E-Book Price-Fixing Trial Date Set for June 2013, an Eternity Away in the E-Book Era

A month is an long time in an emerging market driven by new technology. A year is an eternity. By that logic, Judge Denise Cote has set the trial date for the Department of Justice’s e-book price-fixing lawsuit an eternity from now, June 3, 2013, according to multiple news reports.

Apple, Macmillan and Penguin will have to wait at least a year to find out whether their denial of collusion and price-fixing will hold up in court.

The three settling publishers in the matter, however, Hachette, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, will find out in just a month whether the settlement agreement they entered into with the Department of Justice will be approved by Judge Cote. Legal experts familiar with the case say the settlement is likely to be approved.

For the publishing industry, the dichotomy between the swiftness of the settlement and the delay of the trial presents an interesting prospect. For the next year or so, three of the largest U.S. publishers — Macmillan, Penguin and Random House — will likely continue to operate under the agency pricing model across all e-book retailers while the three settling publishers will likely be forced onto a different model.

The agency model and the most favored nation clause that the publishers have in their contract with Apple that mandates the model across all retailers that are at the heart of the government’s complaint will persist in the marketplace for at least another year. And in that time, who knows what could change in the digital book world?

Five digital lessons from BookExpo America 2012

Self-publishing, part I: “There are no unrealistic expectations anymore”

Self-publishing platform Smashwords announced this week that it’s making self-publishing faster: Smashwords authors who sell e-books on Kobo and Apple will see faster “shipments” to those platforms, meaning that if they update their e-book’s price the change is reflected in near-real time. “We try to listen to people with unrealistic expectations,” CEO Mark Coker told me, “because their unrealistic expectations are the leading indicator of where we need to go.” Near-instantaneous price changes would allow an author to, say, sell an e-book “at $0.99 for the next five hours only.”

Smashwords is now working with library distributors 3M and Baker & Taylor’s Axis360 so self-published authors can get their e-books into libraries. Right now, the libraries buy Smashwords books at list price (publishers like Random House, meanwhile, charge more for the e-books they make available to libraries). Soon, Smashwords will allow its authors to set special pricing for libraries, Coker told me. “A lot of them are going to want to offer libraries lower pricing,” he said, or “will want to offer their books for free to libraries.”

Smashwords will soon let authors specify the countries where their books are distributed. Right now, authors (and the agents Smashwords works with) have the rights to sell their e-books in some territories, but not others. With the changes, for instance, an author could define that his or her e-book should be distributed “globally, except for commonwealth countries.” Smashwords will also let authors specify their prices by currency — a change from now, when authors have to price in dollars and retailers convert the currency automatically.

Also, Coker said, Smashwords will start accepting EPUB files (as opposed to Word files) later this year. With EPUB 3, that means the company could “potentially take more sophisticated books or enhanced books.”

Getting rid of DRM: This is going to take forever

Macmillan’s Fritz Foy announced at the Publishers Launch BEA conference that the company’s sci-fi/fantasy imprint Tor/Forge will launch a DRM-free digital bookstore this summer, and it may include DRM-free e-books from other publishers too. Meanwhile, distributor IPG announced that it will give client publishers the option to sell e-books DRM-free, and Kobo will give authors the option to sell DRM-free through its new self-publishing platform Writing Life. Still, publishers are moving slowly and it looks as though changes are going to happen in trickles.

Penguin global digital director Molly Barton said at Pub Launch that “Penguin is interested in methods of file security that would allow greater interoperability between platforms,” but Random House president of sales, operations and digital Madeline McIntosh called the DRM discussion “a red herring in a publishers panel at the IDPF conference, Publishers Lunch reports (paywall). She noted DRM’s not the only thing that keeps readers using a particular digital bookstore’s platform: “We have to be clear about what the goal is and commercial reason [to remove DRM].”

Self-publishing, part II: It’s getting closer

“We saw that seven percent of the units sold [on Kobo] were coming from self-published authors,” Kobo EVP of content and merchandising Michael Tamblyn told me, making those authors “collectively the size of a major publishing house,” so we “wanted to get closer” to them. Thus the launch of Kobo’s new self-publishing platform Writing Life. Authors using it get a 70 percent royalty on e-books priced between $1.99 and $12.99 and a 45 percent royalty on books below $1.99 or above $12.99. By “looking at how e-books sell in general,” Tamblyn said, “we know that after $12.99 there’s a drop…and after that it’s difficult to generate significant demand.” So the royalty structure “encourages authors to stay within that space.”

Amazon took up a lot of floor space, with separate sections for Amazon Publishing and self-publishing platforms Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace. At KDP, the company set up rows of chairs and, all day long, self-published authors gave presentations on why they use KDP. “I also sell on Nook [Barnes & Noble's self-publishing platform is PubIt],” I heard one author say, but Barnes & Noble doesn’t rent a public booth at BEA — which seems kinda dumb considering both Amazon and Kobo’s emphases on self-publishing at the show. Kobo, too, had the self-published authors participating in the beta launch of Writing Life speaking at its booth.

Startups: Maybe we’ll find a better way next year

The Javits Center’s vastness makes it tough for publishers and startups to randomly encounter each other, a lame “Digital Discovery Zone” is removed from the rest of the floor, and terrible or nonexistent WiFi prohibits quick demos or many interactions you need the Internet for. (Can I throw in one more complaint? There’s no WiFi in the press office and the woman who runs it yelled at me for “drinking all the water.”) The founder of one fairly well-known startup told me he was finding it tough to meet with the publishers who could get use out of his product. Despite a few panels that try to bring traditional publishers and newer companies together, BookExpo America remains, primarily, an event where publishers and authors pitch new books to librarians and booksellers. Maybe that’s what it should be, but since it’s also the largest book industry event in the United States, it’s not surprising that digital companies arrive with expectations about who they’ll meet and leave wanting more. It seems as if there should be a more efficient way to make these meetings happen — stay tuned on that.

Don’t hold your book party on a rowboat

OK, this one’s not digital. Author Robert Sullivan took BEA-going booksellers to the Hudson to promote his upcoming book “My American Revolution,” which is about the historical importance of New York Waterways. As the New York Times reports, “two rowboats – built at the boathouse to imitate 19th-century New York Harbor craft known as Whitehall gigs – left the pier loaded with booksellers, volunteer coxswains and local residents.” Unfortunately, one of the boats “struck a pier” and flipped, “dumping three BookExpo conventioneers, two instructors and two others into 60-degree water.” Five were able to climb onto the pier. “The other two drifted 100 yards away.” There were no fatalities.

iPad Dominates, But Nook Web Traffic Tops Kindle Fire

Not surprisingly, the iPad continued to dominate tablet traffic during the first week of June, but more notable is the fact that traffic for the Barnes & Noble Nook surpassed that of the Amazon Kindle Fire, according to stats from mobile ad network Chitika.

Apple's iPad made up 91.07 percent of the hundreds of millions of impressions captured on the Chitika Ad network between June 4 and June 10. That was down 3.5 percent from May, but still a sizeable chunk, Chitika said.

Coming in at No. 2 was Samsung's Galaxy Tab, but it was a distant second. Samsung's tablet only had 1.77 percent of the market, followed by the Acer Iconia Tab, Toshiba Thrive, and Asus Transformer Prime, which captured between 1 and 1.5 percent market share.

Chitika, however, took note of the fifth most popular tablet - the Barnes & Noble Nook. The retailer's device captured 0.85 percent of the market, which bested Amazon's Kindle Fire at 0.71 percent.

"Barnes & Noble has launched a new advertising campaign, and their newest device sold out within weeks," Chitika said. "While that device is a simple e-reader without Web browsing capabilities, the increase in Nook use may be attributed to brand familiarity through these advertisements."

Barnes & Noble and Amazon unveiled their respective tablets late last year, just prior to the holiday shopping rush. By December, the Fire was the No. 2 tablet on the market, but that dropped off in the New Year. According to May data from IDC, Amazon's Kindle Fire market share dropped from 16.8 percent over the holidays to 4 percent several months later.

Going forward, Chitika predicted that the iPad will eventually have a tablet market share that's comparable to its smartphone penetration. But that won't happen overnight; the release of Windows 8-based tablets will be a big determiner.

"The rise in use of non-iPad tablets is likely an effect of the increased options for consumers (hundreds of models are available), in addition to declining tablet prices," Chitika said.

"Without a doubt, the tablet market has become a real and significant source of Web traffic, and developers must be sure their sites are formatted across all operating systems," the firm continued. "Outside of Web traffic, applications running on tablets present a huge opportunity for advertisers to reach their desired market."

For more, see PCMag's full review of the new iPad and the slideshow below. Also check out our reviews of the Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet.

New Metadata Handbook for Publishers

As traditional book shelf space continues to melt away and online storefronts become more important for book publishers to sell and market their wares, digital metadata becomes an increasingly important issue for publishers.

According to an upcoming report from the Book Industry Study Group, nearly 100% of publishers reported seeing their metadata displayed incorrectly at the online point of sale when it had been correctly sent from the publisher originally.

A new handbook from Digital Book World contributor Thad McIlroy covering the finer points of book metadata seeks to address that issue.

Related: BISG and DBW Webcast Series on Metadata

PRESS RELEASE:

The Metadata Handbook Launched at BEA 2012
Available in printed, PDF, and multiple ebook versions, The Metadata Handbook is the first comprehensive reference to serve English-language publishers of both print and ebooks. Covering ONIX 2.1 and 3.0, the book also features self publishers.

New York, NY (PRWEB) June 05, 2012

Renée Register and Thad McIlroy announce the publication of their jointly authored handbook of metadata for book publishers.

Renée Register is Principal of DataCurate, focused on supporting publishers in the development of 21st century data policies, practices, and systems designed to connect readers to content.

Thad McIlroy is Principal of The Future of Publishing, a consultancy devoted to helping publishers at the intersection of production, markets, and technology.

The Metadata Handbook is a one-stop guide for professional publishers, large and small, who need to get a handle on how metadata for books operates in the real world, and who need to implement a strategy to master the development and transmission of comprehensive metadata for the books they publish.

Its over 100 pages take the reader from metadata fundamentals through to the latest information on the use of ONIX 2.1 and 3.0. A comprehensive glossary simplifies numerous technical terms while a full listing of vendors and relevant industry organizations provides an annotated directory of resources available to publishers.

The Metadata Handbook frequently references “best practices” documentation published by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), BookNet Canada (BNC), and Book Industry Communication (BIC). The authors fully support the work of these organizations in promoting the adoption of shared metadata standards and practices. The authors also support and eagerly anticipate the results of the study commissioned by BISG from Magellan Media examining “how physical and digital book metadata is created, managed, modified and employed throughout the supply chain.”

The Metadata Handbook will be published in July 2012.

It will be available as a PDF (or EPUB or Mobi file) for immediate download for $95 (USD). The printed version retails for $125.

Advance orders receive a 10% discount of list price (bulk discounts are also available). The online order form and additional information can be found at http://www.themetadatahandbook.com.

Creating pop-up footnotes in EPUB 3

Apple sent around an email today announcing that EPUB 3 is now supported by iBooks and the iBookstore. It also tantalizingly suggested that EPUB 3 supports pop-up footnotes and said you could find information in the EPUB 3 spec on the IDPF website. The first part is true, and the second part is sort of true, but if you like, read on and I'll explain just how to do it.

The IDPF website explains the proper syntax for marking up footnotes symantically, that is, by labeling them as footnotes:

<p>In chapters 24, 89, and 90, we substituted a capital L for the symbol for the British pound, a unit of currency.<a epub:type="noteref" href="#n1">1</a></p>

This snippet is from an EPUB 3 version of Moby Dick, coded by Dave Cramer.

And then the EPUB 3 spec goes on to say that a Reading System may associate specialized behaviors with that syntax, and it looks like Apple has associated the pop-up functionality to the combination of epub:type="noteref"and epub:type="footnote" attribute/value pairs.

So, to make a pop-up footnote in EPUB 3 (which works in iBooks), you just have to create your footnote marker link as shown above, paying special care to include theepub:type="noteref" attribute/value pair. I'll repeat it here for good measure:

<a epub:type="noteref" href="#n1">1</a></p>

Next, create an aside element that contains the text that should appear in a pop-up display when the link is pressed. 

The aside element must also have the epub:type="footnote"attribute/value pair to mark it as the footnote content as well as an id attribute that matches the value of the hrefattribute in your link.

<aside epub:type="footnote" id="n1">
<p>These have been corrected in this EPUB3 edition.</p>
</aside>

Note that the aside element, which is new to HTML5, isautomatically hidden by iBooks. If you put your footnotes in, say, a div element, it would still pop-up when the link was pressed, but it would always be visible as a regular part of the text as well.

Another thing that I noticed is that you can enclose your aelement in sup elements so that your footnote markers are raised with respect to the surrounding text, but make sure it's outside the a element or else it will break your pop-up footnote.

And that's it. Look! It works! 

Here it is in a horizontally-oriented iBooks:




And here it is vertically:




Note that I completely disabled the CSS on this document, to be sure that the pop-up had nothing to do with any CSS effect. 

And notice that the font in the pop-up changes to match the font chosen in the Font menu (here I've chosen Seravek):




Again, you can download this and other EPUB 3 examples from the EPUB 3 Samples site and view it in iBooks 2.1.1 (from April!). You can view this particular pop-up footnote on the third page of the Moby Dick book, called "Original Transcriber's Notes" in the table of contents (preface_001.xhtml). Thanks to Dave Cramer who coded the example (in January). And thanks to Apple for adding this functionality... and hinting that it existed so I could figure it out! I love, love, love that Apple totally followed the standard on this one: supporting symantically marked footnotes, and then "associating specialized behaviors" as the spec directs. No extra CSS or Javascript required. Well played, Apple.

OK, there are now two desktop EPUB 3 readers, and iBooks and the iBookstore have officially announced support as well. And there are pop-up footnotes. What are you waiting for to start creating EPUB 3 ebooks?

Does curation work for publishers?

One mantra heard often is, “in a world with a million ebooks, readers need curators.”

Of course, traditional publishers are good at curation, because traditional books are expensive to publish, so they had to be picky, merely as a method of self preservation.

That pickiness leads to widespread rejection of books like A Confederacy of Dunces and Harry Potter, but let’s set that aside for a moment.

The challenge of curation by an individual publisher is this: readers have no idea who publishes what books.

If the marketplace is wide open, an infinite, endless bazaar that anyone can access, the game theory behind an individual publisher voluntarily publishing fewer books is pretty hard to see. If the readers don’t understand where the books are coming from, one organization (or even thirty) holding back isn’t going to have any impact at all.

No, the only way to make curation work is to have it in place alongside permission. If the publisher has direct contact with the reader, THEN she can build trust, build brand, build identity and be rewarded for her curative (curationitive?) powers. Once you associate a publisher with quality choices, the (and only then), the curation pays off.

One more reason why publishers have to urgently build a permission asset of readers who actually want to hear from them.

Amazon and independent publisher resolve dispute, 5,000 titles return to Kindle Store

In February Amazon pulled nearly 5,000 titles from the Kindle Store over a troubled contract negotiation with Independent Publishers Group. Industry publication Publishers Lunch reports that both parties have reached an agreement, however, and the titles are already on their way back to Amazon's ebook outlet. The dispute started when it came time for IPG to renegotiate its contracts with Amazon. Company president Mark Suchomel said at the time that Amazon had proposed new terms that would have "substantially changed" the revenue for authors on both electronic and physical book sales; according to the Wall Street Journal, the terms IPG were offered were reportedly not comparable with its competitors, while Suchomel was proposing terms more in line with other publishers in the marketplace. As a result, Amazon pulled IPG's books from the Kindle Store, though it continued to sell the publisher's physical books.

Unsurprisingly, neither side has revealed any details about the nature of their new agreement. It's simply the latest development in a long list of difficult negotiations and discussions that book publishers have had with Amazon in recent years, with everyone from publishers to the president of the Authors Guild expressing concern over Amazon's dominant position in the ebook market. The DOJ, of course, famously filed suit against five different publishers along with Apple for allegedly colluding to break Amazon's stranglehold on the market. While three of those publishers have settled with the DOJ, Macmillan, Penguin, and Apple have all chosen to defend themselves in the courtroom. As for IPG's titles, the majority have already returned to the Kindle Store; the few remaining books will appear in the coming days.

11 Essential Elements of a Well-Designed Marketing Ebook

How many ebooks does your marketing team have in its content arsenal? With the rise of tablet and e-reader popularity, ebooks are only growing in popularity. According to a newly released report by Pew Internet, in mid-December 2011, 17% of American adults had reported they read an ebook in the previous year; by February, 2012, the share increased to 21%. While we've always considered ebooks to be one of the best lead-gen content assets at a marketer's disposal, the fact that on-the-go content is only carving out more of a place in today's increasingly mobile world makes them an even smarter choice as a marketing offer.


As a piece of long-form content, a lot of work must go into the creation of a well-crafted ebook. So today, let's focus on design. How do you design an ebook that is reader-friendly, engaging, and at the same time supports your marketing goals? Let's discuss the 11 essential elements that make up an effective marketing ebook design. 


Importance of a Brand Style Guide

First, a note about the role design should play in your content strategy. If ebook creation is (or you plan it to be) a big part of your content strategy, it's wise to first spend some time establishing a consistent brand style guide to which all your marketing content -- not just your ebooks, but also your presentations and other marketing collateral -- adheres. This will give your publications a more professional, branded look which translates to a sense of credibility. Of course, the content itself is a huge contributing factor to the credibility and value of a publication, but even if you have quality content down pat, that doesn't mean people still won't judge an ebook by its cover.


If you take a look at the ebooks HubSpot has launched in the past 6 months, for example, you'll notice that they all have very consistent branding and design elements throughout. When you sit down with your marketing team and designer to decide on your brand style guide, establish rules for such design elements as fonts/sizes, color schemes, charts/graphs, borders for screenshots and images, headers, etc. Creating easy-to-follow guides and templates for your various marketing assets like ebooks, presentations, etc. will make it easy for you and your team to implement a consistent branding style throughout your marketing collateral. HubSpot, for example, has an ebook template created in InDesign to ensure our ebooks have a consistent look no matter who created them.


Now let's dive into the 11 essential design elements you should consider in your next ebook design.
11 Essential Elements of Effective Ebook Design

1) An Interesting, Descriptive Title


Okay, so your title choice may not exactly be a design element, but choosing a title for any piece of content is definitely an art, and it shouldn't be overlooked. The title is often the first thing someone judges before deciding whether to click on or read your ebook, especially when the content gets shared in social media. Choose a title that is both interesting and descriptive -- that is, it should be indicative of what the reader will learn from reading the ebook.


Unlike blog posts, ebooks are high-commitment pieces of content because of their length, so you need to make sure you're demonstrating the value up front in a compelling way. For instance, one HubSpot ebook is titled 15 Business Blogging Mistakes & Easy Fixes with the subtitle, "How to Fix the Most Common Blogging Bloopers." The main title is both descriptive and demonstrates value in itself, but the subtitle also makes it sound like an even more interesting read.


2) A Visual Cover


So if we know that people will most definitely be judging your ebooks by their cover, you'll want to make sure you create ones that are both visually appealing and coincide with your brand style guide. Consider how the visual revolution is playing out with sites like Pinterest cropping up and other social networks like Facebook and Google+ putting more of an emphasis on visual content, and the importance of enticing covers becomes even more evident. Make the title easy to read, include branding elements you decided on in your brand style guide, and feature an image. You'll notice that HubSpot's ebook covers, for example, follow the same layout and structure while each featuring a different relevant an interesting image.


3) Skill/Topic/Persona Tags


Depending on your business and industry, you likely have a different buyer personas, whether you segment your target audience by demographics, skill level, topic interest, or something else. So if part of your strategy is to create content that is personalized for or targeted to these different audience segments, one helpful way to organize and differentiate between your content assets is through a tagging system. Incorporate your schema in your ebook design so your readers know which particular ebooks will be of interest to them, and which ebooks won't. You can do this in a number of ways -- through iconography, color schemes, or tags.


HubSpot's ebooks, for instance, are categorized by skill level -- introductory, intermediate, or advanced -- depending on the skill level of our readers. To identify which is which, we use a combination of color scheme and a category key to denote which ebooks are targeted for which skill level. If an ebook is intermediate level like our example here, the cover and color scheme throughout the book uses blue as the dominant color, and a page in the beginning of the book explains which type of audience would benefit from each skill level. Introductory content uses a charcoal color scheme, and advanced content uses an orange color scheme. We've also extended this tagging system to our blog. You'll notice this particular blog post, for example, has also been tagged as 'intermediate.' 


4) An Author Page


Another design element you might want to include in your ebooks is an author page, particularly if you have multiple members of your team creating ebooks. For example, if the author of the ebook is an expert on that topic, an author page that highlights the author's bio and relevancy to the topic is a great way to add credibility to the content. On your author page, include a brief bio of the author, a headshot, and if you choose to, a way for readers to get in touch with the author if they have questions, such as an email address, Twitter username, or phone number.


As an added internal benefit, you might find that members of your team are more willing to spend time creating ebook content if they know their efforts will be recognized publicly through an author page.


5) A Table of Contents


A staple for any book, both print or digital, be sure to include a table of contents in every ebook you publish. This not only gives readers a sense of how the ebook is organized, but it also makes it easy for them to reference individual chapters if they decide only certain ones are relevant to them or if they want to refer back to specific sections later. To make this even more user-friendly for your readers, some programs like InDesign make it possible for you to hyperlink chapters/sections, creating a sort of interactive table of contents and allowing readers to jump to a certain section of the ebook when they click on the corresponding link in the table of contents. 


6) Chapter Title Pages


Clearly distinguish one chapter to the next with chapter title pages. This gives readers a clear indication of their progress through the book and helps set the stage for the section they are about to read. It can also serve as a landing page for that interactive table of contents you may have set up in number 5. In our business blogging mistakes ebooks example, for instance, we organized the chapters by the 15 mistakes we highlight, and our chapter pages highlight which mistake the reader is going to learn about next. 


7) Social Sharing Buttons


We've talked before about the importance of including social sharing buttons on your marketing content. Sure, the landing page behind which you gate your ebook is a great place for these buttons, but why not also stamp them onto the pages of your ebooks as well? It makes sense, right? A potential reader might not feel comfortable sharing your ebook before they've read it and know they like the content, but while they're reading it? That's a different story.


Add these buttons to each page of your ebook -- either in the header or the footer -- so readers can easily share the book with their social networks no matter how far through it they've read. Just be sure you're sharing links to the ebook's landing page -- not thank-you page -- if it's gated content. HubSpot's ebooks, for example, include social sharing buttons for LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter on each page. For help in creating these social media buttons for your ebooks, check out this handy guide.


8) Visual Elements


There's nothing more overwhelming to a reader than big chunks of copy followed by large blocks of text. Whoa there -- character overload! Going overboard with text density in an ebook can be a very big deterrent to a reader, especially when they're reading on a screen.


Break up your "big chunks of copy" and "large blocks of text" with visual elements to emphasize or explain certain points more visually. We're talking anything from headers, bolded text, and bullet points to screenshots, images, charts, and graphs. Furthermore, leverage content visualizations when appropriate to help you explain concepts that are difficult to explain through text and lend themselves to more visual explanations, as we did in this blog post, which is actually an ebook excerpt! Just be sure to keep your visuals in line with your brand style guide, translating images, graphs, and charts to conform to your guidelines in terms of style and color scheme.


9) Product/Service Call-Outs


While ebooks can be catered to achieve certain goals, the way most marketers use ebooks is to generate new leads at the top of the funnel. To achieve this goal, your ebook content should be majorly educational -- not product focused -- in nature. But does that mean you can't or shouldn't sneak in a few mentions of your product or service into them when appropriate? Absolutely not! In fact, when people are just starting to learn about your business in the awareness stage of the sales cycle, they probably know very little about the products and services you offer.


Use educational ebooks as an opportunity to connect your thought leadership with product awareness. One way to do this in your ebook content is with subtle product mentions and call-outs when you mention a problem or need in your ebook that your products or services address. How much of these should you include? The key here is balance. Make sure the educational value of the ebook makes up for your product awareness plugs. For example, in HubSpot's educational ebook How to Attract Customers With Twitter, we add to the section of the ebook that discusses scheduling tweets and monitoring responses by calling to attention to the social media publishing tool available in HubSpot's software, our paid offering. This lets readers with little or no knowledge of HubSpot's software connect HubSpot's thought leadership and expertise with its paid software.


10) Printer/Mobile-Friendliness


While your ebook is a digital publication, you'll likely be offering it as a downloadable file such as a PDF, and despite what you might think, many of the people who download will actually prefer to print it out and read it on paper rather than on a screen. For this reason, it's important to make sure your ebooks are printer-friendly. For example, avoid designs that leverage double-page, horizontal layouts that don't translate well to print. The best way to know if your design is printer-friendly? Print it yourself!


Furthermore, you'll also want to make sure your ebook file is mobile-friendly. Does your ebook PDF view well on a smartphone and various e-readers/tablets? Test it out!


If you're considering making your ebook available for sale through ebook marketplaces like the Kindle Store, things get a little bit more complicated. You'll need to conform to the specific ebook format of that particular store, and you'll likely need to make changes to the style, design, and file of your ebook. In general, you'll need to modify your ebook to embody a very simple design with few visuals and limited formatting. Publishing services like Lulu.com can make this process more easily manageable. 


11) A Final Call-to-Action


The last critical element that should be a part of your ebook design is -- you guessed it -- a final call-to-action! After a reader has completed the ebook, what action do you want them to take next? Tell them!


Perhaps you'd like to encourage them to move from the awareness stage of the sales cycle onto the evaluation stage of the sales cycle. In this case, feature a call-to-action for a middle-of-the-funnel stage offer on the last page of your ebook, introducing it to the reader in a way that is relevant and logical. In our 15 Business Blogging Mistakes ebook, for instance, we encourage readers to start a free 30-day trial of HubSpot's software, relating it to the content of the ebook by emphasizing that readers will be able to try out HubSpot's business blogging tools to help them fix the blogging mistakes they learned they are guilty of making.


Do your ebooks have a consistent design that reflects your business' branding? What other design elements would you add?