How to Create an Ebook with Embedded Fonts

Nikhil Arora
11 min readJun 13, 2021

You want to understand the way to create an eBook, but don’t know where to start. What software does one need? does one got to hire a designer? are you able to embed fonts and can your eBook display them consistently across all devices?

These are all crucial inquiries to ask yourself as you propose the way to create an eBook. The answers reveal a process that’s more accessible than ever today, thanks largely to intuitive technology like Adobe InDesign.

On the marketing side of things, an eBook may be a versatile piece of content that you simply can use during a sort of situation, from gated content to educational promo materials and everything in between. learn graphic designing from an institute that has provided the best graphic designing course in Delhi. Today, social media and influencer marketing are touted nonstop, yet, once you find out how to make an eBook, you’re showing your leads both your design savvy and your marketing panache.

In this walkthrough, we take you from the fundamentals of the way to create an eBook to the finer points of using InDesign to make your new, literary masterpiece.

How to Create an eBook: What to understand Before you begin

The first problem that you simply face when creating an eBook is that the reality that it won’t display uniformly across all devices and screen sizes.

For starters, you’ve got no way of telling in what screen size your readers are going to be enjoying your new eBook because it’s no fixed page size. A smartphone goes to display may be only one paragraph per page while a tablet will have room for more on one page. Then, once you add desktops into the mix — with their massive screen sizes — things get still more inconsistent because they’re going to likely be ready to show two pages at a time on the screen.

The other issue is that you simply don’t always have control over how your readers are getting to absorb the content in your eBook. this is often a problem associated with the fonts you employ, the precise eReaders they’re using, and therefore the format of eBook you’re employed with.

There are belongings you can do to mitigate this, of course, but it’s getting to take some foresight. So how does one affect this? the key to the way to create an eBook that renders perfectly lies within the sort of format that you simply use, thereby giving your readers the simplest possible user experience.

The Difference Between an eBook and an EPUB

To help us understand the way to create an eBook, it’s imperative to first understand the difference between an eBook and an EPUB (Electronic Publication). check out the previous because of the overall category or sort of content and therefore the latter together of the many formats during which to present this content to your audience. Other samples of the previous include PDF (Portable Document Format), AZW (a file format designed specifically for Amazon’s Kindle), and ODF (Open Document Format).

For our purposes of the way to create an eBook, we’re only getting to specialize in the EPUB format for a spread of reasons:

It is the foremost popular and adopted file format

It offers both creators/authors and readers flexibility

It features the reflowable format, which is that the standard in eBook publishing

When working with EPUB, you’ve got two choices at your disposal:

The reflowable format

The fixed-layout format

As I discussed, the reflowable format is that the standard of electronic publishing today, and with good reason. Here are just a couple of the advantages of using the reflowable format:

It’s compatible with most devices

You enjoy a much bigger distribution opportunity

You can upload it to the large retailers’ websites with ease

Nearly all eReaders and operating systems support it

It’s cheaper to form

Its file sizes are smaller

It’s more efficient to update

For our purposes of using embedded fonts with InDesign, using the reflowable format works best since we’ll assume that you’re creating a text-heavy book, like entire chapter books or maybe full-fledged novels.

Pro Tip: When working in InDesign, select the reflowable EPUB format.

The just one occasion when it’s actually recommended to use the fixed-layout format instead is when you’re creating graphic-heavy publications. Examples include cookbooks, technical publications, and even children’s books that are heavy on illustrations and other images.

The fixed-layout format is right once you want absolute control over how your readers absorb your ebook since it disallows them from changing the fonts, text size, margins, or spacing.

What you because the author/creator gain in terms of control (and ensuring the integrity of your artistic vision), your audience loses in terms of UX since they can’t customize your ebook to their liking (if the font finishes up being too small for the device on which they’re reading your book).

Pro Tip: Use the fixed-layout format only publishing ebooks with a plethora of graphics.

So choose wisely between these two format types. As I said, though, we’ll specialize in the reflowable format because it promotes better UX for your audience, which suggests it’ll be downloaded and purchased more often, and since you’re likely getting to be working with text-heavy works if you’re thinking of embedding your fonts.

For a taste of what’s to return, and since we’ve just launched font licensing in our marketplace, have a glance at a number of our most aesthetic, embeddable fonts to be used in EPUBs:

Research What Your Audience’s Pain Points Are…and Solve Them
Understand this in particular else: your eBook should be checked out as a lead-generation tool that solves an enormous problem for your target demographic. A high-quality EPUB that’s bursting with relevant information for your audience means more leads, conversions, and sales for you.

As a graphic designer, you would possibly author an eBook on any of those topics:

Why Small Business Owners got to Hire a Graphic Designer

How Graphic Design Communicates Your Brand to Your Customers

12 Ways Graphic Design Makes Your Business extra money

In each title, you’re communicating value to your customers while educating them on why their business needs graphic design solutions. the thought is to position yourself as an ideal leader or expert in design, which kickstarts the method of nudging your lead down your conversion funnel (with the last word conversion being you getting hired for a project or on a long-term basis).

Setting off on the way to create an eBook without considering your audience is useless. you would like to appeal to their pain points. to work out what their pain points are, consult:

1) Analytics like Google Analytics and Clicky, which tell you what people that land on your website are checking out (and therefore what keywords brought them to your website)

2) SEO keyword research tools like Mangools and Ahrefs, which tell you which of their keywords your leads are checking out in high demand (around which you’ll write a high-quality eBook)

Organize Your eBook

Your next step within the process of the way to create an eBook is straightforward: you’ve got to plan it in such how that it’s legible, readable, and holds the interest of your audience from start to end.

Start by brooding about the flow of data you would like to present to your audience, including the chapter titles and what information all will contain. Each chapter doesn’t need to be lengthy; actually, your entire eBook doesn’t need to be lengthy. It’s better that you simply fill your pages with high-quality content than filler, so, if meaning an EPUB that’s just seven pages long rather than 25, then so be it.

Just as you would possibly break down key discussions in each section when you’re writing an extended article or blog post, so, too, each chapter of your publication should function as an in-depth discussion of a key aspect of your overall book topic. The chapters should even have some sort of logical flow to them. that’s to mention, each chapter should complement subsequent, and, as an entire, they have to accomplish what the title of your eBook promises.

Keep in mind the formatting as you’re working your way through the way to create an eBook. you’ll check out your publication as a really long-form blog post that’s also getting to require these best practices of formatting:

Headings

Subheadings

Bullet points

Lists

Enumerations

Short paragraphs

Different-sized fonts

Bold

Italic

Once you’ve written your publication, you’ll specialize in its design.

Design Your eBook

An integral part of the way to create your eBook is how you present it to your audience. this is often where good design comes into the image.

To maximize your efficiency, have a glance at a number of our favorite eBook templates from our marketplace:

These templates will allow you to edit your publication’s colors, which is vital since you would like to make sure that your creation features your brand colors. This ensures on-point branding that communicates professionalism and adds your personal touch to those templates.

We also got to mention incorporating vibrant visuals. Not only do they assist to interrupt up the flow of data, thereby helping with the formatting, but they also provide additional information that underscores the most points you’re making. That’s why it’s necessary to think twice about the pictures that you simply choose.

We even have an outsized selection of stock photos that’ll make your eBook come to life.

Finally, what eBook would be complete without an all-important call to action or CTA? Now, you’ve given your audience high-quality information they couldn’t get anywhere else, then they appear at you as an ideal leader in your industry. this is often time to prompt them farther down your conversion funnel. Include CTAs within your book to things like:

A product or service page

An offer or promotion you’re running

A landing page

Congrats: you’re through with the particular writing of your eBook. Let’s proceed to embed your fonts within InDesign.

What to recollect When Embedding Fonts into Your eBook
Embedding fonts give your readers the selection of reading your publication during a font that’s more legible and readable, especially on smaller device sizes. While it’s an excellent idea to embed fonts as you create your EPUB, you ought to remember the following:

The legality of using the font: Research if the font you would like to use features a license that legally permits you to embed it in your creation. Creative Market fonts are often purchased under an E-pub license that permits such use.

The utility of the font: Critically examine the font to work out with certainty if it’s actually legible and readable, if it’ll significantly increase the dimensions or length of your entire publication, and if it’s aesthetic or is unusual.

The compatibility of the font: check out how well the font you would like to use will render across various eReaders since that’s always a difficult situation

Also, make note of the very fact that your audience may be a factor when it involves embedded fonts:

Your readers have the final say over reading your book on their devices within the exact font, font size, background color, and spacing they choose
Usually, your readers need to remember to show on your embedded fonts manually by going into their device’s menu or settings
Older eReaders don’t support embedded fonts and can use the device’s default fonts

Embed Your Fonts in InDesign

The advantage of embedding your fonts is that you simply drastically increase the probabilities that your audience will read your EPUB the way you would like it which your book’s presentation won’t get disrupted by different screen sizes. Note that you simply still don’t have 100% complete control over how your audience reads your eBook because they will simply override your embedded fonts and set their own.

All this aside, there’s also some prep work you’ve got to try to to to urge your InDesign file ready before you switch it into an EPUB.

Here’s what to try to do as you continue on your process of the way to create an eBook:

Correct negative space problems

Add ALT tags to your images

Ensure style and picture-name compliance

Inspect then edit your layout order

Establish chapter breaks at the beginning of the chapter

Simplify complex tables

Anchor any floating pictures within your text

Include a Table of Contents style for correct device navigation

Apply styles to your text

Include an in-book Table of Contents

Rasterize your InDesign artwork

Don’t forget semantic markup

And because we’ve just launched font licensing, here’s another round of a number of our favorite embedded fonts that are available for your next project:

With your file ready now, you’re able to embed your fonts. Here’s the way to do that:

1) Click on the File menu.

2) Click on Export within the dropdown menu.

3) Click on Save.

4) within the EPUB — Reflowable Layout Export Options window that exposes, choose HTML & CSS within the left-hand column.

5) Check the box next to incorporate Embeddable Fonts.

6) Click on Ok.

7) You’re all done.

Congrats! There’s just one step left in your goal of the way to create an eBook…

Export Your InDesign File to EPUB

As I established earlier, you would like to pick reflowable EPUB as your format thanks to all the benefits. When you’re proud of your eBook the way it’s in InDesign, click on File on the navigation menu then reserve it with the .epub extension.

The Export to EPUB panel will open up.

In the first dropdown box of the overall selection (in the left-hand column), you’ll notice the default there as EPUB 2.0.1. Change that within the dropdown box to EPUB 3.0. You’ll save yourself tons of trouble due to all the advantages that EPUB 3.0 provides:

It supports JavaScript, accessibility, and languages with complicated characters (Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic)

It uses CSS3 and HTML5

It is often read on a tool that only supports EPUB 2

How to Create an eBook: It is often an extended (but Valuable) Project
Your publication is a crucial arsenal in your marketing toolset. Unlike an infographic, blog post, or email, an eBook retains more value as legitimate reference material due to the greater depth and quantity of the knowledge you’re sharing with your leads and customers.

It also follows that you simply can’t expect to end it within the time it takes to make an email campaign or a long-form blog post. learn designing making from the best institute which has provided the best graphic designing course in Delhi. While the time you spend thereon depends on what proportion of information you would like to supply, writing such a tome from starting to end (including working within InDesign) can take you as little as a couple of days to every week or more.

The most important thing is that the worth you create for your brand and your customers means it’s a win-win situation all around.

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