Three ebook formatting tips, part VI

Ebooks follow different formatting rules than books printed on paper. That’s because a book made of ink on paper is a different platform for presenting information than a book made of digital bits on an electronic screen. Even though the same content (your book) is being presented, the platforms will need to be handled differently, just as certainly different production methods are used for a play presented on stage and on a television screen.

Because of that, there are a number of things you might do when formatting a paperback but never would do when constructing an ebook. Following are three tips about what to differently.

Page breaks
Adding a page break at the end of each chapter makes your book more readable. When formatting, though, always place the page break on the very next line after a chapter’s last word. Add blank lines between the chapter’s last line and the page break sometimes can result in a blank screen for a page in the published ebook; besides looking unprofessional, the blank page can confuse readers about where they are in the ebook.

Photographs
Limit the size of photographs appearing in your ebook. Most ebook publishers restrict the size of the manuscript that is uploaded, and large photos will quickly push you over that watermark, leading to rejection. Since photographs need not be larger than most ereader or tablet screens, it never should be more than five inches wide by five inches deep in actual size (and probably can be even smaller, depending on who you are publishing your book with). Make sure the photo’s resolution is in 300 dpi. In addition, the image quality usually can be reduced to a six on a scale of 1-12.

Page numbers
There’s no need to add page numbers to your ebook. Since readers can customize the text’s font and font size to their preference, page numbers quickly would become meaningless in an ebook. Instead, most ereaders provide a “location” that acts as a sort of a page number for readers.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 300 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.