The growth & popularity of ebooks is constantly on the rise! Especially today, when there is more digital content consumption, publishers are making great use of ebooks to reach their audience. Pushed by the pandemic, the popularity of digital ebooks has also grown manifolds. Supporting the statement, eBook revenues went up to $91.6 million in January 2021, up 21% from that in January 2020. In fact, the figures and several pieces of research suggest that the eBook sales surge will continue even in the near future!
Keep this in mind, are you also keen on developing your ebook? While you can create simple ebooks in fixed format or in the form of PDFs, you can level up by creating an interactive & enhanced ebook for your readers! Read further to find out more about how you can create interactive ebooks and how outsourcing ebook development can benefit you…
What are interactive & enhanced ebooks?
With publishers looking forward to providing an immersive reading experience to their readers, interactive ebooks can do just that! Interactive e-books are portable & shareable files that have various elements and rich media embedded in your ebooks with which your audience can interact with. Other than simply adding text and images, interactive ebooks can have audio files, quizzes, widgets, video files, animations, and a lot more!
Sounds interesting, isn’t it?
Using the latest technologies like HTML5 & EPUB 3.0, you can experiment and create enhanced ebooks that not only drive readers’ engagement but also help you interact with readers in a whole new way. You can provide rich experiences to your readers, provide questions & answers and even send feedback —all inside your ebook! By producing an interactive ebook, you can spice up your simple content, gain a competitive edge and add a unique selling point to your content.
Benefits of creating an interactive ebook
With interactive eBooks, you can grab reader’s attention, cause greater engagement, and increase your reader base. Here are some more benefits of developing interactive ebooks:
1. Drives engagement
As your ebook is backed by rich multimedia content like videos, images, audio, etc., it drives more engagement as compared to regular eBooks or print books. Organizations can engage their customers and employees by adding a layer of interactivity for better engagement. Similarly, K12 and higher education utilize interactive eBooks to make the learning experience more interesting & engaging for their students.
2. Easy update of content
Interactive ebooks can be easily updated with fresh content and illustrations from time to time, without much cost involved. Using advanced digital publishing platforms like OneRead, you can add multimedia or update digital content whenever required.
3. Greater accessibility
ebooks facilitate your readers to access content anywhere on multiple devices and platforms including Mobiles, eReaders, PCs, etc. Furthermore, readers can download the ebooks and access them even without internet connectivity.
4. Immersive reading experience
Rich functionalities & embed multimedia in interactive eBooks, make the content contextually relevant and provide students an immersive and enhanced reading experience.
5. Cost-effective solution
As compared to paper books, ebooks are a far more cost-effective solution. The cost of creating & printing multiple versions of a book is eliminated while developing an ebook. You only have to invest once in creating & designing your ebook.
6. Multiple applications
eBooks are not just performing wonders for educational publishers but are also being utilized by various businesses for training & onboarding purposes. Using eBooks is also an effective way to strengthen your brand and boost your marketing efforts.
How to create an interactive ebook?
1. Clearly define your requirements & decide your eBook type
Before jumping on to creating an enhanced ebook, it is first important to keep your target and requirements clear. Here are few things to keep in mind:
- Define the platform and type of ebook: Having a clear plan for your ebook is a must. Based on whether you are creating an ebook for children or for your employee training or marketing purpose, your first job is to decide the platform for publishing your ebook. As your ebook will be targeting a certain audience, it is vital to know how to reach them. Here are some options for defining the platform/device to put into consideration:
- Web app or a dedicated website: If you wish to directly share the URL of your enhanced ebook, you can consider developing a web app or a website.
- Book as an app: Whether you are building your ebook from scratch or converting your print book into a digital ebook, a book as an app is a great way to reach your readers. This gives you a chance to launch & publish your ebook as a mobile app, where your readers can directly install the app & get access to the content. If you publish your ebook on a platform with a ready-built reader like Kindle, you cannot change the reader’s interface. However, building your own app gives you that liberty!
- Read aloud ebook: Whether you are keen on developing travel guides, children’s ebooks, cookbooks, etc you can create an enhanced ebook with read-aloud features. As audiobooks have gained huge popularity in recent years, creating one can be a profitable deal!
- ePUB file: If you want to give away your ebook file independently, you can create an epub file that can be shared across different devices or published to the ebook store. For eg. You can create an interactive Kindle ebook in the KF8 format to get your book published on Amazon Kindle. You can similarly create digital ebooks for different eReaders & platforms like Apple iBooks, B&N Nook, etc.
2. Prepare interactive book content & material
Once you know the type of ebook you want, the next step is to prepare content for your interactive and enhanced ebook.
- Choose among the various ebook formats available: Before you directly start writing your content, you need to choose from the two ebook layouts: fixed layout and reflowable layout. Depending on your ebook requirements, you need the carefully choose among the two as a wrong decision may lead you to re-create your ebook all over again.
- Fixed layout: In a fixed layout ebook, you will precisely decide where content and all the other elements will be on the page and how they will appear on the ebook. Each & every element of your ebook will be fixed and will never wrap or change.
- Reflowable layout: In this type of format contents of the page can “flow” in order to automatically adjust to the device’s screen size. With this format, your content will change in order to the device’s orientation, thus enhancing the user reading experience.
- Write your ebook content: With different ePublishing platforms & software available, you can either write your ebook directly into the software or import your content from a word document or PDF file. While writing your ebook, you can add interactive elements at the end or can simultaneously add them.
If this is your first time creating your ebook, and you’re worried you don’t have the writing skills, you can leverage ebook creation and conversion services and take the help of ebook copywriters and proofreaders. These copywriters will do the writing for you and will also proofread your content thoroughly to ensure that there are no errors.
Wondering what to do if you already have a published book?
If you already have a print book, all you need to do is convert your existing book into an electronic book. You can outsource enhanced ePub conversion services and get help from ePublishing experts who can proficiently convert your book into your preferred file format and also add interactive elements to your ebook.
- Create your eBook assets: Your ebook assets include all your multimedia and elements like your visuals, audio, and interactive content.
- Create a clickable table of contents: To help your readers easily navigate through the book, create an interactive table of content & link your pages carefully. Make sure to preview your ebook to ensure that you’ve linked the correct chapters to their corresponding titles in your table of contents.
- Embed Videos: You can embed videos into your ebook for your reader to engage them to the next level. To provide an immersive reading experience and elaborate your content you can create and upload videos of your choice.
- Add audio files: People are constantly looking for news to consume content. And so, you can record your own audio over or upload an audio file so that your interactive ebook readers can choose to listen to the ebook content.
- Attach Animations: Interactive and enhanced ebooks come with wonderful animated elements that can be added to the content seamlessly. Many ebook development platforms offer tons of animation options that you can consider in your ebook design.
- Other interactive elements: You can additionally add other interactive elements to your ebook including external links, charts, graphs, quizzes, pop-ups, and a lot more!
3. Design and customize your ebook
Once you have the content and ebook assets ready, the next step is to design the ebook and develop its cover. Since your eBook cover creates the first impression on your readers, it is important that your cover should be striking and attractive! To get your ebook cover and layout designed by the experts, you can Outsource Interactive eBook Services and get typesetting services and stunning designs for your interactive ebook.
Alternatively, you can also make use of tools or ebook creation software that have ready-to-use templates, which you can use and customize as per your requirements.
4. Publish & distribute your ebook
Once you have added all the content, interactive elements, and cover image, you can preview the eBook on the eBook creation platform to cross-check everything one more time. Once you make sure that everything is accurate, you can finally save the final ebook and export it in your preferred file format.
No matter how interesting and engaging an ebook you create, the performance of your ebook ultimately boils down to its distribution. You should make sure that your ebook gets the right exposure. You can publish your ebook on several platforms like Kindle, iBooks, Barnes & Noble Press, Kobo, etc.
5. Secure your ebook
Digital content can be illegally used and copied. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is one of the best ways to protect your ebook. With DRM solutions, you can stop users from copying, printing, and sharing your ebook.
Why outsource interactive ebook development?
While you can create an ebook on your own, however, the technical aspects of creating an ebook cannot be ignored. For example, you will have to decide the format for your eBook before publishing, including PDF, ePUB, MOBI, AZW, etc.
Not just that, when creating an ebook you will also need to decide whether to go for a fixed layout or reflowable, add animations, videos, gifs, assessment, and the list goes on. Here, outsourcing has a clear advantage.
Expert eBook developers understand your objectives and deliver interactive and enhanced eBooks following and using the best industry standards and tools. Other benefits associated with outsourcing ebook development services are:
- Get specialized writing skills: If you are building your book from the scratch, you will need copywriters to help you create engaging content for your audience. By outsourcing interactive eBook services, you can have skilled and experienced content writers and proofreaders on your side.
- Get domain-experienced professionals: when you outsource interactive eBook conversion services, you get access to a pool of domain-experienced professionals who can assist you at every step of your ebook development process.
- Get your ebook developed in a quick turnaround time: With experts helping you to create a highly engaging and interactive ebook, they are well-versed with the development and conversion process and can deliver the final outback in a quick turnaround time.
- Lower your development costs: As compared to hiring content writers, graphics designers & other resources in-house, outsourcing ebook development & conversion services can be a cost-effective solution.
- Get multi-lingual experts: Interactive eBook conversion services can help you convert your tiles into different languages like German, Spanish, English, Hindi, etc. to help you reach a global audience.
- 100% accuracy in the conversion process: When you outsource Enhanced ePub conversion services, you get accuracy close to 100% in your final ebook. Ebook development experts make sure that all your content is error-free and follows the highest quality standards.
SunTec India: Your ideal interactive & enhanced ebook development partner
At SunTec India, we create enhanced eBooks that go beyond your expectations. Focused on providing an immersive reading experience to end readers, we ensure that your ebook has rich multimedia integrations, high-quality content, and attractive design. As a leading interactive eBook service providing company, we can help you develop enhanced eBooks with audio, video, quizzes, HD photos, puzzles, narration, and a lot more into your story, thereby amplifying the reader’s understanding.
Do you also need help in creating an interactive & enhanced ebook? Write to us at info@suntecindia.com
