Quark XPress 9.0 Digital Publishing With QXP 9 En Us
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Digital Publishing with QuarkXPress 9 CONTENTS Contents Introduction.......................................................................................3 Quark digital publishing options.......................................................4 Defining your goals and limitations...................................................5 Characterizing your content...................................................................................5 Assessing your customers' needs...........................................................................7 Planning for distribution.........................................................................................8 Assessing your infrastructure needs.......................................................................9 Hardware, operating systems, and formats....................................10 Hardware..............................................................................................................10 Operating systems................................................................................................11 Multimedia format limitations...............................................................................11 Delivery formats...................................................................................................11 General design approach................................................................13 Mistakes to avoid............................................................................15 Where to go next............................................................................17 Legal notices...................................................................................18 ii | DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 INTRODUCTION Introduction Digital publishing is a huge publishing opportunity. In fact, maybe a little too huge. There are so many options - and so many uncertainties — that decision-making can be a bit daunting. To make things even more complex, the answer to most of the questions you're likely to ask is probably, "It depends." The purpose of this Guide is to help you to make good decisions about digital publishing, so that your efforts will meet with success. DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 | 3 QUARK DIGITAL PUBLISHING OPTIONS Quark digital publishing options The purpose of this topic is to present the digital publishing options available through Quark® for quick reference. You may want to refer back to this table as you read about the various aspects of digital publishing referred to in the rest of the document. Media Type App Studio app and issues Description Kindle eBook ePub e-book Blio eBook A flexible proprietary A format that lets you format with a publish in the Amazon customizable, brandable Kindle store reader A standard, book-centric format supported by many readers A flexible proprietary format with a Blio-branded reader Best for Corporate and magazines Books Books Books and magazines Reader Branded reader (customizable) Kindle Kindle, Nook, Google, Apple iBooks Blio eReader Platforms iPad Multiple Multiple Multiple desktop and digital platforms Layout From QuarkXPress Built into reader application Built into reader application From QuarkXPress® Content Text, pictures, video, Text and pictures slideshows, HTML, interactivity, and more Text and pictures Text, pictures, video, slideshows, HTML, interactivity Distribution Apple App Store Amazon Kindle store Third-party Distributed by Baker & Taylor through their bookstore only Available for QuarkXPress? QuarkXPress 9.1 and later QuarkXPress 9.3 and later QuarkXPress 9.0 and later QuarkXPress 9.0 and later Available for QPS? QPS 9.0 and later — QPS 9.0 and later — Cost Varies depending on number of issues you want to sell No cost for authoring and publishing in bookstore, but Amazon may demand a portion of the profits from sales No cost for authoring; distribution arrangement varies by distributor No cost for authoring and publishing in bookstore, but Blio may demand a portion of the profits from sales 4 | DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 DEFINING YOUR GOALS AND LIMITATIONS Defining your goals and limitations When you think about digital publishing, it's easy to assume that your first questions should be: • Which devices do I want to publish to? • What format do I want to publish in? • Which tools do I want to use? However, this may not be the best place to start. Different devices, formats, and tools have different strengths and weaknesses, and it's difficult to choose from among them unless you have a clear picture of your goals, needs, and limitations. The topics below can help you to get a better fix on these, so you can make an intelligent decision when it comes time to choose a direction. Characterizing your content To some extent, the choices you make about devices and format should depend on the nature of your content. Is your content highly designed, like a magazine or a brochure? Is it primarily textual, with just a few pictures? Is it designed primarily for visual impact, or for leisurely reading? The answers to questions like these can help you decide whether you need layout view, a reflow view, or both. • A layout view lets you carefully design pages for maximum visual impact, and allows you to include multimedia content such as sound and movies. A layout view also lets you maintain your branding to the greatest degree possible, because it provides maximum flexibility. • A reflow view displays text and pictures only, usually with a user-controllable text size and font. A reflow view is less flexible than a layout view, but may be desirable because it makes it easy for the customer to read the text without distraction. Reflow view is well-suited to traditional books and reference materials. DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 | 5 DEFINING YOUR GOALS AND LIMITATIONS Examples of layout view (left) and reflow view (right) If your content is designed to make a strong visual impression, if you need to maintain your branding, and if you want to include multimedia components, you might want to consider creating a custom app, or using App Studio to create content that can be viewed in a custom reader app. If your content is strongly visual and you want to include multimedia components, but branding is less of an issue, you might want to consider creating eBooks for the Blio eReader. If your content is primarily textual, and you don't have any need for fancy layout, you might want to consider using a format such as Kindle or ePub. This format provides only a reflow view, and is compatible with a wide variety of readers. If it is critical that your content be presented in a way that is uniquely yours, you may want to consider creating a custom app, either from scratch or using the App Studio framework. Although this is the most labor-intensive option, it is also the most flexible. Note, however, that the more custom work you put into an app, the more difficult it is to recreate that app for multiple platforms. Another question you may want to ask yourself is, do you want or need to support multiple device orientations? Do your customers expect this functionality? If this is important to you, you should probably consider this when choosing a format. Many ePub readers support this functionality automatically, but not all of them. If you want to vary your layout when the orientation changes, a better choice would be a custom app or an issue created in App Studio. If you're considering using multimedia elements such as audio and video, make sure you have the resources necessary to produce those multimedia assets. It's easy to get excited about the idea of using multimedia, but creating and using multimedia properly can involve a great deal of planning and expense. You may be able to reuse materials that your organization has already created for other media, such as the organization's Web site. Some other things to think about: 6 | DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 DEFINING YOUR GOALS AND LIMITATIONS • Do you want to provide your users with industry-standard navigation controls and icons that they can use without having to think about it too hard, or do you want to create custom controls that provide a more unique experience? • Do you plan to deliver the same content on the Web? If so, what (if anything) should differentiate the Web version of the content from the version delivered on handheld devices? If there are no meaningful differences between the presentation of content on your Web site and the presentation of that content on a handheld device, you may want to consider whether you need an app experience at all. • Do you need to publish in multiple formats, or only in an app presentation? Are you porting content from another format? Can you do a single-source approach, at least to generate the initial version of a layout that you can then customize for release as an app issue? For more information about the formats discussed here, see "Hardware, operating systems, and formats." Assessing your customers' needs It's probably safe to assume that you want your customers to have a positive experience with your content. To make sure this happens, consider questions such as the following: • Do your customers want to be able to change the point size of the text? If so, consider a format that includes a reflow view. • Will your consumers be able to download your content when they want to? For example, if you want to download an app from the Apple App Store over 3G, that app must be less than 50MB in size. If you want to make sure such an app is downloadable over 3G, consider a lighter-weight format such as ePub, or try to minimize the size of any multimedia assets you include in your apps. • How quickly will your customers want to be able to download your content? Even on an unrestricted network, you might want to think about keeping the size of your files as small as possible, in order to prevent your customers from becoming frustrated with the wait. • In what languages do your customers want to read your content? If you want to distribute content in multiple languages, you should make sure that the format and device you choose support those languages. For example, some East Asian and Eastern European languages use characters that are not available in many Western fonts, and some languages are read in different directions than Western languages. The ePub format supports East Asian and Eastern European languages on some devices, but it may not support them on all devices. If you want to use the Blio eBook format, or when creating content using App Studio, you must use only the layout view, because special characters may not display correctly in reflow view. • Do you expect your customers to have an Internet connection when they're consuming the content? If so, you should make sure your content behaves gracefully when customers don't have access to a network. If you create issues of content in App Studio, you can DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 | 7 DEFINING YOUR GOALS AND LIMITATIONS provide a default or "fallback" image or other graphic element in each spot where you display content live via the Web. For more information about the formats discussed here, see "Hardware, operating systems, and formats." Planning for distribution Just as there are many different ways to distribute print content, there are many different ways to distribute content for handheld devices. The way in which you choose to distribute your content probably depends on what that content is for and how you plan to generate revenue. Consider how often you plan to release content: • Do you need to distribute small amounts of content on a frequent basis? If so, you might want to consider creating a news-reader-type app using a framework such as TapLynx. This approach allows you to build and distribute your app once, then regularly release updates to the content displayed in that app without requiring the customer to do anything but open it. In this model, the cash flow usually comes in the form of ad revenue. • Do you want to publish content for sale on an infrequent or irregular basis? For example, are you a publisher who wants to make book titles available to your customers? If this is the case, you may want to consider using the Kindle format or the Blio eBook format and eReader. If you have no need of layout view, you might consider a large existing distribution network such as Amazon, or one of many smaller distribution networks. • Do you want to sell published content on a recurring basis? For example, are you creating a digital magazine? You can accomplish this by creating a custom app for each issue, but this can be work-intensive, and some customers may not want to download a new app every time. You can also consider creating an App Studio reader app, and then selling individual issues from a Web server. If you choose this approach, you can customize the app to display your branding, or use a generic viewer app. (Note, however, that this approach limits you to the platforms supported by App Studio.) If you choose to distribute App Studio issues that are viewable in a reader app, you should consider whether you want to make a sample issue available so that the user can experience the value of your publications. You can bundle a sample issue with the app, but if you do so be wary of file size, both for reasons of download size restrictions and to avoid making your customers wait too long. You can also provide free access to a sample issue from within the reader application. Of course, you need a plan for generating revenue. The options here include selling apps on an individual basis, selling issues that can be viewed in a reader app, selling books (for example, for the Kindle Reader or the Blio eReader), and selling advertising. If you choose to sell advertising, you can work out individual deals with advertisers, or use an existing ad network such as Apple's iAd (for iOS only) or Google AdMob (for iOS and Android). 8 | DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 DEFINING YOUR GOALS AND LIMITATIONS When you're thinking about advertising, you might also want to think about analytics. Do you want your app to provide you with information about how it's being used, and how your content is being consumed? Both iAd and AdMob include options for gathering such information and using it to tailor advertising. Finally, how many different platforms do you want to deliver on? Here, custom apps are the least appealing option, because they must be written separately for each platform. A better option may be to use a framework such as the App Studio framework, which currently supports only iOS but is planning to also support Android. This will allow you to create issues once and then distribute them on both of these major platforms. For maximum coverage, consider an industry standard format such as ePub. For more information about the formats discussed here, see "Hardware, operating systems, and formats." Assessing your infrastructure needs Creating content for digital distribution is only one part of the digital publishing process. If you plan to deliver content for digital devices, you need to make sure that you have all of the infrastructure necessary to do so. For example, if you plan to host content on a Web site, you need to consider how much space you're planning to need and how many downloads you anticipate having, because both of these typically affect the amount you are charged for hosting. In any case, you should track your usage information once you have launched, analyze it, and make any necessary adjustments to your hosting plan. (If you create an app or App Studio issue that includes content served over the Web, you should also consider the hosting plan used for that content.) Billing is another important aspect to consider. If you are selling individual apps or issues, you need to make sure you have the infrastructure necessary to take payments for that content in every market where you want to make that content available. Probably the easiest way to do this is to use an established network such as the App Store, the Blio bookstore, or Amazon, because these organizations are designed to make this aspect of business easy and transparent for content creators. Finally, you should probably have a plan for promoting and marketing your content. You can hire an expert to handle this for you, or promote your content yourself using social media such as Facebook and Twitter, or you can do a combination of both. DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 | 9 HARDWARE, OPERATING SYSTEMS, AND FORMATS Hardware, operating systems, and formats When you're thinking about publishing to handheld devices, it's good to know as much as possible about the hardware, operating systems, and formats currently available for such devices. Hardware It's important to know which types of hardware you want to make your content available on because different devices have different advantages and disadvantages. For example: • Physical size: If you're designing content for delivery on a smaller screen, you probably want to design it differently than you would for a larger screen. When designing for a large screen, you might augment the table of contents with thumbnail previews for each item — but on a smaller screen, you might want to keep thumbnail images to a minimum. On smaller screens, you might also want to give serious thought to providing access to all of your content in reflow view. • Resolution: When designing on a computer monitor, keep in mind that the resolution you're designing at might be different from the resolution your content will be viewed at. If the resolution of your monitor is significantly higher or lower than the resolution of the device you're designing for, you need to keep that difference in mind during design. It also means you should do usability testing with your content early on, to avoid committing yourself to a design that may be unreadable when viewed on the target device. • Network access: Does the device you're designing for have constant access to the Internet? Or is it designed to download content only from a proprietary server, like the Amazon Kindle? If the device has constant access to the network, is it only at a limited speed or limited file size? You need to know the answers to these questions if you're planning to provide on-the-fly downloadable content such as updates or magazine issues. • User interface: Selecting and zooming are a major part of the experience of consuming content on a digital device. Does the device you're designing for have a touch screen? If so, what gestures does it support? If you're designing for multiple devices, do you know what kind of gestures they all support? Does every device you want to use support multiple orientations? 10 | DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 HARDWARE, OPERATING SYSTEMS, AND FORMATS • Orientation switching: Most devices support orientation switching, so regardless of the target platform, you'll probably have to think about doing two different layouts. Operating systems A sad fact of designing for digital devices is this: different operating systems require different apps. If you want to make content available natively on as many phones as possible, you may need to find or create an e-reader for iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, webOS, and Blackberry OS. Even the same OS can work differently on different devices (for example, different devices run different "flavors" of Android). Fortunately, there are several ways to avoid having to write a native app for each operating system. For example: • You can deliver content using a special version of your Web site that is designed for use on mobile devices. • You can deliver content using a generic platform that delivers players for different platforms. For example, you can view Flash content on any platform for which there is a Flash player. However, you cannot currently view Flash content on iOS, and Flash support is still evolving even on mobile platforms that do support it. • You can deliver content using a proprietary platform that delivers players for different platforms. For example, Blio plans to make its eReader available on a wide variety of platforms, and offers the ability to include interactive content for multiple platforms, as well as static text. Amazon's Kindle format can be read on a variety of devices, and Apple's iBooks application runs on both iPhone and iPad. • You can deliver content using a generic format that can be read on almost any platform, such as ePub or PDF. Multimedia format limitations When choosing a delivery format, keep in mind that not all multimedia files are supported on all platforms. For example, video must be encoded to H.264 format in order to be viewed on iOS, and support for Flash is currently unavailable on iOS devices and limited on many other devices. Delivery formats There are several types of formats for delivering content to handheld devices: • Open formats such as ePub and PDF. Formats such as these can be attractive because of their ability to display on almost any device and operating system. However, you should keep in mind that it can be difficult to monetize content in an open format that has no established framework for control and distribution. DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 | 11 HARDWARE, OPERATING SYSTEMS, AND FORMATS • Device-specific or OS-specific formats, such as apps for iOS or Android. Content in this type of format may allow only for limited release, but may allow the author to take advantage of the existing infrastructure of an institution such as the Apple App Store and the Android Marketplace. Writing your own app also leaves you leeway to create pretty much anything you want, provided you're willing to put in the effort. • Controlled, proprietary formats that can run on multiple devices and operating systems, such as the Amazon Kindle and Blio eBook formats. Formats such as these often offer the advantage of a dedicated distribution system, which can make it easier for a publisher to reach a large audience without giving content away for free. 12 | DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 GENERAL DESIGN APPROACH General design approach Before you start designing anything, you should know as much as possible about the answers to the questions asked earlier in this document. The features and limitations of the format(s), operating system(s), and device(s) you're targeting may severely limit your choices when it comes to design. If you feel like you already have a good understanding of what you want to create, here are some suggestions on how to approach creating it. • Decide upon a general approach. Avoid reinventing the wheel. Try to find an app/reader that looks and works the way you want it to, then think about what it is that you like about it and how you might improve on it. • Decide how you want the UI to work. Make sure the UI feels natural. In other words, make sure the design makes affordances for the UI, rather than just imposing an arbitrary UI on every page. • Decide what kind of layout you want. A standard way to do an e-book is to simply mimic the experience of reading a physical book, with pages that you can turn. However, this isn't the only way to lay out an e-book. For example, you can present a horizontal line of thumbnails, each of which represents an article, with a scrollable vertical list of page thumbnails underneath each (this is called a "page stack"). In full-page view, a page-stack design lets the user swipe horizontally to browse through articles and vertically to read them. DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 | 13 GENERAL DESIGN APPROACH A page stack • Build and test your templates. If you're templating multiple publications, make sure you think about orientation during the templating phase and do plenty of testing before you start using those templates in production. Test your fonts, colors, styling, and UI on all of the devices you plan to publish to. If you're converting content that was designed for another medium, look for problems with very small elements such as narrow and hairline rules, frames, small text, etc. • Build your content in an organized way. Decide on naming conventions for styles, colors, objects, and so forth, and stick to them. Consider putting all of your interactive items on their own layer so that you can easily show, hide, and isolate them. • Save the reflow view for last. Make sure your visual layout is FINAL before you start working on reflow view. • Test, test, test. It's worth a little tedium to avoid embarrassing yourself and having to re-release apps and content. Make sure you test with someone other than the people who designed the content and/or app. 14 | DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 MISTAKES TO AVOID Mistakes to avoid Digital publishing is an extremely flexible medium. This flexibility means it's possible to do amazing things, but it also means there are pitfalls that you may not be aware of. For example, just because you can use multimedia elements such as movies, slideshows, and audio in a digital publication, that doesn't mean you should do so on every page. Generally speaking, multimedia elements should be used only when they introduce value that could not otherwise be harvested from the content. An audio sample in an article about a band might be appropriate, where an audio sample from an interview with a dull-sounding subject might not. When you do use multimedia elements, make sure the control of those multimedia elements is squarely in the hands of your users. A movie that plays when users first view a page might be fine in a publication where the user is unlikely to visit that page again, but could become tiresome if the user has to sit through the movie each time he or she returns to the page. Instead of having such multimedia elements start automatically, consider providing clear visual indicators of their presence and allowing the user to decide whether he/she wants to view and/or listen to them. Just as importantly, make sure the user always has an obvious way to stop the playback of a multimedia element, in case he or she decides against viewing or listening to it. In situations where you provide visual indicators of the presence of multimedia elements, it may be tempting to get creative, but your users will probably be happiest if you use industry-standard visual cues. For example, if you want to indicate that a box contains a video snippet, a right-facing triangle in the center of the window is probably the clearest way you can indicate this. Similarly, a horizontal bar with a play button is the preferable way to indicate the presence of an audio clip. It's also important to adhere to industry standards when it comes to navigation. As of this writing, the standard way to navigate from one page to the next on a handheld device is to use a horizontal swipe of the finger. On multi-touch screens, the current standard for zooming in and out is to use pinch-in and pinch-out gestures. On devices that do not support such gestures, arrow icons work well for page turning, and magnifying glass icons work well for zooming. (This may seem obvious, but it's still important enough to mention.) If you want to create a high-end digital publication, one of the most important mistakes you might want to avoid is creating something that looks like it was created by mindlessly shoving content into a template. There's nothing wrong with starting from a template, DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 | 15 MISTAKES TO AVOID but if you don't use some of the design features that are offered by high-end tools such as QuarkXPress, you may be leaving money on the table. Lastly, always make sure you test your digital publications on inexperienced users before releasing them. This is a great way to reveal design flaws that otherwise might not be obvious. For example, it's easy to design a page that includes full-screen multimedia elements that can prevent the user from being able to turn the page. 16 | DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 WHERE TO GO NEXT Where to go next Nobody really knows what's going to happen next with digital publishing. It's a new market, with new players and new tools, and it's difficult to predict which direction it's going to evolve in. The best you can do is learn as much as you can about how the market works and the tools you can use to enter it - so whatever happens next, you're ready. We hope you find this guide is helpful in that respect. DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 | 17 LEGAL NOTICES Legal notices © 1986-2012 Quark Software Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Protected by the following United States Patents: 5,541,991; 5,907,704; 6,005,560; 6,052,514; 6,081,262; 6,633,666 B2; 6,947,959 B1; 6,940,518 B2; 7,116,843; and other patents pending. Quark, the Quark logo, Quark Publishing System, and QPS are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quark Software Inc. and its affiliates in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. 18 | DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9
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