E-reader Formats (September 27)

To Do This Week

Do: Prepare your own EPUB collection, with Chapters, Front Matter, Illustrations in a Word Doc or Apple Pages. Come to class with this ready for working on design.


Class Notes

Tools: Word, Pages, Sublime Text, Apple Books

Overview of InDesign:

Overview Apple iBook Author:

  1. Overview of EPUB creation
  2. Convert your Word docs to Apple Pages
  3. Add internal Document TOC, change names
  4. Add styles to paragraphs and headings, paragraph dividers, drops-caps, figure/caption 
  5. Adjust images
  6. Convert your Apples Pages back to a Word doc
  7. Pages >  PDF gauss-pdf, servinglibrary.org
  8. Overview of EPUB Design – fixed vs reflow
  9. Export Pages to Fixed Layout EPUB & Reflow EPUB
  10. Unpack EPUBs with eCanCrusher, look at default HTML/CSS 
  11. EPUB CSS vs design in Word or Pages, PDF design with CSS
  12. Convert Word doc to Markdown > Aspose – word-to-md,
  13. Macdown > HTML
  14. Extract HTML from Markdown and replace for each chapter xml file in the package
  15. HTML/CSS Design for EPUB 
  16. EPUB Design principles – fonts and typography for reading: sample (free) epub
  17. EPUB Covers: strong image, clear text (16:9 / 1406px width x 2500px height)
  18. Kindle Create or email your EPUB to your Kindle device (Content & Devices> Devices> get email address to device)
  19. Independent Publishers who sell EPUBs: Versotachyonpublications

Finish EPUBs, submit by Friday.

Final Project Groups Meetings – ToDo lists and assign roles/responsibilities


Epub Documents

Opening epub documents

Screen Shot 2015-05-17 at 3.33.34 PM

  • PC – change “epub” file extension to “zip” and then unzip it, do the reverse to close.
  • MAC: use eCanCrusher or  ePub Zip Unzip
  • META-INF: a list of all the root files > container.xml
  • OEBPS: Open eBook Publication Structure is an XML-based specification for the content, structure, and presentation of electronic books.> (html, images, css)
  • mimetype (the type of file – epub)
  • toc.ncx  (xml file that contains the table of contents of the EPUB file)

Creating ebook structure:

  • cover: dimensions (16:9 / 1406px width x 2500px height)
  • chapter: chapter-1.html, chapter-2.html, etc.
  • creating sequence, page breaks: toc.html, toc.ncx
  • html anchor links for navigation (footnotes, etc.)
  • other pages: title page, table of contents, copyright info, notes, footnotes
  • metadata goes in contents.opf
  • images: style images with css (max-width: 100%), 300ppi, 600px x 860px for full page

Parts of a Book:
front matter:

  • Title page
  • Copyright page / ISBN not necessary for ebooks
  • Copyright Acknowledgments (cite sources)
  • Dedication
  • Table of Contents
  • Foreword (someone other than the author)
  • How-To-Use-This-Book
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • About the Author

main body:

  • Parts
  • Sections
  • Chapters

end matter:

other elements:

  • Images
  • Graphs/Tables
  • Visualizations
  • Galleries
  • Audio/Video

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