Last updated on 27 April 2017
This is the era of the e-book with a large majority of people preferring to read e-books on their favorite readers. Consequently, most authors and publishers increasingly rely on eBook conversion services to convert their printed books into electronic format and expand their readership. Simply creating a book and publishing it in e-book format cannot help achieve your goals of reaching out to a wider audience. You need to make sure that your e-book stands out and is readable on various devices so that potential readers would choose it over others.
The most important aspect of the e-book is its content. Alongside, a great design is also very significant. With great content and a unique design, your e-book will be more often downloaded, read and shared. E-books are important marketing tools for businesses. The top goal for content marketing is lead generation, and e-books are a significant part of a successful inbound marketing program.
Here are some expert tips for designing and creating a unique e-book:
- Test your file format in EPUB and MOBI in a wide range of environments.
- Page layout can be either portrait or landscape mode. In landscape mode, the page is wider, which can hold the graphics fully and provide room for two columns of text. Portrait mode focuses more on mobile device visibility.
- It’s important to pick the right typography for your eBook. Using a safe, standard font is recommended from the reader’s point of view. Use serif fonts that do not clash for the body text and chapter headings. Recommended font sizes are 12 point for the body and 14-18 point for chapter titles.
- Use color picking tools to use colors that look good together. It is advised to have different combinations and light color like white on the background if you want to have a printed version. Don’t use more than three colors and try to avoid primary colors (red, blue and green).
- Design the table of contents inside the book and ensure that there is a contents listing. Have the table of contents at the beginning of the eBook. Going through the chapter titles and subtitles will give potential buyers a good idea of what’s in the book.
- Use a well-organized, dynamic and point-to-go table of contents with natural looking indentation and make sure that the chapter headings are properly configured. You can either hire professional outsourced solutions or learn the software and do it by yourself.
- Avoid bad punctuation breaks. If the user set the preferences to full justification on the iPad, then the eBooks will not be able to break a line before or after the dash. Depending upon the size of the font chosen, the whole group of text could pull down to the next line, leaving behind some gap in the word spaces. Use a zero width non-breaking space to bind an em dash to the word preceding it.
- Turning off the hyphens in settings can create a larger space among the long words. Adding a div tag around the head and the next paragraph of your content will give it a neat look, even though it creates many white spaces.
- If you are deciding to submit the document to a site that follows a style guide, make sure to follow their guidelines, or else your eBook will get rejected.
- Connect with the readers using social media. Incorporate social media buttons in headers or footers so that he or she can stay connected with the author or publisher, and also share opinions about the book in social media platforms.
- Print out a few pages to have a preview of the design and margins and also check if the text is readable.
- The main purpose of the ebook is to provide valuable information to the audience. So importance should be given to both cover and the content in it.
- Using images and typography effectively in your eBook will break up that tiring flow of text. This will keep readers more curious and interested in what’s on the next page.
Environment conservation, lower costs and wider readership are the primary factors driving the growth of the ebook industry. According to a PwC report, professional and educational books will grow at a faster pace than consumer books over the next five years. When you need to convert hundreds of printed pages into attractive e-books, tie up with an experienced document conversion company that can provide professional eBook conversion services. With stringent quality checks, a reliable service provider will ensure that your digital books are everything you want them to be. A professional outsourcing company would design your e-book in keeping with your brand image and the audience you are trying to reach. Moreover, they would design the e-book in a way that is appropriate for the particular industry. With a good e-book conversion service provider, your e-books will serve as amazing business tools. It is important that your e-book cover and design are outstanding because many consumers judge them on the basis of their appearance.
