Re: PDF ebook formatting best practice?

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 8:40 AM, jon_noring <[email protected]> wrote:

> I'm now considering offering a PDF version of an ebook which I have
> published since the 1990's. In the past I primarily offered it in
> MS-LIT, and currently offer it in ePub (secondarily, I offer my ebook
> for the eReader and the Kindle.)
>
> Carefully note that the PDF version will be sold directly to readers
> who will either read it on screen, or print it out. This PDF is not
> intended for Print-On-Demand, which is a separate issue (or is it?)
>

Is it intended for use on e-ink readers? (One issue with that is choosing a
page size. While most e-ink readers have 6" screens, there are also some 5"
screens, and the DX and Iliad are larger, and the new one Sony's putting out
next month will have a 7" screen with entirely different proportions.)

I make a lot of PDFs for my Sony PRS-505. I use 3.46" x 4.6" pages (although
some people use 90x120mm; I gather that's close enough) with .15" margins
(because the Reader itself provides plenty of space around the text). I use
9 or 10 pt Georgia or Fontin, but a lot of people like a larger starting
font than that.

The e-ink readers don't show color images, but they render to greyscale
nicely. It does take some adjustment to realize that any picture will be
seen on, at most, a 4 1/2" screen (if they shift to landscape).  However,
that's more usable space than many paperbacks get.

I hate dealing with letter-sized PDFs, and just tolerate the 6x9 ones,
because they usually have wide margins that I have to crop out in order to
read the book. Also, many of them aren't tagged for accessibility, which is
necessary for the Sony's reflow-text ability to work right; otherwise, when
it tries to resize the text, it puts a return at the end of every line.

I like PDFs to be bookmarked by chapters, and I often wind up adding those
myself.



> The uncertainty I have is with the best practice of formatting the
> PDF, including the topics of page size, margins, font selection, color
> images and image size, etc. I am leaning towards using InDesign rather
> than Word or OpenOffice for what I believe to be better typeset
> quality.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Jon Noring
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
"I follow Eris blindly in all things. That She is the Goddess of Chaos
simplifies this immensely."  -- Christian the Pagan


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