The eBook Design and Development Guide

While eBook sales continue to increase around the world, the actual layout and presentation of eBooks is in a sorry state. Mangled formatting, defective images, and non-reflowable content are just a few symptoms of the problem. Many publishing houses and independent authors believe that converting an eBook directly from Word, InDesign, or another publishing program will produce a “good enough” eBook. However, poor sales and poor reviews from readers suggests otherwise. The eBook Design and Development Guide is a technical reference for serious publishers and authors who want to produce professional eBooks with a focus on quality. This guide provides all the technical knowledge of HTML, CSS, EPUB, XML, and KindleGen that is necessary to create your eBook from a source manuscript into an eBook ready for sale at all the major eBook vendors, including the Amazon Kindle Store, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo, and the iBookstore. No prior experience is required and the process of eBook production requires no expensive third-party software. This guide will teach you how to master the following tasks: • Converting your manuscript into HTML • Adding hyperlinks, bullets, and tables to your eBook • Embedding correctly-sized images in your eBook • Creating a clickable Table of Contents for your eBook • Adding basic presentation and styling to your eBook with CSS such as font sizing, margins, and indentation • Embedding fonts in your eBook • Adding advanced styling to your eBook such as gradients, drop caps, and backgrounds • Creating a professional EPUB eBook that validates with EpubCheck • Creating a professional MOBI/KF8 eBook with KindleGen • Adding metadata into your eBook • Working with regular expressions for quickly converting an eBook Additionally, the guide provides a step-by-step walkthrough for a sample conversion of an eBook, as well as some helpful tips on the publishing and marketing process. All HTML, CSS, and EPUB templates are available for immediate use in this guide so you can start making your eBook for Kindle, Barnes & Noble, iBookstore, and all the other major platforms. This book is a follow-up to the author’s How to Format Your eBook for Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, and Everything Else with much more details on HTML, CSS, and the EPUB standard. It also explains how to properly design an eBook for the new Kindle Format 8 (KF8) devices such as the Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch, and Paperwhite. Buy this 65,000-word guide that contains 150 images and 200 code snippets, and you will be able to create professional eBooks that really stand out from the crowd.