The eBook Design and Development Guide

So you may have read my review of How to Format your eBook for Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, and Everything Else. You remember that one, where I sort of missed that the book was no longer for sale? The author was kind enough to send us a review copy of his revised book, The eBook Design and Development Guide, and I will make up for my goof by reviewing the revised version.

I prefer the new title. It’s more professional and will, I think, clue potential readers to the fact that this a serious book which goes beyond e-book formatting. Salvette has added a section on book marketing. It’s basic, but provides a solid overview for the new author. He also has a rundown of the various sites (Amazon, PubIt, etc.) with their royalty rates and a high-level view of the terms. He even includes some pros and cons. Very nice for the author who is trying to decide which platforms on which to publish.

Author Paul Salvette

The meat of the book, however, still involves tips and instructions on how to format your book to make it look good in any reader. Everything from my previous review applies, but Salvette has updated the guide to discuss the EPUB3 standard and the KF8 format. He goes into much more detail on incorporating pictures, tables and other advanced formatting elements into an e-book. This guide can be used, of course, for formatting a genre fiction book, but it truly shines if you are publishing a more complex nonfiction book.

One of the elements I particularly liked were the sidebars with warnings and tips. He uses a gear icon and a lighting bolt as warning symbols, to make these stand out.

Salvette has obviously studied the various readers and apps to learn how each work, and to learn how to format a book to make it as universal as possible. He discusses older Kindles and the Kindle Fire, and uses screen shots to show us exactly why his recommendations work.

Want to be ready for the future, when Kindles support video embedding? No problem. He’s got a section on HTML5 and video.

As with the prior version, the most useful part of the book is the step-by-step workflow, which aims to keep you on track with each step of the conversion process. You won’t need to worry about missing something and having to backtrack.

At $6.99, it’s definitely a bargain.

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