Guide to Fixed Layout ePubs
A “Fixed Layout” e-book is probably the dumbest of all e-book formats. It’s essentially a copy of an existing book’s layout, and requires the reader to pinch and pan to TRY to read it.
Still, some books are OK in that format — photo books, some children’s books, some illustrated textbooks, and some cookbooks.
To learn lots more about converting a book to a fixed-layout e-book, see the continually-updated “Field Guide to Fixed Layout for E-Book”, available in PDF or EPUB format from the Book Industry Study Group here.
For a bit more info, see Steve Werner’s post here.
Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7 training titles at Lynda.com, as well as the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7 . In addition, Jay writes regularly for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines and speaks at industry events.
Hi Jay
I wondered if you can give me some advice. I am authoring a children’s picture book in QuarkXpress 9.2 with full page images (text flattened into image) intending to output it as an EPUB. I’ve got most of the process down. I appreciate emebedded text might improve things but the text is carefully positioned to fit the graphics so I wouldn’t want it to re-flow and move position.
The intended platform is primarily iPad.
Most of the page images are portrait but some are double page landscape spreads. I think the best solution might be animating (is that the right term in this context?) so that the landscape pages load as the left page of the spread and, after a delay, pan slowly to the right page and then hold.
If I can do this in QE, do you think that is the best solution?
How do I do it?
Thanks
Nick