By guest writer Tom McCluskey

At first glance, e-books may seem just one short step removed from the electronic files used in publishing. After all, once the book has gone through editing and design, it is usually in a PDF or InDesign format. Why not just package that up and put it on the Internet as an e-book?

The answer to that question is that e-books require a different design paradigm than standard printed work, because with e-books we can never quite be sure how the book we have published is being read. Consider three persons reading the same “traditional” book: a commuter on the train on the way home from work, a child reading by flashlight under the covers after bedtime, and a student relaxing with a book in a coffee shop. The book they read is perhaps 5½” by 8½”, with black text on white or off-white paper and a fixed number of lines per page. Page 44 for the student will be page 44 for the commuter and page 44 for the child.

E-books, however, are completely different in that one person may download an e-book to read on his Sony Reader, while another may view the same book on her iPhone, and still a third person may be using his desktop computer’s 22-inch monitor. These devices have quite different screen resolutions, screen sizes, and overall appearances, which means that the notion of fixed book design needs to go out the window to avoid the very real risk of creating e-book content that is not viewable on some devices. A PDF file of an 8 ½” by 11″ document, for example, would be larger than the Sony Reader’s screen and far larger than the iPhone’s.

In order to deal with this issue, e-books must either be designed individually for each specific e-book reading platform (a project so massive in scope that it would not be surprising to learn that it was never-ending, as more platforms are added faster than old ones can be designed for), or they must be flexible enough to fit any platform. Reflowability of text is one of the most crucial elements to ensure this flexibility. In essence, text must be able to flow by itself, much as text on web pages will shuffle itself about in order to fit on the page as width changes. And this, of course, leads to many consequences for editors, as it becomes meaningless to ensure that there are no widows, orphans, ladders, or other such typographical eyesores in a given manuscript.

Fonts are another important area to consider; beyond a certain few basic fonts common to nearly all systems, it’s impossible to know which fonts a reader will have on his or her device. Font families (serif, sans serif) rather than individual fonts should be specified for e-books, and margins, padding, and other spacing should be proportional (4.5 em margins rather than 1-inch margins). This helps to ensure that the page will scale well and be presented well on a screen of any size. In many ways, the design of e-books is similar to the design of web sites.

Publishing e-books, then, requires a shift in how we think about design. The format of a book is no longer static and unchanging; rather, like the publishing industry itself, it must be flexible and adaptable.

In the next issue of Inside Ink, we’ll look into the specifics of what sorts of e-book formats are common in the market, and the nuts and bolts of formatting for them. Until then, enjoy the flexibility of a new way of looking at book design!