*I’d like to give a warm welcome to Ellie Mendez, a professional in the e-book industry. Ellie is a formatter, which means she puts our e-books into a format that will fit the publishing house as well as look great when reading on the computer or your e-reader. Thanks for stopping by today, Ellie! And take it away!
A common misconception among authors is that they want their eBook to look like a printed Book. Once they get the file with their formatted eBook ready to be uploaded into Amazon, Barnes & Noble or others there’s a bit of a let down because it doesn’t look like a traditional book.
One thing an author may notice is the absence of page numbers in the table of contents. Depending on the eReader device (Kindle, Nook, iPad, etc.) the reader is able to customize what is seen on screen making page numbers irrelevant.
The following image is an example of how a book would be formatted in order to be ready for print. In this case there is white space, the header shows the name of the author and book, the footer has the page number and the font is pleasing to the eye.
On the other hand the format for an eReader is bland in comparison “Just the facts ma’am”. As they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder because this format will be eye pleasing on an eReader.
Some formatting, such as italics, bolds, centering and hyperlinks will be acceptable for eReaders and in some cases there will be a few special effects your eBook designer will be able to create.
As an example, I formatted an eBook in which a ghostly voice appeared in-between the lines to freak out the reader. It was very important for the plot of the story for this voice to appear other worldly. This is how the format looked on the Word file I received:
If it was a printed book, the format could be done as is, in the case of an eBook all I could do was make it look as similar as I could by using a smaller font size (without it being too small for an eReader), centering some lines, aligning other lines to the right, others to the left.
When it comes to your eBook, listen to the designer when he/she tells you that your beautiful font won’t translate in the eyes of Kindle; but he/she should be able to be creative when special formatting is needed for your story to make sense to the reader.
Images used:
Flying with Kids by Katie Dillon
6 Short Stories of Suspense by Ezra Barany and others
*Thank you so much for joining us today, Ellie. We’ve loved this little insider’s look into the publishing industry! Stay tuned for more from Ellie and other professionals here on the Whispers Publishing Blog!*
Great article, Ellie!
And I’ll never forget what a great job you did with my short story in “6 Short Stories of Suspense.”
You managed to maintain the creepiness of the emerging voice so well using your great ebook formatting skills!
I’m honored that you used excerpts from my story.
Thanks!
Ezra Barany
Author of the Award-Winning
Bestseller “The Torah Codes”