub and it will check against the same current standards. So, you just click choose file and then validate and it has to be 10 megs or less.

And there's one other service that I want you to know about. This FlightDeck service is great. It's a little pricey, you have to pay per ebook that you upload. But it checks not only does it meet the epub 3 specifications, but also checks any special rules and regulations that some of these e-resellers might have for your ebooks. And it gives you a lot of information about how to fix things. So, you might want to check out ebookflightdeck.com. The one that I mostly use though is this epub checker from Pagina. And, in fact, I've put a little favorite over here in the sidebar 'cause I like to just drag and drop files onto there.

And I'm going to do just that. So, here on my desktop there's the epub that we just exported. And I'll drag and drop it onto epub checker and it pops open and it runs it against the current version of epub 4.0.2. And it's a happy green, it is valid. No errors or warnings detected. If you do end up with errors, if it says line 52 or this x, y, z is incorrect or is against conformance it'll always list it out and then you need to figure out how to fix it yourself.

Either go back to the original program and fix it or open up the actual epub file in some program like, say, BBEdit where you can open up the actual files here, for example, if there's a problem in the CSS you could scroll down and say, oh, it's saying that line 181 isn't working right. You could either delete it here and save it or go back to the original program and fix it. But in general most commercial software programs will generate valid epubs. Just something that you need to think about and check before you actually start selling or uploading your epub to be sold.