A colleague linked me recently to an article on The State of eBook Typography. One interesting takeaway: except for devices like the new iPad (a.k.a. iPad 3), device display technology has yet to catch up with print, sometimes making text hard to read. When I’m reading eBooks on some devices, I tend to turn the text size way up. While ultimately your reader’s device and font size are out of your control, Vook does make it easy to get a gorgeously-designed digital Read more…
This is the second post in an on-going, multi-part series about Vook’s powerful text styling capabilities. Read Part 1, and make sure to stay tuned into our blog for weekly updates. Last week I showed you how to use quotes and tip boxes. Today’s topic is… Captions Did you know that captions created with Vook always stay on the same page as their images? All you need to do is let Vook know what is a caption and what isn’t. To Read more…
Vook has an unparalleled ability to create great-looking eBooks. It’s all thanks to our Style editor—a proprietary tool that empowers you to edit and create a stylesheet without knowing any code. This week and the next, I’m going to show you tips for unlocking the Style editor’s full capabilities for designing text—everything from setting the margins to controlling the spacing between lines. Today, we’re going to focus on tip boxes and block quotes. Tip boxes are like callouts or sidebars inside textbooks: they Read more…
The two most popular eBook formats are ePub and KF8. ePub is used by Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony, and many other retail channels. KF8 (formerly Mobi), on the other hand, is a proprietary format used only by Amazon. Vook makes it a snap to design eBooks in both ePub and KF8 formats, because you can quickly create an eBook in either format on the Preview page. ePub and KF8, though, support different settings in the Style editor. We’ve outlined them Read more…
With a little bit of smart tagging, Microsoft Word can become a Vook pre-production powerhouse. To create eBooks quickly and easily, use Microsoft Word’s Styles as you’re preparing your manuscript. 1. First, open the Styles Gallery. Usually, it’s in the Microsoft Word “ribbon” at the top of your page. You can also open a small Styles toolbox by going to View > Styles. 2. Then, apply the Title style to your chapter titles. To apply a style, just place your cursor inside Read more…
Vook allows you to create eBooks quickly and easily. Just how quickly? In January, one of our production experts created an eBook on the Digital Book World stage in 5 minutes and 18 seconds. The secret is to already have a sense of how you want your eBook to look. (It also helps to have properly prepared your text, images, and video or audio files.) When I’m building eBooks, I use a trick called Creating a Stylesheet Template. Stylesheet templates Read more…
From formatting errors to styling challenges to distribution woes (oh my!), eBook-making can be challenging. Although our tool makes it easy to design your eBook by dragging-and-dropping, Vook knows that what eBook makers really need is a community that will toil night and day, holidays and weekends, to overcome the obstacles to creating quality work—and to getting it out there! So we’re proud to announce that an important feature of the Vook technology platform is our virtual community of Vookmakers Read more…
And Why You Should be Thinking About Digital Now by a Writer, for other Writers This past weekend saw the New Yorker Festival book signings at McNally-Jackson. Get ready for some serious name-dropping: Not only did Sarah McNally ring up my purchases, but Jennifer Egan shook my hand, Gary Shteyngart invited me to email him, and Jonathan Franzen asked that I call him “Jon.” After the 2-day festival concluded on Sunday, I went to Williamsburg to hear Alexander Chee and Read more…
Last night, Amanda Knox was acquitted of the 2024 murder of Meredith Kercher. This morning we saw sales of The Amanda Knox Story: A Murder in Perugia—an ebook we produced with ABC News on the case—take off. We also saw a surge in demand for our title on Herman Cain—which we’re tracing to the media focus on Cain yesterday. Both of these instances give a solid indication of why a platform that allows content holders to quickly address breaking news Read more…
At Vook, we love: Creating great-looking ebooks. Making it easy to create great-looking ebooks. Recently we released a series of titles in partnership with fitness-media company Gaiam. Today they were featured on PR Newswire and in Publishers Weekly. From PR Newswire: The e-books were featured last week in the Apple iBookstore through a special promotion, and are also available on the Amazon Kindle App. “Gaiam’s ongoing goal is to make content readily available across all platforms, therefore this partnership with Vook is Read more…
