It’s no secret that e-books are slowly taking over the publishing industry, and last week we touched base on the latest craze in the world of electronic books—enhanced e-books.

What in the world is an enhanced e-book?

Instead of just black and white numbers and letters printed on the page, or embedded since we’re talking electronically, enhanced e-books also include multimedia files (PDFs, images, videos, and audio files) within the e-book itself.

With this explanation, some may still be asking what in the world an enhanced e-book is… and that’s okay; they’re not alone.

Last week, we gave these three examples:

1. Say that Abby the Author hand-drew art that she wants to include in her story, giving the book another form of visual appeal.  She can do this now.
2. Say that Rocky the Rocker wants to include some of his popular hits within the text of his autobiography for the reader, allowing his fans to actually hear the music instead of only reading the lyrics.  He can do this now.
3. And say that Cathy the Cook wants to include actual video footage of herself preparing meals in the kitchen inside her e-cookbook, instead of only listing the recipes for her chefs-in-training.  She can do this now.

Sounds cool, right?

We think so.

But how do we get started?

Today, we want to talk about the most basic file type for enhanced e-books—images. Similarly, we’ll also discuss PDF files.

The types of attachments that will work in an enhanced e-book include .jpg, .gif, and .png files. These file images can be stock photography or actual pictures that one has of characters in his or her book.  Images can also be made of tables, charts, or graphs.

If anyone out there is like me, we understand that PDF, .jpg, .gif, and .png files are all pictures files in one way or another; but what are they actually?  Here are a few definitions that might help.

PDF—Portable Document Format—an electronic file that captures all of the elements of a printed document

.gif (Giff)—Graphics Interchange Format—a bit-mapped graphics file

.jpg (Jpeg)—Joint Photographics Experts Group—compression of photographic images; most of us recognize the file extension (JPG) once we upload pictures from our cameras to the computer.

.png (Ping)—Portable Networks Graphic –a more versatile and advanced compression of photographic images.

Because e-books can be very finicky with regards to formatting, we recommend embedding images that have been cropped and formatted using an image editing software such as Photoshop. Images should always be centered above and below text.  And to protect against headaches, know that images will never work correctly in an e-book when attempting to left or right align an image and fit text to the left or right—it simply will not work properly.

And let’s not forget about those PDF files…  there are two ways to embed a PDF document into an enhanced e-book and make it accessible for the reader:

1. The writer can set the PDF file as a link to an external file that sits on a server or as an embedded file
2. The writer can actually embed the file into the e-book, so it is like an image and an actual part of the size (megabytes) of the enhanced e-book.

Embedding picture files correctly can be frustrating and time consuming—be sure and breathe and keep calm.  A steady hand wins the race, right?

The main thing to take away from embedding images and PDFs is that these enhancements should help the reader visualize what they are reading and add depth to the reading experience.

Want to see an example?  Check out Jillian Dodd’s enhanced e-book—That Boy.

Come back next week when we continue our series about multimedia as a part of publishing.