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.