While we have always considered eBooks one of the best lead generation assets, they take a lot of time to come together. It's a shame to see great content sabotaged by poor design.
Professional authors and marketers believe that while drafting serves them, the design serves the readers. And, we design what? Emotional experiences through visuals.
Emotional experiences delight, engage, move, and encourage the reader to take action. A reader's brain processes images and colors far more quickly than sentences. Within seconds, a well-designed eBook can repel or resonate with a reader.
If you put hours and hours into creating great content that you feel is valuable and worth something to your audience, wouldn't you want the outside to look irresistible? We know you do.
This guide will talk about eBook design so your eBook looks professional and inviting, and your reader can't wait to crack it open.
What is eBook design?
An eBook design is the process of laying down and arranging the content of an eBook in a way that is accessible, functional, and visually appealing.
When carefully curated, eBooks are the top marketing asset that brings leads to a business. Unlike other content forms, eBooks are longer and demonstrate expertise creatively while conveying complex information.
Things to Consider Before Starting eBook Design
The world of eBook design encompasses more than just aesthetics. It requires a thoughtful approach with technical expertise that gives it visual appeal, brand identity, and a premium reading experience.
Before you get into the designing part, there are a few things we want you to consider:
1. Brand Style Guide
A brand style determines the general look and feel of a company's branding. It helps you recognize a brand because of its consistency across written or visual messaging. Brand guidelines dictate the look of a logo, website, blogs, eBooks, and other marketing collateral.
Here are some elements that make or break a style guide:
Color Palette: Your brand's color palette is its most distinctive and recognizable part. It comprises a group of colors your company uses for your brand. A brand color palette should include a wide variety of primary, secondary, and neutral colors for more dynamic and varied design options.
Typography: Typography is a part of a visual element that goes beyond a font. We recommend choosing a primary and secondary font with a mixture of font weights and serifs for different use cases. Typography plays a huge role in a website's user experience, ensuring it is accessible and readable.
Imagery and Iconography: Approved imagery and pre-designed icons are custom symbols for your brand. These icons can be used across the collateral for long-form content like blogs or eBooks to create consistent content.
Brand voice: A brand voice shows your company’s personality: friendly, casual or formal. This makes it easy for writers, salespeople, and marketers to know how to represent your brand online.
For reference, you can check out the brand style guide for Walmart, Asana, and Starbucks. All of them have a consistent brand style throughout their marketing collateral.
2. Orientation: Portrait or Landscape
The orientation of a book refers to the relative proportions between its width and height dimensions. Choosing the best orientation book depends on which format better depicts the subject matter to your expert.
There are two major orientation forms that you can choose from:
Portrait Orientation
A portrait orientation book is when a book is taller than its width. Hence, the portrait orientation is vertical, which is by far the most popular choice for eBooks.
The most common portrait book sizes are
- 6" W x 9" H
- 5.5" W x 8.5" H
- 8" W x 10" H
Landscape Orientation
A landscape is wider than it is tall, which means the book will have a horizontal shape. Landscape-oriented books work best for books that rely heavily on images and visuals. The larger images make it easy for readers to fully understand the information without feeling constrained.
The most common portrait book sizes are
- 9" W x 6" H
- 11" W x 8.5" H
- 8.5" W x 5.5" H
3. Layout: Fixed or Reflowable
An eBook layout refers to how each of the components of the eBook are arranged. A wrong move can make navigating difficult for users, causing frustration and hindering comprehension.
There are two eBook layouts that you can choose from:
Fixed Layout
The layout in this is predetermined and fixed, so readers can't adjust the font size or line spacing. The fixed layout works best to show complex layouts such as graphic novels, children's books, and technical manuals, as they require precise placement of text and images.
Reflowable Layout
These books can adapt to any screen size and font size by a user. Fixed layout is most commonly used in the digital publishing industry. They are flexible and adaptable since they are created using HTML and CSS codes. You can easily read them on any smartphone, tablet, or laptop.
4. Design Software: Free or Paid
Now that you have covered the basics of eBook designing, it's time to bring your ebook together. There are many eBook design software is available to simplify the process of creating eBooks.
Some popular eBook design software options include:
Freemium
Best for someone who is just starting and has a limited budget. Canva is one such software that offers both free and paid templates for eBook designs.
Paid
If you want to create comprehensive and complex eBooks, these software should be your priority.
- Adobe Indesign: Adobe lets you create stunning eBook designs with complete formatting control.
- Adobe Illustrator: A vector graphics editor for creating and editing illustrations, logos, typography, and other artwork.
- Adobe Photoshop: A powerful software for editing and manipulating digital images and graphics.
- Corel Draw: A graphic design software for creating illustrations, layouts, and vector-based artwork.
How to Design an eBook: 7 Simple Steps
Now that you have covered the basics of eBook designing, it's time to bring your eBook together. Here is a step-by-step process to design your eBook that captivates your audience and delivers your message effectively:
1. Start with the Cover
We are told from childhood to never judge a book by its cover, but in reality, people make sublime judgements about whether or not they should read an eBook just from its cover.
So, how do you design a cover that sells? By working on its title and cover design.
A compelling, interesting title
A compelling title may not be a design element but a work of art. The title is often the first thing a reader reads, so it shouldn't be overlooked. Put yourself in your reader's shoes when coming up with titles.
Ask yourself:
- Is this eBook worth reading? (what's interesting in it)
- Is this eBook worth the cost of handing over my email or credit card?
- What benefits does the book offer over other eBooks?
The best eBook titles are clear and actionable and tell exactly what's in them. Ebooks are high-commitment pieces because of their length, so their title should exhibit the values a reader can draw in an interesting way.
There are a few examples of powerful and effective book titles:
- Stability is an Illusion — Take a Closer Look
- The Hidden Cost of Doing Nothing: 5 Ways You Pay a Hefty Price For Inaction
- 31 Days to Build a Better Blog
A solid visual
If you ever read a promising book whose compact print strained your eyes and gave you a headache, how likely are you to continue reading it? Not much. That's why popular authors spend so much time crafting the perfect eBook cover.
These are some key elements of creating an eye-catching cover:
Keep your target audience in mind at all times
Different people have different conventions regarding eBook covers. While young audiences enjoy bright, strong covers, millennials and boomers are attached to neutrals and trustworthy classics.
Convey meaning
A book cover should support the theme the book explores and the mood of the book. For example, what's the book about? Is it serious research on user behaviour, or is it a fun memoir about your adventures in life?
Avoid clutter
If you think adding a lot of elements to your eBook cover gives out more information and makes people want to read it, then you might be wrong. These are a sign of cluttered covers and don't work well when viewed in small sizes. Cluttered covers at thumbnail sizes can take away a lot of your potential customers.
Understand color theory
Color often determines the first impression of your eBook. It plays a huge role in how consumers make decisions and evaluate brands. Choose colors that complement the overall mood and theme of the book. Check out this color psychology chart from Conversioner to help you choose the right colors.
Choose an appropriate font
Choosing a typeface for your book can be tricky. The font must look good when viewed on the full-size cover and be readable in small sizes on thumbnails.
You can also take inspiration from some eye-catching book covers from 99designs.com and Canva.
2. Create a Clickable Table of Contents
Any document of more than 5 pages should have a table of contents (abbreviated as TCO). Simply put, a TOC contains the list of all chapters of the eBook. The list includes the main sections (sometimes sub-sections) with page numbers in a hierarchy.
The TOC should be interactive so that clicking on any items on the list takes you to the chapters. For instance, a 2023 report on State of SaaSOps by BetterCloud includes an interactive TOC that allows readers to jump to a particular section.
The TOC helps readers understand the book's topic and content. This is particularly beneficial when readers require specific information or wish to revisit a particular section.
3. Ebook Chapters
Ebook title pages help readers distinguish one chapter from another. This gives readers a short break to pause and digest their reading content. Ebook chapters are also created to create awareness of transitions in the story.
Check out this “State of Product Marketing” eBook by PMA. Each of the chapters represents different stages of building a successful blog. They give a glimpse of what readers can expect in a specific chapter and intrigue readers to continue reading the story.
4. Add Visuals
You must have heard the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words," a mantra that truly defines the art of visual storytelling.
Visual media in eBooks means photographs, infographics, illustrations, graphics, and videos. They don't just stand out; they are also easy to remember. Visuals can also help us connect with people and characters, allowing us to imagine scenarios and easily understand even the most complex narratives.
For instance, this eBook on "Candidate Experience Report" by Criteria used graphs and infographics to illustrate complex data. If they had not used visual storytelling to convey such critical data, most readers would feel bored and distracted within a few seconds.
5. Include Running Heads or Footers on Every Single Page
Running headers are placed at the top and bottom of the pages. The running head is written at the top of the page, whereas the running foot is at the bottom. These contain the title of the book, page numbers, a chapter, a section, or any other reference point.
You can also add your website and copyright line at the footer of the page. The title page of the book and a chapter do not need running heads or footers because they might look cluttered.
Why are these important? For instance, if a reader wants to print out just a portion of your eBook, you want them to remember where this information came from.
6. Include a Call-to-Action (CTA)
Ebooks are a fantastic starting point for driving new customers.
If you are using eBooks to generate leads, it's important to have contextual calls to action throughout the eBook. Your CTA must make sense regarding the topic and buyer stage.
Whether your CTA is just a link to another resource or a call to inform about your product, it should all align with the content and the reader.
Here's an example of how Hubspot eBook on How to Run an Inbound Marketing Campaign dedicates a specific call to action to download relevant resources.
They have also added subtle CTAs in the eBook that direct readers to other Hubspot resources appropriate for the eBook.
7. Convert or Export eBook into a Downloadable File
Your final step is to convert your eBooks to digital downloads to share them directly through the website.
You can use Publishdrive, which converts your written content from .docx files to. epub or. mobi files.
These are some of the most popular eBook file formats:
.pdf is the most popular compatible eBook format but has limited formatting
.epub is an accessible, open-standard format that supports a variety of graphics and video elements
.mobi is workable on a variety of devices but does not support video or sound
.azw mainly supports Amazon Kindle
6 Tips to Make Your eBook Design Stand Out
Even the best designers can overlook design issues, so before you take a final pass, it's essential to look for tiny mistakes that can disrupt the reader's experience. Here is a checklist to ensure your eBook stands out every single time.
1. Implement a Visual Hierarchy
When it comes to visual hierarchy, there is a golden rule: if everything looks important, then nothing seems important.
Visual hierarchy is a method to rank the information you are consuming.
Take this as an example:
There are many things going on on the left side, making it difficult for the reader to grasp all the information. But, on the right, your eyes are automatically drawn to the blue box, the element, and then the CTA.
A good visual hierarchy guides a user and helps them navigate the page. However, poor visual hierarchy confuses the reader and makes it unclear where to look.
2. Highlight Important Information
Besides text, use headers, quotes, statistics, and headers to draw attention to important information. Since most readers usually skim through content, they can quickly grasp information as they go.
Take a look at this BetterCloud eBook. You will see that the author has used multiple sub-heads, bold fonts, sidebars, and statistics to draw attention.
3. Use Data Visualization
The way we structure and visualize information helps people make decisions. Data visuals are also simpler to take in and easier to remember. It chiefly helps in three aspects of reporting:
Explaining: describe situations, answer questions, support decisions, and communicate information.
Exploring: explore opportunities, identify areas of interest, and find solutions or answers.
Analyzing: inspect, distill, and transform the most significant information in a data set so that they can discover something new or predict upcoming situations.
For instance, Monster's eBook on Future of Work displays the most critical information through bar graphs, pie charts, and images.
4. Judiciously Use White Space
White or negative space refers to blank or empty spaces surrounding other elements in a design composition. White space is generally used to:
- Structure and organize content
- Improve readability
- Draw focus on important elements
When adding white space, make sure to follow a visual hierarchy. If the content is too cramped, the reader will feel fatigued. Let your visuals breathe, and kill any unnecessary illustration, text, or chart junk. This is an easy way to get more white space.
5. Double-check Your Alignment
Our eyes crave symmetry and balance. After all, you want to create an eBook that is easy to read and simple to navigate.
If you are not using any professional design tools like Canva or Illustrator, or don't have any design experience then you can use tools like Reedsey and Draft2Digital to format your eBooks, which take care of formatting, fonts, and chapter organization. These tools can transform your written files into professionally formatted eBooks.
6. Differentiate Hyperlinks from Text
If the content is hyperlinked in your eBook, make sure it's underlined or color-coded so people know where to click.
Take this as an example: HubSpot's inbound marketing eBook has hyperlinks stylized in bold and underlined. This increases the chances of readers clicking on the hyperlinked text.
Wrapping Up
Designing a professional-looking eBook is possible without being a pro designer if you follow these simple steps:
Step 1: Create an exciting eBook cover that aligns with your content and reader.
Step 2: Use online formatting tools to make your book easy to read and skimmable.
Step 3: Weave in images and charts to back up your written material.
Step 4: Include a strong CTA at the end of the book so readers know their next step.
Step 5: Convert your eBook into a downloadable file so you can sell it for profit.
That's how you create and design an eBook. Check out the latest eBook design inspirations to get started with creating your own eBook.
