Photo by misocrazy

Last week, I put out survey to see what do you really want to learn from By Bloggers?  I was surprised to hear that the focus was so skewed towards design.  Many, many people were interested in finding out how to design an e-book.

Next to designing an e-book, you want to know exactly how to put together an e-book on a budget.  Creating a product can be pretty damn expensive. For an e-book design, By Bloggers charges an average of $800 for creating an e-book.  For someone looking to create an e-book for the first time, that is out of the budget.

When you consider all of the time that goes into creating an e-book, the cost is not as astronomical as it sounds.  E-books need to be designed (and that design refined or revised); content needs to be added to the design; pictures need to be found, created or illustrated; links and table of contents need to be put together.  It is a long process and the hours add up- it makes sense that people want to know how to put a product together on a budget.

I told you in my last post that my word for the month of February is service. How can I serve you better?  Today is the first part of that answer.

Over the next four to six weeks, I’ll be guiding you through the process of creating an e-book – ideas, planning, content creation, design, layout, publishing, multimedia, and even a little bit about launching.

Before we get there though, I want to cover, “What is e-book design, and what are the components of an e-book?” Many first time e-book authors think, “I just need a cover and a Word document.”  That thinking is the first step toward creating a sub-par e-book (think special reports – bleck).

The truth about e-book design is that there are MANY elements that need to be designed in order to create a beautiful final product.

Every element that I’m about to cover is not critical, nor does it require the same amount of design attention.  What you should take away from this list is an idea of how to spend your time during the design process.

The Critical Elements

1. Cover

When people think e-book design, the first place their minds go is the cover.  What does the cover look like? What type of images will be on it? A photograph? Typography? An illustration?

The possibilities are endless, and you should definitely spend a solid chunk of time on your cover design, but don’t forget the rest of the components of designing an e-book.

2. Table of Contents

An e-book table of contents should be two things: organized and functional.  If your e-book is going to be more than 20 pages long and you want your audience to come back and use your e-book as a resource, you need a table of contents.

Organize your Table of Contents based on the headings you have in your e-book.  In most publishing software, there is an automatic function for this so there is no excuse for not having one.  If you can take the time to make sure that the sections link up with the headings, you’re going to save your user a significant amount of time every time they open up your e-book to find a specific piece of information.

3. Headers & Footers

Topics and headers are rich treasure troves for design opportunity.

Page Numbers

I’m throwing page numbers under headers and footers because that is where they usually end up unless you’re getting really fancy.  You can go all out with your page number designs, making them big and bright and colorful, or you can go simple and that works just as well.  You can spend time on making them an integrated part of your design, but you can also keep them simple and utilitarian.  Do what works for you.

4. Topic Headings

Headings come in a variety of flavors.  Just like in HTML where you have h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and yes, the infamous h6, your e-book can and should have a variety of headings.  These let people know if they are entering an entirely new topic, or if they are just coming to a new sub point in your teaching.

Use the various levels of headings to create an organizational hierarchy.  If you read Epic E-Book Creation, one of my biggest points when talking about user experience is that you must create a hierarchy so that the reader knows where they are and what to expect in your e-book.  You want them totally focused on the lessons within your content, not figuring out what the heck they are looking at.

5. Lists

I love lists.  You love lists.  Everybody loves lists.  If you don’t believe me, look at your stats.  I bet you’ve got list posts that got lots of comments and retweets.  They are easy to consume, very digestible and useful for the scanning patterns that most readers have.  They’re not just for blog posts though.  You can use lists as an excellent addition to an e-book.  And you can design them so they’re pretty and clear and separated.

6. Photos, Graphics, Images

The biggest component of designing the images you are using is to have them match or reflect your content and to match your style.  If you have a very graphic e-book, consider finding illustrations instead of photographs.  If you are using photographs prominently, don’t go all cartoony.  Consistency is key.

You aren’t really “designing” the images you use when you’re adding them to an e-book; you are considering them as a design component.  Consider the white space around your pictures.  Consider if the heading and body text will wrap around or overlay the images.

7. Links

Have you ever been to a blog where you couldn’t tell what a link was and what wasn’t?  This happens even more frequently in e-books.  Or, you see a lot of standard bold, blue links.  These are fine for usability, but they aren’t really sexy.  Good design can add sex appeal to something as fundamental as a hyperlink, so be sure to give it some thought: color, font-weight (bold or normal), underline, italic and backgrounds are all

8. Quotes

Want to share a quote or indent some text because it is of significant importance?  Make sure you take a moment and think about how you design your quotes.  Fancy quotation marks, author attribution and where it’s from are common things to share when you consider a quote.

9. Body Copy

Twelve point, double-spaced, Times New Roman might be great for putting together a school report, but it sucks for an e-book.  You need to seriously consider how you design the typography for your e-book: the fonts you choose, the white space you use and the colors of all of the elements.

Non-Critical Design Elements

1. Section Cover Pages

One of the best examples I’ve seen of a section cover page is in Sell Your Crap by Adam Baker.  When you open up his e-book and start reading it, every single section has a cover page.  They are consistently designed so that you know when you have reached a new section of his e-book.  Very clear, very useful, very simple.

Consider using section cover pages when you have broken your e-book into separate modules.

2. Call Outs

Sometimes these are called tool tips, sometimes they are suggestions and other times they are random asides.  Typically, they look like small boxes that have small comments or suggestions in it for your reader.  In The E-Book Creation Explorer’s Guide, I gave the By Bloggers mascot a name, “Bob,” and at the end of every lesson, he would pop in and deliver a succinct lesson.  There are call outs in Epic E-Book Creation that have small tips that aren’t from Bob and take place in the sidebar.  Just like page numbers, these can be as simple or as ornate as fits your needs when designing an e-book.

3. Graphs & Statistics

When was the last time you looked at an academic science journal?  Probably been awhile, that’s no problem.  One of the things that really gets me about these things (yes, I will peruse an article or two every once in a while), is that their graphs are hideous.  They are worse than the cheesy chart designs that come bundled with Excel (which are getting better with each release of MS Office).  Their goal is to communicate data.  Ease of use and clarity of design have proven to be massive factors in how well we retain information.  Consider this when you add graphs and charts into your e-book.

4. End of Chapter

If you have anything special that goes on at the end of a chapter or section, it can receive its own, “style guide,” so that every time that you arrive at the end of the chapter, the reader automatically understand, “This is the end of the line. Time to move on.”

You can make these as simple as a page break, or as elegant as a graphic that will go below the last line of content.

How Do You Decide What Needs to Be Designed?

Whether you intend to or not, every element of your e-book is designed.  If you’re not considering these things, they are happening by accident.  What you can decide is, “Do I need to include this design element?”

There are elements that are not critical – such as a Section Cover Page or a Call Out.  You choose what is included in your design by asking the question, “Is this going to serve my audience?”

If the answer is yes, then you should include it and consider how it will be integrated into your design.

What’s In Your Design?

When you sit down to create your e-book design, what do you think about including?  Are there any elements of e-book design that seem unclear to you?   Let me know in the comments!