eBook design and production
When it’s so easy to make them look gorgeous, we’re astonished how many eBooks look like mangled Word files. And it seems we’re not alone, because there’s a growing reader backlash against shoddy quality.
Here at BBR, we believe eBook users deserve as much respect from publishers as any other book readers, so we give our eBooks the same care and attention in production as we do for printed books. Yes, we automate what can be automated, but otherwise it’s a human hand that’s needed for all those little nips and tucks that make the finished job look spot on.
We publish fiction on Amazon and on Apple’s iBookstore, so not only do we understand what it takes to make flowing eBooks as attractive and functional as possible, but we also have the advanced XHMTL/CSS skills to achieve that. And as we don’t delegate to an aggregator, we’re able to prepare and submit retailer-specific files that exploit the best features of each platform.
A sample page from one of our fiction titles (left to right) in iBooks for iPad, in the Kindle app for iPad, and on the Kindle.
Meanwhile, we’ve been exploring the possibilities of the flowing eBook format for academic and heavily illustrated books, particularly on the iPad, and this short video gives an indication of potential:
iBooks and Kindle both support embedded audio and video, and so we’re also experimenting with integrating the jQuery JavaScript library (a standard component of modern websites) to add rich interaction to fixed-layout eBooks.
eBook creation from flowing formats such as InDesign, HTML or MS-Word is straightforward, but it should be noted that converting non-flowing content (such as PDFs or page scans) to reflowable content is a more labour intensive process.