I was hired to create the book book interior layout for Space is Open for Business by Robert C. Jacobson and Luca Funari was contracted to create the ebook. The layout of this book was complex both for print and ebook formats because of the sheer length of this technical business book, but mostly because there were so many graphics, pull quotes, charts, columns, and other visuals and special formatting.
I thought this would be a good book to use as an illustration of how a print book and ebook look side by side. While the final ebook does not look exactly like the final print book, it maintains the general look and feel of the printed book, while having all the flexibility and accessibility of a reflowable ebook. Click on any image in this article inspect it more closely.
Many ereaders will show the cover in black and white, as seen below, although that is not always the case.
This gorgeous cover was designed by Richard Ljoenes.
The fonts in an ebook will look different than the fonts in the printed book. A lot of the “extras” that can be used in print book formatting are simplified for ebook format to ensure that it reads clean on any and every device. For example, drop caps (the big letter at the beginning of an opening paragraph) are not often used in ebooks, heading fonts may look different, and body fonts can be changed at the whim of the reader. A good ebook adaptation will try to carry a few of the visual elements (maybe the chapter numbers, or something like that) from the print book into the ebook to keep some visual similarity between them both, but overall, the way the fonts and spacing look in an ereader like a Kindle or Nook depends on the reader’s preferences, not the designer’s.
Below you can see how the same text can be read in three different fonts, just depending on the settings the reader chooses on his or her device.
The Table of Contents in an ebook looks quite different than in a printed book, and of course the “page numbers” are quite different because page numbers don’t really matter / exist in a reflowable ebook. The Table of Contents set up on an e-reader is based on the way the software works and is functional but not necessarily beautiful. It might not bear any resemblance to the printed books table of contents other than that the headings themselves are the same.
As you see below, the wider column and text wrap in the printed book give a different look than the ebook. With reflowable ebook layouts, there is not as much control for wrapping text around graphics, etc. The ebook will look slightly different on each device. So text and captions have to be formatted a bit differently (no text wrap, just on their own line).
One of the hardest things to view in an ereader is something like this two-page chart. In the printed book it is a lot easier to look at and read simply because I was able to use two pages at once and turn the graphic on its side to maximize the use of the space. In the ereader layout, this graphic is harder to read, although on most devices it’s possible to zoom in.
In an ebook, “pages” are seen one at a time and not in a spread like in a printed book. For example, the opening pages of each section will always be on their own page in the ebook and not seen next to the previous page.
For those who are really attached to the look of their printed book, it can be hard to accept that in some ways the format of the ebook has to be a bit simpler and more straightforward. But people who are accustomed to reading ebooks know that they look different than the printed editions of the books and usually, the visuals don’t matter so much to ebook readers. They have probably chosen the ebook edition for other reasons: accessibility, price point, etc.
If you have a print book that needs to be converted to ebook, or just want to talk about your book project, schedule a free book consultation with me! I am happy to answer any further questions you may have.