The beauty of an eBook is its real-time reflowable text that adjusts for any eReader device, thanks to the EPUB eBook format specification.  It works great for text and small embedded images, but not so well for titles with design-critical layouts, such as cookbooks, travel books, comic books and childrens’ books.

For books with sophisticated illustration and/or photography, Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) have developed precise, “fixed layout” formats for iOS, Kindle, Kobo, and Barnes and Noble color devices that Aptara employs to produce beautiful, full-page, full-bleed, illustrated eBooks that retain printed page fidelity.

The production process for creating Fixed Layout eBooks is more complex than creating a standard EPUB eBook, though.  The process is more akin to typesetting a page on the device screen and involves manipulating the fixed format layout publication file to precisely control the page layout, position images, embed fonts, and create single image page spreads best displayed in landscape view.

Fixed Layout specifications provide far richer presentation possibilities than standard eBook relowable text formats:

PDF print spread from “Plum Gorgeous” cookbook, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Aptara produced Fixed Layout spread shown on an iPad

Fixed Layout format eBooks are ideally suited for titles in which any of the following composition elements are critical to the reader experience:

• Multicolumn text pages
• Page design and design elements
• Illustrations or artistic photography
• Aspect ratios that cannot change
• Original art that must be faithfully represented
• Color and graphics that support reader comprehension and/or enjoyment.
• Layouts built around pedagogical methodology in textbooks.

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