Author looking for great ebook art works

[jules_siegel]

I am a writer and graphic designer whose work has appeared over the years in Playboy, Best American Short Stories, Library of America's "Writing Los Angeles," and many other publications. I administer newsroom-l, an email discussion list for journalists.

I am also active in the field of bookarts. My works are in the Museum of Modern Art Artists Books Collection and other private and institutional collections. You can read more about me than you will need to know in several lifetimes at http://www.cafecancun.com/bookarts/jsiegel.shtml

I am putting together a presentation on digital book art for a major art book publisher. I need outstanding examples of the creative uses of the ebook format. I will appreciate any suggestions that you might have.

Many thanks for any help you might be able to offer on this. Please pass this message along to anyone who might be helpful.

[desertgrandma]

Welcome to MobileRead, jules_Siegal.

[happy_terd]

Hello and welcome to MR!!!

[ImogenRose]

Hello and welcome to MR!

Imogen

[MickeyC]

Hi jules and welcome to MobileRead

[neilmarr]

Good to have your company, Jules. Do you see a difference between ebook and paperback/hardback cover work? My own indie house over the past year or so has tended to have covers designed that we feel are as effective in black and white for e-ink readers as on paper or on LED colour devices (including PCs and laptops as well as colour tablets), but I can see no obvious sign of any other house taking the need for b/w compatibility into account. Interesting point. Best wishes. Neil

[Valmore Daniels]

welcome

[Sandra Edwards]

Welcome to MR!

Sandy

[GeoffC]

Welcome to mobileread ....

[jules_siegel]

Thanks for the welcome.

[jules_siegel]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

Good to have your company, Jules. Do you see a difference between ebook and paperback/hardback cover work? My own indie house over the past year or so has tended to have covers designed that we feel are as effective in black and white for e-ink readers as on paper or on LED colour devices (including PCs and laptops as well as colour tablets), but I can see no obvious sign of any other house taking the need for b/w compatibility into account. Interesting point. Best wishes. Neil

Converting illustrated books to ebook format (other than PDF) involves so many design compromises that it's really like creating a whole new design. So far, I'm only working in the Kindle format, which eliminates most typographic refinements, including the choice of fonts, and only supports inline layout. It reminds me of early HTML.

I change all the InDesign heading styles to the Heading 1, Heading 2, etc., and then export to RTF, edit and save as Word HTML and then clean up in Dreamweaver to remove the Word HTML formatting. Once this is done, I insert the images in Dreamweaver, and create the Kindle file in Mobipocket Creator.

I'm converting my images to 16 gray scale PNGs. Some of them work out just fine. Others need considerable work in Photoshop, including various "artistic" filters and/or half-tone screens. I also have experimented with Mangle.exe, which does beautiful PNG conversions, especially when combined with Photoshop editing. I assume that since Kindle is so utterly basic, it will provide a proper foundation for conversion to ePub and other formats.

From what I've seen in my online research comic-book format graphic novels seem to be converting well. Graphic designers are complaining about the glitches (many, very frustrating) and constraints. The non-PDF ebook is not a visually friendly environment, which is unfortunate, as it would be the least expensive way to distribute full-color graphically rich works.