8/18/11 IMPORTANT UPDATE: We’ve updated our Nook ePub template so it works better with the black and white Nook Readers. Our new ePub template is resizable. If you’ve already bought Formatting Comics for Kindle and Nook, just delete the old version and then download the latest version! (If you have trouble at any of the sites, shoot us an email with your purchase history or receipt, and we’ll make sure you get the updated ebook.)
Artist Niki Smith and I have been making digital comics for almost a year now (more or less — though it feels much longer than that). And we want to share what we’ve learned, so other folks can join the fun and get their comics out to a whole new set of readers.
So, we did what any creative folks would do. We made a book! An eBook, to be precise, entitled Formatting Comics for the Kindle and Nook.
While the title pretty much says it all, here’s a bit more info:
Formatting comics and image-heavy eBooks can be a confusing and sometimes frustrating task. Every e-reader on the market has a different screen size, meaning that as a creator/publisher, you have to format your comic multiple times.
In this how-to guide, we’ll be talking about putting together your eBook images for the two biggest e-readers on the market: Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Nook Color.
Buy a PDF (2 MB) directly from UnWrecked Press, for just $2.99.
Or you can buy Formatting Comics from the following online distributors:
- Amazon’s Kindle Store (Kindle)
- Barnes & Noble (Nook)
- Smashwords (HTML, MOBI, ePub, PDF, RTF, LRF, PDB)
- DriveThruComics (PDF Download)
- The Illustrated Section (PDF Download)
And if you’d like to know what’s actually in the book, here’s the complete table of contents:
Introduction
Part 1: Preparing Graphics
- Adjusting for a Smaller Screen
- Tweaking the Text Size
- Adjusting Image Legibility, and Deciding on Grayscale vs Color
- Setting Pixel Dimensions for Kindle
- Setting Pixel Dimensions for Nook
- Adjusting the File Size
- Streamlining the Formatting Process
- Creating the Cover
Part 2: Uploading Your eBooks
- Uploading Your Comic for the Kindle
- Uploading Your Comic for the Nook
Part 3: Working with Digital Distributors
About the Creators
Hope you check it out, and let your comic-writing friends know about our eBook — and anyone else who may have an image-heavy book to turn into an eBook, from a coffee table book to a kids picture book to a photo book or art book. Happy publishing!
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Hi Michael,
Just wanted to point out I downloaded an epub version of your book and it wasn’t the complete book. It finished right after the Kindle pixel dimensions
Trying the pdf version now and so far it looks a lot nicer in layout imo.
Hi Adam – sorry for the troubles with the ePub version. I haven’t heard any complaints about that version ’til now. Did you buy it at the Nook store or Smashwords? Thanks!
I got it at the Smashwords store and then loaded it into the Kobo app. Btw, the pdf version ended up working perfectly so it’s all good.
Just a quick thank-you – downloaded your book and html sample, and used both to set up a graphic novel for the Kindle. Upload and conversion were smooth, not a single glitch, and the pages look the same in the downloaded book as they did when I prepared them in my graphics editor, so your pixel/dimension advice seems to be spot-on. Take a bow ;o)
Great news, Thomas. Thanks for the update, and i’ll check out “Purgatory” ASAP.
What’s the book, Thomas?
“Purgatory Volume 1″ on Amazon. All pages are the same dimensions (the max dimensions recommended by Niki & Michael, and landscape-oriented as per their suggestions for max screen space), so if you are curious about the setup, the sample will tell you all you need to know. Any shortcomings in the product are entirely my fault, due to the fact that the original pages may have been too big to rescale properly (i.e., readably) to Kindle size; a subject also discussed in Michael’s and Niki’s book, but I began my humble book before Kindle self-pubbing was available ;o)