A cover for iBooks Author
One of the unexpected and strange challenges of designing a book with iBooks Author (and with most of the other tools and e-bookstores available) is designing the book’s cover. With iBooks Author the cover is merely more than an icon displayed alongside your book’s metadata; you don’t really get to look at it when actually opening or reading the book (Apple provides you with a place holder for “Intro Media” for that purpose). The practical implication is that designing your iBook cover is a very different undertaking. To avoid wasting time, jump straight to the appropriate design parameters for your ebook cover.
What then are those parameters?
Design parameters for your iBooks Author cover:
This post by Craig Mod covers the challenge and ways to address it with far more elegance and actual book design expertise than I could ever dispense. To summarize:
- Your book cover is an icon -you need a startling graphic and a color scheme you own, and little else.
- If you are going to put a title on your cover, remember that big type wins.
- Apple will insert your book’s title in bold letters next to your cover on the iBookstore. Your book cover should not include a title.
- Ditto for your name (except that one will not be in bold).
I am following Craig Mod’s advice and have modified my iBook cover for Travelogue 1 as you can see in the “before” and “after” versions shown below:
Version 1: Too busy and full of elements that are irrelevant on the iBookstore (book title, author’s name, etc.):
Version 2: Conveys what’s needed and nothing else -strong graphic, subject matter of Travelogue 1 (surf) and the figure 1 to make it clear there will be others.
Discussion (2) ¬