Practical Ebook Formatting: Limitations and Optimizations

The eBook market is booming and the number of devices that can read eBooks is growing fast. This workshop will help you see what formatting works and what doesn’t work on the different platforms, with specific suggestions for making your eBooks look great no matter where your consumers read them. The session will be broken into four parts:

General Formatting: an overview of the basic formatting and structure of an eBook, including general layout guidelines and a discussion on good coding and conversion practices.

Advanced Formatting: an in-depth look at some more advanced features in eBooks, like images, lists, outlines, fonts, Unicode text, tables, sidebars, pull quotes, footnotes, etc.

Extreme Formatting: an overview of the more extreme formatting possibilities that will only work on some devices and in certain settings, but that push the boundaries of eBook formats.

InDesign to ePub and Kindle: Phil Frank, who does book production, will demonstrate his workflow for getting InDesign files exported as ePub files and converted into Kindle files. This practical demonstration should give you added insight into taking your own eBook conversion process in-house.

Because there are too many eBook devices and software programs to cover all of them, the formatting parts of this workshop will focus on the similarities and differences between the following platforms:

• Kindle 2
• Kindle DX
• Kindle for the PC
• Sony Reader
• B&N nook
• Adobe Digital Editions
• Stanza (on iPod Touch)
• Aldiko (on Android)

The workshop will only be looking at formatting in the Kindle/Mobipocket and ePub standards, not in eReader, LIT, or other old formats. Questions and thoughts will be encouraged throughout the workshop, and sample eBook files and their sources will be available so that you can follow along.