This is simply a wish from myself. Over the last few days I’ve been reading quite a few ebooks – free ones, purchased ones, ones on productivity, ones on internet marketing, ones on creativity, ones on ebooks.
Just about all of these ebooks – no matter if a report of a few pages, or a 100 – 200 page how-to manual, come in PDF form in a portrait orientation. Just like the white papers, documents and real life books and manual they are trying to electronically represent and look like.
There’s nothing wrong with this format – except for when you’re reading it. The amount of times I’ve swapped from Fit Page to 100% in a reading is beyond count on some of the bigger books. Fit Page makes the whole page fit into my adobe reader window, but this is especially small on a laptop screen, but at least gives me the bigger picture. 100% gives me the ability to read, but then I get into the whole scrolling problems. Scrolling on a laptop without a wheeled mouse is quite an effort, and I often end up scrolling down too far, to end up at the top of the next page without wanting to.
There was one difference in two of my many ebooks. Zen to Done and Personal Core Values are in landscape. And what a wonderful way to read an ebook! Each page is right there, at 100% and you can see all of the page on the screen. (Aside note : I don’t know if there’s anything to be read into here, but both books mentioned are on productivity, and formatted with a lot of sidebar quotes and whitespace).
Now, there are obvious pros and cons about each format – but even when viewing facing pages (two pages on the screen), the landscape orientated ebook is still as legible as any in portrait orientation. And I agree that the landscape ebook is still reminiscent of publishing powerpoint slides – which are in a similar orientation, but that preconception is easily waylaid with some good ebook designs. And sometimes landscaped paragraphs of text look too elongated with a waste of white space, particular with one-sentence text.
But landscaped orientation for ebooks (and for that matter, web pages and anything else we have to read) makes sense when considering our reading habits, and the current wide-screen formats of our television and computer monitors.
So spare a thought for this eBook reader, and design more of them in landscape, to save my fingers at least from all that scrolling.
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September 3rd, 2008 at 4:31 am
Thanks for sharing. It is helpful
February 10th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
I agree – here’s one I did earlier – http://www.tinyurl.com/ermintrude
February 10th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
I too recently came across an ebook beautifully designed in landscape format. The writer had gone to the trouble to hire a designer to put it together.
I was so impressed with it that I decided to do some experimenting. I have material for an ebook just waiting for me to pull it all together.
Well, I discovered that it was easier said than done. I wanted main text in a large column on the right side, with pull quotes and such in a smaller column on the left. To my dismay, Word has difficulty with that. It appears that to accomplish this, one must create a table for every single page, cutting and pasting in the flowing text.
Have you come across some design solution that makes 2-column landscape layout easy to accomplish?
February 10th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Yes I use a programme called Articulate which is a plug in for Powerpoint – it generates Flash, podcasts & CD’s and a navigation tree on the left hand side – I used it to build my online writing course (and Ermintrude) – http://thebookwright.com/home-study/ – see http://www.articulate.com/products/presenter-features.php for more details & let me know if you’d like a sample of my course so you can see it in action
February 10th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
I have to admit, I broke my own request in creating my two free ebooks, The Ultimate Guides, available on this site. I created them in portrait, without much thinking. The first was created in that format, because it suited the two page at once design I wanted, and a columnar listing of products and sites. The second followed suit because – it simply used the same template.
There are a lot of template designs available for the e-book writer, but most if not all come in the portrait format. A few are available in Word, others in Oo Writer formats, often as downloads and bonuses within internet marketing packages. But I haven’t come across many proper templates in landscape.
The biggest suggestion I have is to not use Word. Why? Because I had my own troubles trying to set out columns and spacings, inserting graphics exactly where I wanted them. I setup a template, therefore in MS Publisher which I happened to have with my Office license.
With Publisher, you have complete control over the design of the template – creating master pages for the background elements, and design elements. And with the save to PDF / XPS plugin, you can publish into a PDF format. Next time, I may well try designing a more simplistic template within Publisher – and in the landscape format.
August 8th, 2009 at 6:51 am
I’m back to your post of landscape for e-books to see if anyone offered more info about how to do it most easily. Glad to see the Pulbisher suggestion. Other people have suggested I buy the expensive software InDesign. Publsher is a much less expensive option that will probably do the trick.
August 8th, 2009 at 8:42 am
The easy way to do this is just so go to Page Set up in MS Word & select Landscape – prepare your doc in Landscape & save as PDF ….
That said – check out http://www.smashwords.com & http://www.myebook.com (& BookBuzzr & Scribd) – & watch this space for the Apple Tablet in Autumn
August 13th, 2009 at 2:42 am
Tom, of course Word in landscape view works just fine — for SINGLE COLUMN material. However, if you want a separate sidebar column for “call-outs” and other related material, Word seems not up to the task. The only way I was able to accomplish that was by creating a table for every single page — and even then the principal text would not flow from page to page. I give up that approach with great disappointment.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:23 am
You may find Powerpoint’s better for that type of material …. or bite the bullet & get InDesign