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Design & Production

How is your book going to look? Will you be publishing in print? In digital? What fonts should you use? What size should your print book be? What are Mobi and EPUB? Our design and production community can answer all these questions and more.

Steps in Design & Production

  • Choosing print and ebook layout
  • Choosing fonts
  • Adding illustrations
  • Using validation tools
 

Book aggregators and distributors: A short primer

by Carla King
Bowker | Wed Aug 27, 2014

The purpose of this post is to define the terms aggregation and distribution and to introduce you to the tools and services I recommend so that you set out on the right publishing path.

Indie authors can upload ebooks to each online ebook retailer directly, but we might instead choose to distribute them using an ebook aggregator like Smashwords, IngramSpark, Vook or BookBaby. Likewise, we can upload our print book to Amazon via CreateSpace directly but distribute to other online print book retailers and brick-and-mortar bookstores via a distribution service like IngramSpark.

Yeah boy, that is a lot of geeky publishing terms! So let’s wind it down and go through it in slo mo… 

Inside Publishing
Design & Production
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Today's Great American Novel (Part 1 of 2)

by June Hyjek
Bowker | Mon Aug 18, 2014

We’re authors.  So for all of us, at some point, it became a dream to write the next great American novel.  Some of us have been writing for a long time, and maybe some of us weren’t originally writers by craft.  But we had a story to tell and knew it had value to others.  A great story, maybe the next great best-seller.  Just like in the movie, “Field of Dreams,” we thought “If you build it, they will come.”  If you wrote a great story, people will buy it.  We had to get it out there. 

Now, you’ve written that book and you have boxes of it sitting in your garage.  Now, you know it’s not that simple.

Inside Publishing
Design & Production
Marketing & Publicity
Getting Started
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DCL/Bowker Joint Survey on eBook Production

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Fri Aug 1, 2014

Publishers are increasingly concerned with quality as they move towards digital productions, according to a new survey on trends in the digital publishing industry. Of the respondents, 84 percent are planning to publish digitally in 2014 (an increase of 21 percent over the prior year), and 52 percent of respondents said quality of digital conversion was the aspect of greatest concern. The survey was jointly conducted by Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL), an industry leader in organizing and converting content into digital formats, and Bowker®, the world’s leading provider of bibliographic information management solutions for publishers, booksellers, and libraries.

Inside Publishing
Design & Production
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Making Beautiful Books

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Fri Jun 20, 2014

Learn what goes into creating professional-looking books! Join India Amos, Managing Editor of Print and Digital Production at CN Times Books, and Allan Lieberman, Special Projects Manager, Data Conversion Laboratory, Inc., on Monday, June 30th, at 1:00pm EDT to discover what you need to know about production and design.

Whether you are publishing in print, digital, or both, this webinar will help you determine what choices you need to make for your book. We’ll cover:

Inside Publishing
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I made my ebook with "Markup", and you won't believe how good it looks! - Part I

by Hugh McGuire
Bowker | Tue Jun 17, 2014

If you are planning to publish an ebook, you will want it to look good, to look professional, to look like an ebook the biggest publisher would publish.

These days there are many tools to help you make an ebook, but getting a good-looking ebook isn't always so easy. This article will tell you about "markup" -- a magical substance that can either make your ebook beautiful-looking. Or ugly as sin.

Ebooks are (roughly) self-contained websites. They are made of the same stuff: HTML and CSS styling.

What is Markup?

Markup is the HTML part ... it's the text of your book, plus "tags" in the background.

For instance, here is a brief passage of text with some formatting:

Inside Publishing
Design & Production
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markup
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I made my ebook with "Markup", and you won't believe how good it looks! Part II

by Hugh McGuire
Bowker | Tue Jun 17, 2014

Bad Markup and How to Fix It

There are a number of problems that pop up consistently in self-published ebooks, where outputs just don't look as people expect. Very often, these problems are due to "bad" styling markup that has crept into the editing interface, often coming from MS Word, or from the user just doing a few things wrong.

Here is a quick list of the most common problems we see with users of Pressbooks, and how to fix them:
 

  • Styling headings with Bold instead of Heading tags
  • Not using blockquotes for letters, quotes etc.
  • Forcing certain kinds of paragraphs not to indent
  • Not using correct list formatting (for bullets & numbers)
  • The dreaded MS Word <span> tag
  • Funny spacing
  • Paragraphs not being separated properly

Heading styles

DONT: Style headings with Bold instead of Heading tags.

Inside Publishing
Design & Production
  • Read more about I made my ebook with "Markup", and you won't believe how good it looks! Part II

Survey Says!

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Wed Apr 9, 2014

DCL & Bowker are interested in your digital publishing plans for 2014! As the demand increases for materials of all types to be available on mobile devices, publishers and authors are challenged with providing a quality eBook experience while managing costs and standards.

We'd be delighted if you'd answer the survey we've created, just to explore what we might be able to do for you. Enter to win a $100 American Express Gift Card!

 

Inside Publishing
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Getting Started
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Judge Your Book By Its Cover - Everyone Else Will

by Adam Schnapper
Bowker | Thu Mar 6, 2014

Ebook Covers ≠ Print Covers

Ebook covers have different challenges than their print counterparts. Most readers will first see an ebook cover when it's a small thumbnail amidst a grid of ebooks on the digital storefronts. This is the critical moment where a reader will either notice the title immediately, or miss it. The small size of these thumbnails brings new challenges for your cover design.

The Title

Let's assume your #1 goal is to at least have your book's title legible in all situations. Suddenly, real estate on your cover becomes much more precious than on a print book cover. You will need to make your title as BIG as possible while still legible within the dimensions of your cover image (usually 600 by 800-900 pixels). This is contradictory to print, where designers carefully adhere to margins and give generous breathing room where possible.

Design & Production
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Bookbaby's Top 10 Articles on eBook Formatting

by Chris Robley
Bowker | Mon Jan 13, 2014

How to prepare your book manuscript to become an eBook Want to know how to format your Word document before converting it into an eBook? Curious about the difference between fixed and standard eBook layouts? Struggling to put images in your eBook? Here are 10 articles from the BookBaby archives on all things eBook formatting:

eBooks 101: Standard Vs. Fixed Layout

eBook Formatting: How to Properly Indent Paragraphs

How to Insert Page Breaks When Formatting an eBook

Text Justification in Your eBook

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Self-Publishing and Audiobooks

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Tue Oct 22, 2013

iSpeech.org, a text-to-speech developer, has launched a text-to-speech converter for publishers. As reported by GigaOm earlier this year:

iSpeech gives publishers three options for creating content. They can convert PDFs to audio files; they can add a widget to a website that essentially adds a “play” button to an article; or they can use more sophisticated developer tools built on iSpeech’s API and add them directly to their web pages. Pearson is using the PDF option for its textbooks. Evernote is using the developer tools to integrate speech technology into its web reading platform Evernote Clearly.

Design & Production
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Getting Started

Create a Culture of Quality in Your Publishing Company

Thu, November 13

FAQs about ISBNs

Fri, October 24

How to Write a Business Plan as Narrative (Part 2 of 2)

Wed, September 10

A Novel Planning Technique for Book Publishers (Part 1 of 2)

Fri, September 05

Do You Have the Write Stuff?

Wed, September 03

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