ePublishing with InDesign, 2015 Edition

Used at the Savannah College of Art & Design and in many oth­er col­leges, uni­ver­si­ties, and train­ing cur­ricu­lums through­out the world. The best­selling pre­vi­ous edi­tion has been trans­lat­ed into five languages.

Create, Deploy, and Manage Digital Publications of All Kinds

For publishers, designers, authors, and self-publishers.

For use with Adobe InDesign CS6 or CC (any version.)

If you want to cre­ate dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tions with engag­ing lay­outs and pages that pop, let epub­lish­ing expert Pariah Burke show you how. This book pro­vides the infor­ma­tion you need to design and launch your dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing how to cre­ate econ­tent from scratch and how to con­vert print pub­li­ca­tions to dig­i­tal formats.

This book walks you through the entire process: plan­ning, adding mul­ti­me­dia and inter­ac­tiv­i­ty, and pub­lish­ing using InDesign. Step-by-step instruc­tions and hands-on projects help you quick­ly build skills. In no time, you’ll design media-rich ebooks, emagazines, ecat­a­logs, and more!

Get it Whole or A la Carte

This book is being pub­lished chapter-at-a-time and section-at-a-time. You can buy each chap­ter indi­vid­u­al­ly or buy whole sec­tions, all while the rest of the book is still being writ­ten, edit­ed, and pro­duced. This dis­tri­b­u­tion method gives you, the read­er, the chance to get the most up to date infor­ma­tion avail­able now instead of hav­ing to wait for the entire book to be finished.

Below are full descrip­tions of all chap­ters as well as the four sections.

Get what you need now, and be alert­ed to the release of each chap­ter and sec­tion by sub­scrib­ing to the pri­vate, spam-free ePublishing 2015 New Releases email alerts.

Click or tap green vol­ume titles below to expand or con­tract and see chap­ters and contents.

[su_spoiler title=“Book 1: The Business (and World) of ePublishing” class=“my-custom-spoiler” icon=“plus-circle” open=“yes”]

Chapter 1: eReading Devices and Their Capabilities

Buy this chap­ter by itself.

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.

In this chap­ter, you will learn about the following:

• Device Classes
• eReaders
• Tablets
• Computers
• Mobile Phones
• Hybrid Devices
• Future Devices
• Designing for Devices

Chapter 2: Digital Publishing Formats and Their Capabilities

Buy this chap­ter by itself.

Like devices, epub­li­ca­tion for­mats are numer­ous and var­ied, with dif­fer­ences, some­times sub­tle, 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.

In this chap­ter, you will learn about the fol­low­ing formats:

• Reflowable EPUB
• Fixed-Layout
• Kindle Formats
• PDF
• Digital Replica
• Interactive Magazine
• HTML5

Chapter 3: Digital Publication Types and Their Markets

Buy this chap­ter by itself.

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. It’s all rather sub­jec­tive, but I’ll iden­ti­fy the pur­pose, char­ac­ter and use of dif­fer­ent pub­li­ca­tion types as well as explain which for­mat class­es are best suit­ed to each type. 

In this chap­ter, you will learn about the fol­low­ing pub­li­ca­tion types:

• eBook
• Fixed-Layout eBook
• Emagazine
• Enewspaper
• Etextbook
• Digital Comic Book

Chapter 4: The Facts, Figures, and Financials of ePublishing

Buy this chap­ter by itself.

Whether you are an aspir­ing self-publisher or the CEO of a major pub­lish­ing house, a free­lance design­er or sales per­son, this chap­ter will pro­vide sta­tis­tics, fig­ures, and exam­ples to help you make sense of the busi­ness, eco­nom­ic, and mar­ket­ing con­cerns of epub­lish­ing. Whether your intent is to sell your­self, your boss, or your clients, or if you just want to edu­cate your­self about the real­i­ties of the world of epub­lish­ing, you’ll find in this chap­ter an abun­dance of impor­tant, rel­e­vant data.

In this chap­ter, you will learn about the following:

• People and Their Device Usage
• The Business of eBooks
• The Business of Children’s & Young Adult eBooks
• Authors and Their Incomes
• The Missing 30 Percent of Data
• Self-Publishing
• The Business of eTextbooks
• The Business of eMagazines
• Enewspaper
• Etextbook
• Digital Comic Book

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[su_spoiler title=“Book 2: Creating eBooks” class=“my-custom-spoiler” icon=“plus-circle” open=“yes”]

Chapter 5: 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.

In this chap­ter, you will learn about the following:

• Creating an eBook from Scratch
• Testing Your EPUB
• Styling Your eBook
• Converting a Print Publication to an eBook

Chapter 6: Working with Images and Multimedia in eBooks

Although the major­i­ty of ebooks are text-only nov­els and short sto­ries, many ebooks—across all genres—include 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 multi-media for oth­er dig­i­tal formats.

In this chap­ter you will learn about:

• Exporting Images to eBooks
• Preparing Images for eBooks
• Adding Audio and Video to eBooks
• Adding Scalable Vector Graphics to eBooks

Chapter 7: Fine-Tuning EPUBs

Successful, effi­cient EPUB pro­duc­tion begins in, and cen­ters on, InDesign and the toolset 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 to pro­vide an ide­al read­ing experience.

In this chap­ter you will learn about

• Getting Inside the EPUB
• Editing Files inside the EPUB
• Editing eBook Metadata
• Creating Multiple-Chapter eBooks
• Creating Tables of Contents

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[su_spoiler title=“Book 3: Advancing Beyond Reflowable eBooks” class=“my-custom-spoiler” icon=“plus-circle” open=“yes”]

Chapter 8: 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 EPUBs. Although they’re only sup­port­ed on tablets and cer­tain oth­er devices, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of fixed-layout ebooks has explod­ed among both read­ers and publishers.

In this chap­ter you will learn about:

• 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 Narration
• Creating Fixed-Layout for Kindle
• Converting Fixed-Layout for Nook
• Creating Fixed-Layout for Kobo
• Other Fixed-Layout Creation Tools

Chapter 9: Designing Interactive PDF Publications

PDF (Portable Document Format) pub­li­ca­tions are still a viable—indeed, a popular—distribution for­mat. PDFs sup­port rich multi-media, hyper­links, variable-visibility objects, some pret­ty cool inter­ac­tiv­i­ty, script­ing, reflow­able text like EPUBs, 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.

In this chap­ter you will learn about:

• Planning a PDF Publication
• Starting a New Document
• Exporting to Interactive PDF
• Creating External Hyperlinks of All Types
• Adding Audio and Video
• Devising Intra-Document Navigation
• Creating Advanced Interactivity
• Finalizing the Publication

Chapter 10: Producing Digital Replicas for Tablets

With pixel-perfect lay­out con­trol, unre­strict­ed font, col­or, and aes­thet­ic choic­es, and a min­i­mal cost in both dol­lars and time to go from print-ready lay­out to tablet view­able, dig­i­tal repli­ca for­mat pub­li­ca­tions are fast, cost effec­tive, and easy to pro­duce. They lack the abil­i­ty to fit dif­fer­ent screen sizes auto­mat­i­cal­ly, as well as inter­ac­tive fea­tures beyond basic hyper­links and embed­ded audio and video, but can be the per­fect solu­tion for pub­li­ca­tions that don’t require those features. 

In this chap­ter you will learn about:

• Digital Replica Systems & Services
• Converting Print to Digital Replica
• Planning New Publications
• Creating Hyperlinks
• Adding Audio and Video

Chapter 11: Going to Press with Print-On-Demand Books

Self-publishing, whether for mass mar­ket con­sump­tion or pri­vate dis­tri­b­u­tion, doesn’t mean pub­lish­ers have to for­go print edi­tions. Nor does hav­ing print­ed books mean large up front invest­ments in print­ing and inven­to­ry stor­age. Simultaneous to the explo­sion of dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing, print-on-demand ser­vices have risen to pro­vide any­one with low cost, short run and on-demand book print­ing. While some ser­vices charge a small fee, oth­ers are com­plete­ly free to the pub­lish­er and author, requir­ing pay­ment only when a print­ed book is ordered by a customer.

In this chap­ter you will learn about:

• Print-On-Demand Services
• Planning a Print-On-Demand Book
• Starting a New Document
• Converting from eBook
• Preparing Cover Art for All Three Sides
• Exporting for Print-On-Demand

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[su_spoiler title=“Book 4: Developing Interactive Tablet Publications” class=“my-custom-spoiler” icon=“plus-circle” open=“yes”]

Chapter 12: Mastering the Fundamentals of Interactive Magazines

In this chap­ter we’ll focus on the basics of interactive-magazine cre­ation with InDesign as a lead-in to the fol­low­ing two chap­ters, which delve into the nuts and bolts of inter­ac­tiv­i­ty using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite and its prin­ci­pal com­peti­tor, Aquafadas Digital Publishing System.

In this chap­ter you will learn about the following:

• Planning an Interactive Publication
• Creating Multiscreen Layouts
• Adapting Designs to Various Layouts and Tablets
• Using Liquid Layout Behaviors
• Employing Scrolling Page Regions and Content Replacement
• Utilizing Hyperlinks of All Types
• Inserting Audio and Video
• Integrating Live Web Content

Chapter 13: Creating with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite

Adobe Digital Publishing Suite is the tablet pub­lish­ing sys­tem most every­one has heard about. It’s also the most wide­ly used with more than 850 pub­lish­ers using it to pro­duce more than 1,700 titles world­wide. This capa­ble sys­tem offers strong inter­ac­tiv­i­ty inte­grat­ed tight­ly into InDesign.

In this chap­ter you will learn about the following:

• Starting a Publication
• Adding a New Layout
• Live-Testing Your Publication
• Panning and Zooming Images
• Creating Slideshows and Galleries
• Incorporating Audio and Video

Chapter 14: Creating with Aquafadas Digital Publishing Suite

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 you will learn about the following:

• Installing Aquafadas DPS
• Starting a Publication
• Adding a New Layout
• Live-Testing Your Publication
• Panning and Zooming
• Understanding Picture-Enrichment Options
• Creating Slideshows and Galleries
• Incorporating Audio and Video
• Incorporating External Publications
• Building Read-Along Text
• Using Content Replacement
• Adding Live Web Content
• Including Offline HTML and Widgets
• Adding Actions & Advanced Buttons
• Applying the Finishing Touches

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Full Book and Instructor's Edition

The com­plete ePublishing with InDesign 2015 Edition and the Instructor’s Edition of the book will be avail­able in July 2015, just in time for edu­ca­tors to build cur­ricu­lums for the 2015–2016 school year.

ePublishing 2015 Book Chapter Release Alerts

This sends an occa­sion­al email alert only upon the release of new chap­ters, sec­tions, or edi­tions of ePublishing with InDesign and the ePublishing 2015 Series of books.

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