Comments on: What is Your Favorite Layout For E-books?

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:44:42 +0000

Even with an iPhone, I still like to print your book and read it that way. Call me old fashioned…

By: Sam

Sam — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:36:17 +0000

One wide column is difficult to read. Take a lesson from the newspapers.

By: Lorraine Ayre

Lorraine Ayre — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:55:24 +0000

I like it the way it is, as I always print out ebooks rather than have to scroll through them.

By: Roy Huber

Roy Huber — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:45:58 +0000

Larry,

I print and bind it as soon as I recive a update. It works great for me. Thanks for asking….

Roy

By: Jeff Kaiser

Jeff Kaiser — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:04:27 +0000

Larry,

I use the book both ways. I keep an original, unaltered electronic version. Then I save and extra copy to read and use highlighter tool in Acrobat Pro to markup this onscreen version. I also print a copy in B&W and mark it up too! So I guess this doesn’t help your dilemma much. I did find it a bit harder scrolling up and down when reading the screen version, and yes I know you can zoom in Acrobat, it just takes longer to read a selection that way. Whatever you decide won’t matter much to me, because I love your material!

~Jeff

By: larry

larry — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:12:36 +0000

@marcus- I looked at the photoshelter seo kit your refer to and I see your point. That’s a very readable layout. It’s interesting… this horizontal format feels more like a presentation than a book but it works well for on screen viewing.

By: marcus

marcus — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:27:53 +0000

There seems to be a misconception that if you go to a landscpe format that fits screens better [esp widescreen laptop screens] that you’ll have to go to a wide single column – not so. You can still have two colums, just layed out on a landscape page.

Personally I almost never print pdfs and constantly grumble that they aren’t optimized for screen reading.
I occasionally let out an audible ‘whoop’ of appreciation when I open a pdf and find that it’s layed out like a good webpage, with everything ‘above the fold’, readable columns and nice graphics. All I need to do to read it is tap the next arrow to flip the pages, ahhh that’s better!

A perfect example is the rather good and free seo kit for photographers by photoshelter:
http://www.photoshelter.com/mkt/seo-kit-for-photographers

Having said all that, it seems that a lot of your customers are happy with the status quo, some even print it out !
Ideally it would be available in both formats, which I guess wouldn’t be too big a deal depending on how much you felt it needs editing / massaging to fit well on a landscape format.

By: Pam

Pam — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:19:07 +0000

I read your e-books on my monitor, in Adobe Acrobat Pro, using the magnification setting of ‘Fit Page’, and the view/page display setting of “Two-Up’. This gives me two pages side by side, just like an open book. I also use Acrobat’s built in highlighter and save a highlighted version for my reference. Works great! Can’t imagine any format change would be better.

By: T.A.Iverson

T.A.Iverson — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:06:34 +0000

Horizontal, single column would be my vote. A two column article on a computer screen requires scrolling. Thanks for being so responsive to your readers.

By: M. Hartt

M. Hartt — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:01:17 +0000

I prefer the two-column approach, as you’ve been doing. I actually do not print out the pages, but read on my monitor. I have a large enough monitor (23″) to comfortably see a whole page at readable size without scrolling. If I were using a small monitor, then a single column would probably be preferable, but I think most people have sufficiently sized monitors for full-pages these days. However, in NO case would I want a single “wide” column in landscape format. Visually tracking long line breaks across wide columns is a nightmare for readability — and one reason that narrow columns have become so universal. Thanks.