Building An Ebook Template
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Ebook templates save lots of time for any author planning to create a significant number of them. As an information publisher, the ebook and e-report are the basics of my business and I create a lot of them. Speed of creation and a professional look are extremely important to me and setting all of this up is one of the more tedious and time-consuming aspects of ebook creation.
To speed the process and maintain a high quality product, I built an ebook template in Open Office that I use for all of my ebooks. Open Office is a free office suite software package that includes a first-rate word processor. This word processor also has a high quality PDF exporter built into the software which creates beautiful ebooks for your business. It is my favorite software to use.
The basic settings I modify for my ebook template are the fonts, the font sizes, the line spacing, a page header, a page footer, and a few other bits of 'boilerplate' content. I also like to put a border around the pages to dress it up a bit.
Font Settings For Ebooks
Font size for my ebooks is set to 14pt and the line spacing to 1.5 or 2. It's important to remember that many people will be reading the content from the screen and a larger font is easier on the eyes. The increased line spacing also helps with on screen readability. These settings also look pretty good when printed, so it is a good compromise.
For fonts, I use a sans-serif font for the headings and titles and usually pick Times Roman or Bookman for the body copy.
Layout and Design for Ebooks
Next comes the header and footer for all of the main pages. The header usually contains the name of the ebook and the footer has a promo teaser on the left and the page number on the right. Some people like to include copyright information at the bottom of every page as well. I also like to separate the header and footer from the main text with a divider line.
Standard Content for Ebooks
Finally, I create some boilerplate legal pages, an index page, a resource page and an about the author page to round everything out. These might get modified from book to book, but they are always present in every book so it saves time to have them as part of my template file.
Putting It All Together
If you want to see an example of my template in action, here is a recent free report I created using it:
How I Made My First $100 Online
It took a little while to figure out the nuances of creating page styles in OpenOffice, but now this it's done and I've built the framework for my ebooks, I just cut and paste content into my template. Working this way easily saves 1 to 2 hours on every single project.
Building An Ebook Template,
Incoming search terms:
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Tagged with: ebook formats • ebook layout templates • templates
Filed under: Creating E-Books
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I’d be curious to learn what you discovered about creating page styles in OpenOffice and what your template looks like. Are you compiling your ebooks, or using PDF?
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Rob,
The article above outlines most of the relevant things I learned about creating a template. Coming from an MS Word background, I had to figure out where the controls were for the settings.
One thing that was tricky is that each page style you create leads to another. So, if you set the title page style to lead to a page style for your disclaimer page, anytime you apply the title page style OpenOffice will automatically apply the disclaimer style to the next page.
Since these styles ripple through your whole document, you can really screw up a document if you haven’t carefully planned out all of your styles.
My template is just a document with placeholder content and boilerplate content. The ebook I link to in the article was created using this template document. I just opened the template, changed the text and images on the title page, updated the disclaimer page, and added the body content for the new ebook. Then, I saved it under a new name.
All my ebooks are exported as PDF files. I never compile my ebooks.
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My question is about guttering. In the regular printing process you use a margin offset. Do you simply center the page in an ebook, or does the reader compensate?
Thanks
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Greg,
Generally I center the content area on the page for an ebook that is published as a PDF. If you are publishing for a reader device like a Nook or Kindle, there is no margin setting. Kindle uses basic HTML with a few custom tags for formatting – there aren’t many options to control. The MOBI e-publishing format works the same way for other reader devices.
That said, there are times when I use the same formatting as a print text for an ebook. If I am releasing the text as a PDF and I want it to feel like the reader is getting content from a ‘real book’ (or if there is a print version available and I’m giving away the PDF as a bonus) using a print-style layout adds a subtle perception of increased authority to the ebook.
Since most ebook authors don’t bother to hire a book designer to layout their ebooks (they mostly seem to hit ‘Export to PDF’ in Word), going this extra step can help your book to feel more official. And, that usually equals increased perceived value in the reader’s mind. It’s like the effect of putting a really nice frame around a picture – it magically becomes ‘art’.
I hope that helps,
Andrew