Deciding Between Fixed Layout ePubs, Dynamic ePub or a Kindle Print Replica Format

You may be wondering what the difference is between Fixed Layout ePub and standard dynamic ePub? You can find all the answer here.

Dynamic ePUB

A dynamic epub file is one where the text and images reflow to fit the device screen (iPad, kindle etc.), epub was designed for this purpose and most ebooks do this now. This is a simple but ingenious way to keep the text and images all at a readable size irrespective of the screen size, but unfortunately, the original printed page formatting and layout is often lost. This isn't an issue for black and white fiction titles but it can give an unsatisfying result for books with a lot of illustrations and photographs or where the page design is a key element. Automated routines can convert the printed page format into ePUB at a very low cost, however, good quality ePUB conversions will always require some skilled design interaction and QA.

Fixed Layout ePUB

One alternative to dynamic ePUB is to create an ebook which has a "fixed layout" (only some devices eg iPad currently support this), in this way the page stays in the same layout whatever the device or screen size... equivalent to seeing an exact copy of the printed page on screen. The page will always look the same thus preserving the printed page layout, but the user has to zoom in and pan around to see the detail or be able to read small text, especially on devices with smaller screens than the printed page. However this format is ideally suited to coffee table books or highly illustrated children's novels.
At the present time fixed format is only available in iBooks on the iPad and iPhones.

Is the straight conversion of books to fixed layout or Kindle Print Replica formats missing the point?

Put it this way, if the paper book had never been invented do you think ebooks would be in the same format and look the same as they do now?

I can understand that publishers and authors have pdf's or InDesign files for printed books and a quick win solution is to convert these to ebooks in their current format. By fixing the format using fixed layout or the Kindle Print Replica format the publisher can make sure they don't lose any of the hard work they put in designing the layout of the book but the crucial issue is that these were designed for a paper book of a specific size with pages.

Preserving the paper book formatting and putting this on a digital device doesn't add anything to the reading experience. In most cases the e-reader will be smaller than a double page spread of the paper book and the pages will be reduced in size thus forcing the user to zoom in and then have to pan back and forth to read each line.

Fixed layout offers a valuable and powerful tool in making ebooks look and perform well but in my view, for it to work well, publishers need to redesign the pages to fit the device before they use it. This may mean increasing text sizes, reducing image sized or removing detail from the page.