Mission: Impossible? Consistently good ebook formatting across devices
Your mission, should you decide to accept it: distribute content as ebooks.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it: distribute content as ebooks.
In which we uncover some unpleasant realities about distributing ebook editions.
KF8. Nope, it’s not K2‘s long-lost mountain cousin. It’s Amazon’s new ebook format.
While dealing with this new format probably isn’t as daunting as scaling a 28,251 ft. mountain, KF8 is providing a particularly bothersome challenge right out of the gate: it’s not compatible with any Kindle devices other than the Kindle Fire!
Ebooks and tablets are helping people read more than they did before: in a recent survey, 66 percent of portable device owners said they were reading more.
That statistic should prompt all technical communicators to think about if—and how—ebooks and other tablet-compatible formats (including apps) fit into their content delivery.
The ePub spec is long and very formal, but the format itself is fairly straightforward. And while building an ePub by hand is not complicated in itself, reworking content from other formats can be tricky.
Our Technical Writing 101 book is now available in an ePub edition. You can purchase it from our online store or get it from Apple’s iBookstore.