How to design an e-book
Formatting and design tips for independent writers and publishers
With an office suite like ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors, every author can design and release their own e-book. But perhaps, more challenging part is to make the book readable and visually pleasing.
This is a basic guide that features the most fundamental rules of creating the design of an e-book and offers careful suggestions for formatting that will improve reading quality of your digital piece. Obviously, some of these rules can be omitted based on your format and your design skills.
Here, we will give more attention to design and layouts. In our blog article ‘How to replace textbooks with ebooks: 7 easy steps’, you can learn how to compose the contents of your e-book.
Revise the structure
The best place to start is to have a look at the structure of your future book. The basic structure elements of the book, be it an electronic one or a paper one, are front matter, body matter, and the back matter.
Front matter
Front matter always consists of a cover, a title page, an imprint, and an introduction (in the corresponding order). Other parts may also be a dedication, an epigraph, acknowledgements, a foreword, and a preface.
In an an e-book, you can put most of the front matter parts in the end matter, so that the reader is not bothered with extra pages in the beginning. For convenience, you can add a hyperlink to the end matter in the beginning.
Body matter
Body matter of the book consists of prologue, epilogue, and the chapters beginning with chapter titles. Prologue and epilogue usually have the same structure as the chapters. Those are often used in fiction books as they compliment the the story: to introduce the characters and the setting, or to tell the subsequent story, respectively.
Back matter
The most common parts of the back matter are the supplementary contents such as a list of figures (for example, illustrations), endnotes, and the copyright section. The back matter can also include an afterword, an appendix, a colophon, etc.
Adjust the layout
Margins
Margins that are too wide will make your book look narrow on bigger screens, while narrow margins make reading extremely uncomfortable. If your book is digital-only, it is recommended to use around 2cm for all margins.
Leading
It is important to keep your texts lightweight and easy to read, and the space between the lines of text (lining) must be big enough. The best option is to keep it 1.5 times larger than the size of the typeface.
Images
Pick the right dimensions and size for your images. It’s ideal to use 300 dpi images where possible, so that the image quality retains the good level on all screens.
Make sure to use high resolution images that fit the width of your page well. If the image is smaller than the page width, feel free to downsize it to avoid a raw, low quality page look. Images should be wrapped ‘In Line With Text’ and centered.
Page breaks, justification, and spaces (avoid them)
Your readers will not have actual pages, and the texts and layouts of the book in many cases will be manually adjusted. These elements may only destroy the look of your book when opened with a book reader or a reading app.
For the spaces, try to keep them no more than four lines to avoid seeing empty screen areas on the reader’s device.
Pick the right fonts
The first role of the font is to help people read. From titles to text bodies and captions, your content should be comfortable enough to spend hours reading. You need to pick at least four base fonts for a book, which are the minimum no matter what type of work it is.
Text body
Most book designers prefer classic serif fonts for the book body texts, as they improve readability and bring comfort to the reader. However, complex fonts may be distorted or even converted into weird characters. It is better to use simple, sans serif fonts that don’t use many pixels, such as Open Sans, Avenir, or Montserrat. Choose 10–12 pt font size.
Chapter titles
In a no-risk scenario, it is advised to use a sans serif typeface for titles and headings, or, alternatively, a bold or semi-bold and bigger version of the text body font. As the bigger size allows you to experiment with font shapes, you can use possibly complex fonts to give your titles the necessary flavor. Choose >25 pt font size.
Headings
Choose a bigger bold font (can be a version of a text body font), to make the headlines visible enough. This also helpsthem stand out for easier skimming (quick reading with focus on the main points) Picking different version of the same font is a more careful move, however, you can try to play with other types as long as they can visually coexist in harmony. Many serif typefaces have a sans serif version. Choose 15–25 pt font size.
Extras: tables, captions, footnotes, etc.
Try to use different font from the text body, and pick in favor of serif fonts as well. To make some extra texts like call-outs stand out, add alternative color (if possible) or decorative elements. Choose 8–10 pt font size.
Choosing the right set of fonts not only helps make the texts comfortable to read and wrap the book in the attractive and crisp design, but also reflects the whole mood of your work. You may want those accent fonts to be modest, minimalist and mature overall if your work is a scientific publication. On the other hand, an art or design book enables you to be more brave and use quirky serifs and grotezk types for the headlines and covers.
Define the color palette (if you need colors)
Full-color book readers are opening new opportunities for authors, offering freedom of using colorful illustrations and fonts.
If you decide to design a book with color elements for reading on color screens, choosing the right palette is another challenge you must endure. Try to stick to the universal rule of three colors: pick one main color to use for bigger and more important elements, and two complimentary colors for extras. Think 60:20:20 ratio.
As for choosing the right pairing, a color wheel is your best friend. There are several ways to use it to pick color combinations according to the color theory. Let’s have a look at the most simple ones.
Neighboring colors. It is always a safe move to combine colors that are next to each other, and choose different shades of those. For example, a sky blue, a navy blue, and a light blue.
Opposite colors. A winning combination for each color is the on the opposite end of the wheel. For example, you can pick emerald green for the main color, and two different shades of raspberry red (opposite) for complimentary colors. Or make sand beige color the main one, and pick brick orange (neighboring) and navy blue (opposite) as complimentary.
Triad. For more colorful designs where you want to use a contrasting colorway, you can pick three groups to choose your colors from. The trick is to imagine an equilateral triangle on the color wheel, and choose colors near its vertices. For example, teal, yellow orange, and magenta.
Summary
Even though e-books are much more simple than printing books, creating a good digital piece is a challenge.
On the one hand, an essential part of every publication is the style guide that encompasses all fonts, page details, colors, and design elements to make your book harmonious, as well as easy to read and understand. On the other hand, the layout of the book needs a big portion of your attention, to prepare the book for comfortable reading from different devices and apps.
Download ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors to create your next e-book adding all necessary design elements and page layouts, and release it in the most popular e-book formats.
