ePublishing with InDesign CS6

Chapter 1: Exploring Ereading Devices

The first thing to under­stand about dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing is what devices peo­ple use to con­sume dig­i­tal con­tent, includ­ing what types of pub­li­ca­tions each device class can sup­port, how peo­ple use the devices, and where eread­ing hard­ware is head­ed. You will find a star­tling array of devices on the mar­ket, but ulti­mate­ly there are only four class­es of devices on which dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tions are consumed—ereaders, tablets, com­put­ers, and mobile phones—and the pros and cons of each, and which epub­li­ca­tion file for­mats each can sup­port, can be mad­den­ing with­out this guide.

Chapter 2: Learning About Digital Publishing Formats

Like devices, epub­li­ca­tion for­mats are numer­ous and var­ied, with sub­tle dif­fer­ences between them, but large diver­gences in pur­pose, capa­bil­i­ty, and device sup­port. Consequently, it’s most log­i­cal and pro­duc­tive to think of epub­li­ca­tions in terms of for­mat class­es, with each class offer­ing a par­tic­u­lar com­bi­na­tion of pur­pose, capa­bil­i­ty, and device sup­port. This chap­ter dis­cuss­es the unique char­ac­ter­is­tics and pub­lish­ing expe­ri­ences of EPUB; Amazon Kindle for­mats such as MOBI, AZW, and KF8; PDF, dig­i­tal repli­ca, inter­ac­tive mag­a­zine, and HTML5-based epublications.

Chapter 3: Surveying the Digital Publication Types

Now that we’ve exam­ined the char­ac­ter­is­tics and capa­bil­i­ties of the avail­able dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tion for­mats, it’s time to think about the kind of con­tent you want to dis­sem­i­nate dig­i­tal­ly. In this chap­ter I iden­ti­fy the pur­pose, char­ac­ter, and uses of ebook, dig­i­tal mag­a­zine, enews­pa­per, etext­book, and dig­i­tal com­ic book pub­li­ca­tion types as well as explain which for­mat class­es are best suit­ed to each type. 

Chapter 4: Creating Basic Ebooks

Whether cre­at­ing ebooks from TXT files or word proces­sor doc­u­ments or con­vert­ing exist­ing print pub­li­ca­tions to EPUB, the basics are all the same. You must learn to think in terms of EPUB, to reeval­u­ate how your con­tent is orga­nized, and to know how to struc­ture it using InDesign’s built-in tools in order to pro­duce well-organized, read­able ebooks. The yel­low brick road to becom­ing a wiz­ard of ebook pro­duc­tion starts with this chap­ter and pro­ceeds through the next sev­er­al chap­ters, cre­at­ing pro­gres­sive­ly more inter­est­ing, more mar­ketable ebooks and oth­er EPUB-based publications.

Chapter 5: Working with Images and Multimedia in Ebooks

Although the major­i­ty of ebooks are text-only nov­els and short sto­ries, a large minor­i­ty across all gen­res includes pho­tographs, illus­tra­tions, charts, graphs, maps, and all sorts of oth­er imagery, and even audio and video. Moreover, even nov­els and short sto­ries typ­i­cal­ly have at least cov­er images. Whether your pub­li­ca­tion mere­ly needs a cov­er or requires lots of fig­ures, cre­at­ing and using them in ebooks dif­fers in sev­er­al dis­tinct ways from cre­at­ing and using graph­ics for print or oth­er dig­i­tal formats.

Chapter 6: Fine-Tuning EPUBs

Successful, effi­cient EPUB pro­duc­tion begins in, and cen­ters on, InDesign and the tool set InDesign brings to the busi­ness of ebook pub­lish­ing. However, InDesign isn’t the only tool you’ll need to pro­duce ebooks of the high­est qual­i­ty, max­i­mum com­pat­i­bil­i­ty, and utmost read­er engage­ment. At a cer­tain point, you’ll need to go inside the EPUB to edit and mas­sage the com­po­nents InDesign can’t reach, often work­ing in con­junc­tion with the orig­i­nal files in InDesign to build an ebook that takes fullest advan­tage of eread­er hard­ware and soft­ware to pro­vide an ide­al read­ing experience. 

Chapter 7: Creating PDF Publications for Digital Delivery

Not to be over­shad­owed, PDF-format pub­li­ca­tions are still a viable—indeed, a popular—distribution for­mat. PDFs sup­port rich multi-media, hyper­links, some pret­ty cool inter­ac­tiv­i­ty, script­ing, reflow­able text like an EPUB, and elec­tron­ic forms. PDF view­ers are avail­able for all com­put­er and mobile plat­forms, though fea­ture sup­port varies by plat­form. In this chap­ter we’ll use PDF to its fullest epub­lish­ing poten­tial while defin­ing the restric­tions placed on it by cer­tain devices. We’ll also look at some suc­cess­ful PDF-based pub­li­ca­tions that have been going strong for years.

Chapter 8: Covering the Basics of Interactive Publications

In this chap­ter we’ll focus on the nuts and bolts of interactive-magazine design—how to plan and build the lay­outs in both Adobe Digital Publishing Suite and its lead­ing com­peti­tor, Aquafadas Digital Publishing System, adapt­ing one lay­out for mul­ti­ple devices and ori­en­ta­tions (includ­ing work­ing with liq­uid lay­out behav­iors to make that process as easy and quick as pos­si­ble), build­ing arti­cles and pages the cor­rect way, and fill­ing in the impor­tant fin­ish­ing touches.

Chapter 9: Creating Interactive Magazines with Adobe DPS

Now that you know how to begin and lay out inter­ac­tive mag­a­zines we can get into the real­ly good stuff—all the dif­fer­ent ways in which those pub­li­ca­tions can be made inter­ac­tive and engag­ing with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. From from adding ani­ma­tion and video to immers­ing your read­ers in 3D panoram­ic spaces, from includ­ing live Web con­tent and wid­gets to employ­ing advanced content-replacement tech­niques to put vol­umes of infor­ma­tion on a sin­gle page, lit­er­al­ly at your read­ers’ fin­ger­tips, we’ll go hands-on and step-by-step with includ­ing all the inter­ac­tiv­i­ty in Adobe DPS and then how to build a view­er app for your pub­li­ca­tion and pub­lish it to the App Store, Google Play App Market, and Amazon Android App Store.

Chapter 10: Using Aquafadas DPS to Create Interactive Magazines

Competing head to head with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite is a com­pre­hen­sive but rel­a­tive­ly unknown chal­lenger from France, Aquafadas Digital Publishing Solution. Although not as pop­u­lar as Adobe DPS, Aquafadas offers a much rich­er set of inter­ac­tive ele­ments for incor­po­ra­tion into dig­i­tal mag­a­zines. Also work­ing as an InDesign add-in, the Aquafadas sys­tem is more pol­ished and pro­fes­sion­al look­ing than Adobe’s DPS tools, and, in near­ly all oth­er aspects, Aquafadas is arguably a bet­ter, more intu­itive, more fea­ture rich sys­tem for pro­duc­ing dig­i­tal mag­a­zines. In this chap­ter we’ll go hands-on through step-by-step instruc­tion for includ­ing numer­ous rich­ly inter­ac­tive fea­tures includ­ing slideshows and gal­leries, audio and video, read-along text, advanced con­tent replace­ment, Web and HTML con­tent, and pre-built games and activ­i­ties such as Sudoku, mahjongg, mazes, and more.