e-book (electronic book) August 9, 2009
Posted by doctorhowie in drawings/illustrations, e-book, images, internet/web, PDF, photos, publishing.Tags: e-book, publishing, writing
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An e-book is the electronic equivalent of a printed book, except it is usually intended to be read on screen in PDF format.
If anything, that means it needs to be even clearer and easier to read than a printed book. Keep pages quite small and make your font size (text size) large. Make the space between lines of text (known as leading) quite large too, so that there seems to be a lot of “air” or “white space”.
Try to avoid using too many images (graphics, photos or drawings) in order to keep your pages less cluttered. Have the resolution of your images quite low (say 72 to 100 dots per inch) in order to keep your file size small.
The KISS principle is a good one to follow: Keep It Sweet and Simple
(or, more rudely, Keep It Simple, Stupid!)
Hi Scott,
Thanks for your advice about my e-book. I was looking over the list of services you provide on your site, askdoctorhowie.com, and wondered if you also do resizing of photographs and images for the web? I was thinking of adding some images to the e-book.
I know this is reasonably straight forward with Photoshop but that is quite an expensive piece of software, specially for only occasional use. Can you recommend any other less expensive software?
Hi Scott,
Hi Euphemia. Sorry I’ve been late replying to you. Yes, I do resizing of photos and images for the web. Adding some images to your e-book will enhance it if done properly… if there are not too many and if they complement the text content. Remember the KISS principle… Keep It Sweet and Simple
I do use Photoshop and it will seem expensive if you don’t need all of its power and features. While I am not familiar with inexpensive software for image retouching or “tweaking”, I’ve used Google to come up with some sites that may provide some help.
For Windows-based machines:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pixelbasedwin/tp/freephotoedw.htm
and for Macintosh machines:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pixelbasedfreemac/tp/budgetphotoedm.htm
Hopefully these sites will point you in the right direction.
Hi Euphemia. I did omit to mention one related and obvious photo editing software application that’s not too expensive… Photoshop Elements. It’s available for both Windows and Macintosh computers.
Thanks, Scott. useful to know about the free software available for photo resizing.