In conversations with our clients lately, we’ve come to realize that authors don’t always have a clear understanding of how e-books are designed compared with print books.
Design is an incredibly important aspect of writing a book—it’s your first impression! From the look of the cover to the specific choice of fonts, the book’s brand should be consistent and clear.
What makes e-book formatting different from print? And why does it matter for your audience and your book sales?
Check out this short video to get the scoop on e-book design.
Transcript:
Hey guys. It’s Amelia from Pithy Wordsmithery. I have been telling them, I today, I just wanted to talk about designing ebooks. So we’ve been working with a lot of clients recently, and we realized that people don’t always have clear, a clear understanding of how eBooks are designed compared to the print book. So when we’re doing a print book, we want to be really ridiculous about how the design is. We want it to match the vibe of the book. We want the fonts to match the cover. We want it to have like, the whole look and feel of the brand and go with like the style of the book or the website or the company that is, you know, putting the book on for ebooks, it’s a little bit different. So you can do is called like a fixed layout page looks like in a print book. It looks exactly like that in the eBook. That is usually only done for Super visual books. So maybe like a textbook or a highly imagery or list or like the experience of the book is the esthetic. If the book is not like that, and it’s like an adult book, it’s like a chapter book. Use a fixed layout, and instead, we would design it so that it’s compatible for ebook readers. So no matter what kind of device somebody has, they’re able to read the book reading is comfortable for them. So, like, the big thing is obviously font size and readability. Like, the most important thing is that when you’re on a tablet or an e reader, like, sometimes there’s, like, it’s harder to read for some people, right? Like, maybe the it’s just not the same experience as, like, having a book in your hand. So we want it to be comfortable for people. So that’s why we don’t do the fixed layout usually. So doing it that way, you do lose a lot of the personalization that you have in the print book. So if you’ve got like, a certain way that, like every when every chapter starts, you’ve got this treatment there that you love really look like that is the ebook, chances are. So we try to get it as close as possible, but it really needs to be a much more simplified layout so that it is compatible with some writing readers. So I think that was good for authors to know that, just so that when they get to that point, they aren’t surprised that they expect it. And if you read a lot of ebooks, you probably already know this, because you’re used to going through those pages and being able to customize it, and there won’t be any surprises with it. You would serve a more basic thing. But if you only read print books when you’re designing the ebook, it might be not quite what you expect. So the thing that we care the most about is making it comfortable for people to read it, and having to be clear to them. So we don’t always recommend women with a fixed layout. Hopefully that makes sense and clears up any confusion. Again, this is Amelia from Pithy Wordsmithery