Download a free copy of an interactive PDF eBook

I have just made a free PDF eBook called How to Market Yourself Online.

Click the button above to download a copy of this PDF as I will be referring to it in this article.

Most eBooks are PDFs. PDFs are easily exportable from Microsoft Word. But if you want complete creative control and interactivity (with not only external links to websites but also an internal navigation system) it is better to use Adobe InDesign to create it. However, if you don’t have InDesign (and it is rather expensive), please read on as most of the points I make here can be applied to all eBooks regardless of the application used to create them.

Why use a PDF?

The PDF format was originally created for storing and editing printed documents and because of this text does not flow to fit the screen. And, because the PDF embeds the fonts you are using, the page elements are pretty much set in stone and look identical on any computer with Acrobat Reader installed. With PDFs, What You See in the application you use to create it Is What You Get when your readers view it and print it.

So, if your readership would like to print your document on a desktop printer or view it on a laptop or desktop computer, PDF is the file type for your eBook!

(For eBooks that are created for handheld devices such as phones and eReaders, ePub is the file type to go for. I will be writing another article about creating ePub documents soon!)

Page format

Page size: Create your eBook with a page size that will fill up a computer screen and print off on a desktop printer without any wasted paper. So, I would choose something like the north american letter size of 8.5″ × 11″ or 216mm × 279mm landscape (that’s 11″ or 279mm wide by 8.5″ or 216mm deep – on it side, otherwise it won’t fill up the screen). Alternatively, you could try the european A4 size landscape if that’s where your audience is. But, it’s the landscape / horizontal format which is key here.

Obviously, you don’t have facing pages in an eBook – there are no left or right pages. And it is important to have 2 or 3 columns per page. Text stretching across the wide page would be difficult to read so divide the text up into narrower legs.

Also obviously, leave a few millimeters of margin all around the text so that nothing gets cut off by any of your readers’ printers.

Make every page the same size within your PDF even though it’s possible to have multiple sizes.

Fonts: Pick easy to read fonts. You might be partial to a bit of Comic Sans or Brush Script but would you really want to read more than a couple of paragraphs in them? Trust me, you wouldn’t. Choose a dependable serif for your body text (I went for Bell MT) and a solid unobtrusive sans serif for headings and subheaders (for me, DIN).

Paragraph styles: In order to add some air or white space into the proceedings, I preferred to add space in between the paragraphs rather than indent the first line. Other than the body text Paragraph Styles, here are some others I created to make my eBook.

• Headings
• Subheads
• Bullets
• Blockquotes
• Small text style (for copyright line and credits)

Colors: In order to inject a bit of variety into the gray or black text, I would choose a couple of colors for the headings and links in the document.

Images: Again, to add a little color, choose some images to insert into the eBook’s text. Maybe one for each section head like I did. But keep them small – you don’t want the PDF’s file size to be too big. Images should be RGB JPEGs.

Navigation, branding and header & footer area

The header and footer areas of an eBook are a great way to provide branding and navigational aids to your readers. There are four elements I put on the InDesign Master Page in the header and footer area (although their usage depends on the type of eBook):

• Page number: This is crucial for navigation. In InDesign go, Type > Insert Special Charecter > Markers > Running Page Number, or Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-Option-N. It is depicted as an “A” on the Master Page but gives the page number on every page of your eBook.
• Contents page button: I set the magnification in the button to Inherit Zoom
• Next and previous page buttons: Again, I set the magnification in the button to Inherit Zoom
• Your logo: Great excuse for a bit of publicity for yourself or your company. Make it a button with a hyperlink back to your website.

Cover page and contents page

Make a cover page with an internal link to the contents page. Make the second page a contents page with each section or chapter in the list linking to that section or chapter in the eBook. Add page numbers for reference as well. With this contents page plus the contents page button on every page, your reader is never lost in your document. The reader knows he or she can flick through the eBook, easily finding the bits that they want.

Exporting the document

When exporting the eBook there are several important things to consider:

• File size: Compress the images so they’re not too big and not too small.
• Make sure it has RGB brightness: In InDesign, go Edit > Transparency Blend Space > Document RGB and make sure it is outputted to a RGB destination.
• Make sure all hyperlinks and internal links are working: In the InDesign Export Adobe PDF dialog box under Option: check Optimize for Fast Web View, and under Include: check Non-Printing Objects, Hyperlinks and Interactive Elements.
• File name: Call it by it’s first name. Not something like “EBOOK495-8343Xv22.pdf”.

Security

Once exported and you’re happy with the way it looks (that took me months, by the way, but that’s another story!) there are some super-important things you can do to protect your material from plagiarism. Get Adobe Acrobat Professional, you can download a 30-day free trial, which is OK because you’ll only need it for 5 minutes!

Open your lovely new PDF eBook in Acrobat Pro and go File > Document Properties… or Cmd/Ctrl-D. Click on the Security tab. In the Security Method dropdown menu choose Password Security. Click on the first radio button – “Encrypt all document contents”. Do not check the “Require a password to open the document” check box. But check the “Restrict editing and printing of the document”. Then enter a password and let your readers be able to print the document but not edit it by choosing the relevant options in the two dropdown menus:

Printing allowed: choose high resolution or low resolution, it’s up to you. Changes allowed: none. Do not check “Enable copying of text, images and other content” but check “Enable text access for screen reader devices for the visually impaired”. Click OK, save and you’re done.

Now your readers will be able to read it and print it. But people will find it difficult to copy your work. Try selecting text in Acrobat Reader and copying it once you’ve done this. You can’t. Haha!

Conclusion

As ever, I’m really keen to hear any of your feedback both on my eBook and my method and advice on creating one.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

I haven’t written as many posts as I would have liked on this blog in the last couple of months. The reason? I have been creating an e-book which will be used as an incentive for join my mailing list. It’s ready now!

Why did I do this?

Many reasons … I wanted to do something a bit different; to showcase my own design of an interactive PDF; to get some extra exposure. But mostly, I want to take my site to the next level.

The subject matter of the e-book is something I’m passionate about – setting up and getting noticed with a self-hosted WordPress site; SEO, social media and blogging.

Five years ago I was waking up every morning wearily to do uncreative artwork in other people’s companies. After five years of blogging, I run my own company where I am habitually involved in incredibly creative and interesting work for the most amazing and wide-ranging group of clients.

The change I have seen in my own life is testimony to the power of blogging with a self hosted WordPress site. But creating a blog is one thing; developing a website which attracts regular traffic and returning visitors is quite another, and I have outlined every step I took to achieve this in the 35-page PDF.

I will write more about creating an interactive PDF and using it as an incentive for a mailing list in the blog. I created the PDF in InDesign and I used Vertical Response to sort out the list and the sign up form.

OK, so how do you get a copy?

Please follow this link below to my main sign up page where you will only have to fill in your email address (and, if you like, your first and last name).Then you will receive an email with a subscription link. After that you will receive another email which welcomes you to the list and has the link to the PDF.

I would be grateful for comments and I hope its helpful to some of you.

So, here’s the link:

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Supplying initial ideas

Some designers will tell you that they always design one option for themselves and one for the client. One very beautifully “designed”; the other more commercial. Personally, I like to supply two or three options, all of them for the client.

Try to show the client variety in your options and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the different designs so that you can understand exactly what is needed.

Choosing great typefaces

Sometimes I like to use a combination of a serif and a sans serif typeface. Here the title is in the elegant Didot font and the body is in Futura, mostly Futura Light. Also instead of making body, or even title fonts, in black, I’ve experimented with different shades of gray.

Dealing with photography

If your advertisement has a product image in it – or any image for that matter – it is necessary to get it to reproduce as well as possible.

The photo that was decided upon for this ad was of a mature man modeling the product. There were a number of things about the photo that were improved upon (blotchy skin, dirty fingernails, wrinkles, etc.) The original photo is on the left; the re-touched photo on the right.

To make these improvements in Photoshop I used the Clone Stamp Tool (S) to get rid of blemishes and the Dodge Tool (O) to lighten areas.

Lastly, I changed the image’s mode to CMYK and made sure in Image Size that it was roughly the size it will be when reproduced with a resolution of 300 ppi.

Writing great copy

I could write a lot more about this subject, especially about the headline. This headline actually came from the client and, along with the picture, fulfills most headline criteria. It is attractive, attention-grabbing and clear.

Always be at pains to make the text as simple as possible, being informative about the benefits of the product or service.

And … don’t forget the spell check.

Supplying the artwork

Make sure all images and logos were high resolution and CMYK. Also make sure that the text was CMYK, especially that the black or gray text is made out of K (key black), without any C, M or Y. There should be no RGB colors in the artwork.

I laid this out in Adobe InDesign and exported it as a PDF/X-1a:2001. I finally checked it in Adobe Acrobat Professional where you can see all four plates separately to check that there aren’t any rogue elements in the ad that may cause problems later.

I have written further information about preparing artwork for print and supplying artwork to printers in this website.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

If your client hands you a .PPT from MS PowerPoint or and .DOC Word and says: “The presentation/print deadline is tomorrow, make this look nice”, what are you going to do?

The answer is to use other programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Quark, Premiere or Keynote and get creative!

Here are a few tips I’ve picked up over the years of doing this.

Make sure you import your client’s text into InDesign and Quark rather than copy and paste it

Why? Because it keeps the formatting (bolds, italics, heads, subheads, notes, etc). If your client has gone through the document and done this there’s no need for you to do it again. OK, you may not like your client’s choice of formatting or font, you can change that globally over the whole document in seconds. Use the Style Sheets or Utilities > Font Usage in Quark and Paragraph Styles or Type > Find Font in InDesign to turn the sow’s ear into a silk purse.

If you want a presentation to look good don’t do it in PowerPoint

I know this isn’t always an option as all the world and his wife seem to want to use PowerPoint for any purpose but, if you can’t persuade the client to go for Premiere or Keynote, there’s always the PDF. The good old PDF will give you an excellent presentation with vectors supported, movies played and excellent interactivity.

You’ve got to do it PowerPoint, now what do you do?

In PowerPoint go File > Page Setup and that’ll give you the size of the slide. Then go to Photoshop go File > New and type in the same height and width values from PowerPoint, create your attention-grabbing masterpiece, save it as a PNG (transparency is supported) and then back in PowerPoint go Insert > Picture > From File… and select your PNG.

OK, so you can do that for every page of a 40 slide deck if your client wants to edit the text, but it’ll add a bit of extra fizz to the proceedings.

Get your client to provide you with the source files

If there’s a blurry bitmap graph or chart that you need to beautify, ask if it exists as a PDF or ask for the source files. Even if it was the ugly result of a PowerPoint-Excel partnership the chances are it can be copied and pasted into Illustrator and the type can be changed and the excess crud can be deleted.

Similarly a PDF can be opened from within Illustrator with the type and the vectors editable, if the wind is blowing in the right direction, if you’re lucky!

For both of these routes you may find all the elements refusing to be ungrouped. If this is the case go Object > Clipping Mask > Release and Object > Compound Path > Release and then ungroup and see where that gets you.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

It’s the joyous season of the dreaded companies’ annual report and accounts where artworkers and printers try to make money by producing horribly boring documents full of endless tables with horrendously dull titles like “Intangible Assets”.

But, do you know the trick of how to get columns of figures to line up, as the accountants like, with the bracketed figures (negative numbers) aligning with the figures not in brackets (positive numbers)? If producing the tables in normal tabbed text in both Quark and InDesign the solution is to select the tab icon that looks like an arrow with the decimal point after it in both applications. This not only lines your numbers up on the decimal point if you have them and also “hangs” the brackets outside the numbers.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Choosing a group of colours can be a daunting exercise. OK, so there’s some golden rules to follow, like “always choose from the same third of the colour wheel”. Golden rules are made to be broken.

Adobe has a colourful website to make this a bit easier. If you sign in you can download the colourways as a .ase which can be imported to CS2 and CS3 applications via the Swatches palette (InDesign CS2/CS3: Load Swatches; Illustrator CS2/CS3: Open Swatch Library: Other Library; Photoshop CS2/CS3: Load Swatches). A pleasure to use!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

X and Y You can choose where your x and y measurements for page objects are taken in the Control bar – top left, top centre, top right, middle left, middle centre, middle right, bottom left, bottom centre or bottom right. With Quark it’s top left – and that’s it!

Duplicate spread You can add a new spread or page exactly the same as another one, in Quark you must add a page and then copy the elements.

Fill frame proportionately (Command (Ctrl for PCs) Option Shift -C) Get a picture to fit into a box without the edges showing. After this go center content (Command (Ctrl for PCs) Shift -E) and you’re just about there with most photos!

Interactive PDFs Put buttons on a master page to go to next page, previous page and contents/home page. InDesign has the ability to add numerous other interactive options to PDFs that Quark doesn’t. More about this here.

Print ready high resolution PDFs Export direct from InDesign, don’t even think about exporting them from Quark for final artwork – you have to print a PostScript file and distill it. More about this here.

Constrain proportions You have the choice to constrain proportions of boxes in the control palette by clicking on the chain/broken chain icon, you can’t constrain proportions in Quark’s measurements palette. This is so handy!

Change case Everything in caps and you want it in lower case? Can’t be bothered to capitalise words? It’s a time-saver.

Overprint preview Ever set white-out text to overprint? I have. Wish I didn’t!

Data merge Order fields from a spreadsheet direct to your document.

I haven’t even talked about drop shadows, object styles or transparencies – let alone importing AIs and PSDs.

On the other hand I still prefer the way Quark handles type and I haven’t found reliable quick keys for editing point size, leading, tracking and baseline shift in InDesign. I’m also still getting to grips with the way InDesign handles hyphenation and justification.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

The advantages of PDF publishing over internet publishing are:
1 No need to worry about browser and platform differences or about being standards compliant – if you can view a PDF properly in Reader the chances are that everyone else in the world can.
2 You can use any font you want.
3 Vector graphics appear pin sharp at any magnification.
4 You don’t need an internet connection to read or print it.

Ah, I hear you say, the web is interactive but PDFs aren’t. Wrong again!

More about this subject and how to create them in InDesign.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Take navigation. Everybody loves to click on articles in a contents page to go to that page, or click on an icon to get back to the contents page, or click “next page” or “previous page” to move through the document. Set up a master page in InDesign with a button set to the bookmark of your contents page and left and right “page turners” set to previous page and next page and, bang, you’ve done it! No need to mess around with your PDF in Acrobat Professional tediously setting all the links.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

But what if you want some text boxes to wrap around images and others to flow over? Move to front like Quark? No! Go Object > Text Frame Options and check Ignore Text Wrap whilst having the text box selected. However, if you do want Text Wrap to work like Quark‘s Runaround in Preferences (Command/Control -K), under the Composition tab, you can check Text Wrap Only Effects Text Beneath. Text beneath an item with Text Wrap applied will flow around the object – move the text to front and it will flow over the object.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

You can still use most of the keyboard shortcuts, including F7 to show and hide guides, command-shift , and . to increase and decrease both type and pictures within a box, command-option-shift ; and ‘ to increase and decrease leading by 1 point, command-option-shift [ and ] for tracking/kerning, command-option-shift – and = for baseline shift. (Shift) F5 for move to front (back). Command (PC Control) -I to view/hide text invisibles.

However, setting the Step/Repeat is command-option U, and opposed to command-option D in Quark. Whereas command- D is still duplicate.

There’s a speedy shortcut for editing text in InDesign (Illustrator users will be familiar with this). When you’re using either selection tool, just double-click on any text box—your cursor will immediately change to the Type tool.

Quark users migrating to InDesign will find the master page items behaving differently. Elements on master pages appear locked on the normal pages. To edit an item on a normal page, command-shift click on the object. Beware! This also moves the item to the front. Use layers to keep it behind other elements if that is desired.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.