Frequently asked questions

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Both the print version and the ebook version of your book are totally different things hence, you should get a different ISBN for each.

No, each version needs its own ISBN.

Actually, there are two types of ebooks. Reflowable and Fixed Layout. The reflowable ebook will look different than your printed book because the person reading your ebook can adjust the size of the font. So as the font gets bigger, the text shifts to accomodate the larger size and “flows” to the next line or page. Since the position of text varies, there are no contents page, headers, footers or page numbers in this type of ebook. On the other hand, a fixed layout ebook will look exactly like the printed book but it will size to fit the area of the display on the device being used.

See the previous question for an explanation.

An ebook is an electronic version of your book that can be read on a digital device called an E-Reader. Some devices are dedicated e-readers although most digital devices and computers can use apps that will allow you to read eBooks.

We use InDesign as the program to create ebooks. We take your document and “flow” the text into an Indesign document and make adjustments to format it to your liking and then export it to the ebook format. Where a text document such as Word allows us to modify the fonts and formatting of a document, a PDF is pretty much written in stone and, although there are programs that can modify PDFs, they are limited in what they can do. We can use PDFs to create ebooks it’s just that we are limited to creating “fixed layout” ebooks with them.

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This refers to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act which specifically targets children’s products.

When a sheet of paper goes through a printing press, the sheets can shift slightly from one to the other. In most cases where there is just text, that’s not an issue since any shift will not be noticeable. That’s not the case when you have an image that goes right to the edge of the page. If there’s any amount of shift in the paper going through the press this will be noticeable as a white lin. To compensate for that, printers extend the image slightly beyond the trim size of the book. that way any shift is not visible. This extended image is the “bleed”.

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Actually, white can be a color in printing. Paper used for printing paperback books actually is not white and you can actually print white ink in certain cases. In most cases what people are referring to is the non image area of a printed piece.

That depends on how your book is printed. A jacket can be used on a soft cover book whereas a casewrap would be for a hard bound book also called a casebound book.

There are many standard trim sizes available many of which are common for certain types of books. The number of books you plan on printing will come into play when determining trim size. If you plan on printing large quantities of books then you would most likely consider a smaller trim size to cut costs. Check with us to find out what is most cost effective.

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When your book is converted to an Ebook you will be supplied with an Epub file which is the industry standard for Ebooks. Amazon uses a different format for their Ebooks but that is not an issue since they will automatically convert any supplied Epub file to their format.

Trim size is the final size that a book is cut to.