Creating Fixed-Layout eBooks

Often referred to as “chil­dren’s ebooks,” “pic­ture ebooks,” “pho­to books,” and sim­i­lar monikers, fixed-layout ebooks are visually-rich lay­outs that offer much more than stan­dard EPUB and KF8 for­mat ebooks for iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Kindle Fire, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and more.

ePublishing with InDesign: Creating Fixed-Layout eBooks will teach you:
  • Understanding Fixed-Layout eBooks
  • Planning a Fixed-Layout eBook
  • Creating Fixed-Layout in InDesign
  • Adapting the HTML
  • Editing the CSS
  • Adding Advanced Features
  • Creating Read Aloud/Read-Along Narration
  • Creating Fixed-Layout for Apple iBooks
  • Creating Fixed-Layout for Kindle
  • Converting Fixed-Layout for Nook
  • Creating Fixed-Layout for Sony Reader
  • Creating Fixed-Layout for Kobo
  • Other Fixed-Layout Creation Tools

Fixed-layout ebooks behave very much like PDFs or even dig­i­tal mag­a­zines, dis­play­ing the design, typog­ra­phy, and page geom­e­try exact­ly as designed on all devices. This spe­cial­ty type of ebook tends to be very reliant on imagery, either or both as inline graph­ics or page back­ground images, and some­times even as spread-spanning images. They sup­port advanced typo­graph­ic con­trol and pixel-precise lay­out, and they can con­tain read-a-long, on-demand, or ambi­ent audio. Limited inter­ac­tiv­i­ty may also be achieved through JavaScript inte­gra­tion. Objects can be placed any­where on the page, aligned rel­a­tive to one anoth­er, with absolute pre­ci­sion, and type con­trol goes far beyond stan­dard, flow­able EPUB in the forms of sup­port for any font (with embed­ding), accu­rate line wrap­ping, hyphen­ation, lead­ing con­trol, track­ing (let­ter spac­ing), and even mul­ti­ple columns. Fixed-layout EPUBs may have real side­bars, note or tip box­es, and live text image cap­tions. And, like flow­able EPUBs, all the text-even in such spe­cial features-is search­able, live text.

All of these fea­tures make fixed-layout ebooks ide­al for such projects as chil­dren’s books, cook­books, trav­el jour­nals, pho­tog­ra­phy and design books, game guides, and any oth­er project where page pre­sen­ta­tion is impor­tant to read­er expe­ri­ence and sales.

Creating Fixed-Layout eBooks by Pariah S. Burke is a com­pan­ion to ePublishing with InDesign CS6 by Pariah S. Burke (ISBN: 9781118305591, Dec. 2012, Sybex), which is a pre­req­ui­site title, and is part of the ePublishing with InDesign series of books, videos, and instruc­tor materials.