Adding a cover graphic to your PDF eBook

Because an eBook cover graphic is designed to fill the Acrobat eBook Reader window, it’s nearly impossible to add this graphic to your eBook in a layout program, let alone a word processor, and achieve satisfactory results. Imagine placing a 300 dpi graphic that covers the entire page (beyond the margins) into a document created in your favorite layout program and then hoping that Distiller will compress it nicely for full-screen display in the eBook Reader. It’s best to create the graphic separately and use Acrobat 6 to insert it into your eBook after it has been exported PDF. Here’s how:

1. Open the tagged PDF eBook file you exported from your layout program.
2. Choose Document➪Pages➪Insert.
3. Locate and select your JPEG cover image in the Select File to Insert dialog box and click the Select button. (Note that you may have to choose JPEG in the Files of Type drop-down list to see your graphic in the dialog box window.) The Insert Pages dialog box appears. This dialog box lets you choose where in the eBook file you want the eBook cover graphic to appear. Luckily in this case, the default is before the first page in the document, which is where you want your eBook cover graphic to appear.
4. Click Before in the Location drop-down list, and then click OK. The cover image is imported into the PDF file as the first page in the document.
5. Click the Pages palette tab to verify the location of the cover graphic at the beginning of the eBook document.
6. Note that because the cover graphic was appended to the beginning of the document, it was automatically given the first page number in the PDF. You can resolve this issue by choosing Number Pages on the Options pop-up menu at the top of the Pages palette.

Acrobat lets you renumber pages, as well as change numbering formats one section at a time, so that you can make sure the numbers you created for your eBook pages correspond to page numbers that appear in the page navigator bar in Acrobat eBook Reader.
Whenever you convert a document to PDF that is either a multisection book with different numbering schemes or a single document that starts with a page number other than the number one, you must use the Number Pages command in Acrobat 6 to renumber the PDF so that its page numbers mirror your original document’s numbering scheme.
When you add a front cover graphic to your Adobe eBook, it’s important to insert an inside front cover page, though this page could be blank as well. Also, make sure that you end up with an even number of front-matter pages, using a blank page at the end of the front matter if needed. This ensures that your Adobe PDF eBook displays properly in Adobe Reader 6 and Acrobat 6, when viewing two pages at a time (by using the Facing Pages view), with odd-numbered pages on the right.

Designing Library and Cover Graphics

You can definitely integrate graphics and digital photos into the design of your Adobe eBooks, especially those you create solely for viewing in Acrobat eBook Reader, Adobe Reader, or Acrobat 6. Because there is no added expense for color use in an eBook (as there is with printed books), you can feel free to embellish your eBook with colored text, borders, and fills. In addition to the graphics you might use to illustrate your eBook, you also need to consider the use of library and cover graphics. There are three different kinds of library and cover graphics: your actual eBook cover and two thumbnail versions of the eBook cover. Although none of these graphics are required to create a functioning eBook, they add to the overall look and feel of your eBook and are required if you plan to market your eBook commercially.
When specifying color conversion settings in either the Distiller or the export settings of your eBook authoring program, always choose the sRGB model. Because computer screens use the RGB model, this device-independent color setting ensures that the graphics and colors in your eBook appear accurately in a wide variety of displays.
The Cover thumbnail is used for marketing purposes when you distribute your eBook online. E-book sellers use the Cover thumbnail on their Web sites to identify and advertise your eBook. The Library thumbnail is displayed in the Acrobat eBook Reader Library, as well as the My Bookshelf feature in Adobe Reader 6 and Acrobat 6, and is used as a navigation button for selecting and opening an eBook. The actual eBook cover graphic is set as the first page in your eBook in Acrobat 6 and appears full screen (momentarily) in Acrobat eBook Reader when a user double-clicks the library thumbnail graphic to open the eBook. You can create these graphics in any editing program, though recent versions of Photoshop (5.0 and up) have the advantage of using the sRGB color model as a default.
Here are the basic specifications for these three graphics:

• Cover thumbnail: Create a thumbnail of your cover graphic in GIF format. The image should be 100 pixels wide. A 3:2 aspect ratio works well, so at that width, your image would be 150 pixels tall by 100 pixels wide. Make sure to adjust the image resolution to 96 dpi, so that the thumbnail display is sharper with fewer artifacts or pixel distortions when viewed online in a Web browser.
• Library thumbnail: The image that appears in the Acrobat eBook Reader Library is slightly different than the Cover thumbnail. For this graphic, create a thumbnail of your cover graphic in JPEG format. The image should be 100 pixels wide with the same 3:2 aspect ratio as the Cover thumbnail. Make sure to use the sRGB color model if possible (RGB otherwise) and adjust the image resolution to 96 dpi.
• eBook cover: You should also create your eBook cover in JPEG format. To fill the Acrobat eBook Reader window, it should be 600 pixels tall and 400 pixels wide, using sRGB color and 96 dpi image resolution.

The graphics and illustrations you create for the body of your eBook can be developed in any graphic or photo editing program, such as Illustrator or Photoshop. When you export your eBook to PDF, these graphics are optimized for viewing via the Distiller job option you choose during the export process. Because the Library and cover graphics are added to your eBook in Acrobat 6 after it has been exported or converted to PDF, make sure to create GIF and JPEG format graphics and use the sRGB color model so that they are fully optimized for the Web when you upload the cover thumbnail to a bookseller’s server or insert the cover and Library thumbnail in your eBook.

Converting FrameMaker 7.0 documents to PDF

FrameMaker is much like PageMaker, in that you can create linked tables of content and indexes, as well as compile book publications from separate documents. It’s designed to create long, content-rich documents and also comes in a version (FrameMaker SGML) that lets you publish complex documents in Standard Generalized Markup Language, which is a required format in some industries. The good news is that FrameMaker 7.0 now supports the export of tags to Adobe PDF. Like InDesign and PageMaker, you can now easily create a tagged PDF eBook from within the program. When you’re ready to convert a FrameMaker 7.0 eBook document to PDF, follow these steps:

1. Choose File➪Save As; in the Save As dialog box, select PDF from the Save As Type drop-down list. Enter a name for the eBook file and click the Save button to open the PDF Setup dialog box.
2. In the PDF Setup dialog box, select Settings from the drop-down list; in the Settings panel, choose eBook from the PDF Options drop-down list.
3. To generate bookmarks in your eBook, choose the Bookmarks panel in the PDF Setup dialog box and select the Generate PDF Bookmarks check box. Note that these bookmarks are based on the paragraph styles in your FrameMaker document. If you’ve already created an internally linked Table of Contents, these bookmarks serve as an additional navigation device when your eBook is viewed in Adobe Reader 6 or Acrobat 6.
4. Click Tags on the Setup PDF drop-down list to display the Tags panel, and then select the Generate Tagged PDF Bookmarks check box. This option ensures that your PDF eBook text can be reflowed when viewed on smaller devices, such as handhelds or cell phones.
5. Click OK to close the PDF Setup dialog box and generate your Adobe PDF eBook.

It’s not the end of the world if your program doesn’t export its documents to tagged PDF files. You can still add internal and external interactive links to your document in Acrobat 6, as you find out later in this chapter, and Windows users have the added ability to use Acrobat’s Make Accessible plug-in to scan their PDF files and create tags that allow the document text to reflow. The plugin is designed to create tagged files out of older PDF files so that they can be used in screen-reading programs for the visually challenged. Users of Acrobat 6 for Windows can download the plug-in at:
www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1161
There is not, as yet, a Make Accessible plug-in for Acrobat 6 for Macintosh (somebody write Adobe a letter!). After you’ve downloaded and installed the plug-in, open your PDF file in Acrobat and choose Document➪Make Accessible. The utility scans your document’s formatting structure, and if enough structure is available, it converts that information to reflowable tags.