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All about Design - Ebook design that is !

Cover Design

How impressed are you with visual impressions? Have you ever picked up a book at a store meanly because its cover grabbed your attention? Now what made you do that? Just ask yourself that question. Would you like others too to do the same when they see your book?

The point is we all know we're not supposed to judge books by their covers, but the truth is that we do just that nearly every time we walk into a bookstore or pull a book off a tightly packed shelf. It's really not something we should be ashamed about, for it reinforces something we sincerely believe: design matters.

So now that you've passed your first hurdle of preparation the next is the process of designing. No matter what you write about, one of the key ingredients of successful marketing is presentation - basically cover design and layout in this context. Unless your ebooks looks professional it will create a negative impression. Its amazing how graphics, photos, fonts and layout can make or break even a well written ebook. In traditional publishing, publishers try out various cover designs before deciding on a winning design. For instance, Harry Potter comes is two cover designs ; one for kids and one for adults - totally different from each other. The idea is simple. Kids need kids designs to grab their attention while adults need adult designs to get them interested. There's a book that you may be interested that we recommend:

By Its Cover: Modern American Book Cover Design by Ned Drew, Paul Sternberger

But if you can spare some extra cash you can hire a professional designer. But in most cases some good knowledge about designing and layout can be obtained by reading one of the books mentioned above that will save you money in the long run. One of the exiting things about publishing your ebook is also doing everything by yourself which gives you tremendous self- satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment.

Book Layout

Now to text layout. Should you leave 3 inches on top, or 2 inches at the bottom? Is it going to be Justified or Left aligned? What's the leading? What's the set width? Are you going to use style sheets to make your job easier? These are questions that crop up when dabbling with layout. You might say "gee I never thought laying text was such a big hassle" Well the fact is unless your layout is good reading your ebook will be very difficult and that will make it look unprofessional.

Your ebook should not only have a professional layout, but it should also look well organized. Appropriate images, illustrations or photos will enhance its appearance. TIP. Please don't over do this because it may end up looking like a picture book with very little content.

Software:

There's plenty of software that's available from instant cookie-cutter applications to professional applications. While MS Word is used extensively we recommend Adobe InDesign - possibly the best publishing software. This versatile software will not only publish your ebook without having to buy a separate PDF Converter, it will publish all your press-ready pages in case you decide to publish it the traditional way.

Adobe InDesign CS 3.0 Product Description:
Adobe InDesign combines exceptional production capabilities and creative freedom to take digital designing to a new level. With InDesign CS, one can produce anything quickly and reliably. Its in-built tool set helps produce design ideas rapidly. It can import Photoshop, Illustrator, and PDF files which can save a significant amount of production time. All adobe software such as InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator share a similar interface, which can speed up your work more efficiently with tightly integrated tools.

When Adobe first launched InDesign in 2000, many professional designers were skeptical about it and said that InDesign would not make any significant inroads into a market that had long been dominated by market leaders like Quark Xpress. However, Adobe InDesign is today being considered as the new standard software for professional publishers and designers. Ebook publishers, book, magazine and high-end publishers and designers of all using Adobe InDesign.

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