Can you format an ebook with photos?

[sandree]

I have a pdf book I have sold on Etsy for a long time. It is a how to for making glass beads. It has photos on every page. Can this be made into an ebook? I kind of assumed that it couldn’t but now I’m wondering. If it can be made into an ebook, could I use Vellum for the formatting? I think it would look better in a larger format than the normal ebook. Is that possible?

I assume that it would be very expensive to do POD, but if anyone has any ideas on that, I would be interested to hear that too.

[Denise]

I have a pdf book I have sold on Etsy for a long time. It is a how to for making glass beads. It has photos on every page. Can this be made into an ebook? I kind of assumed that it couldn’t but now I’m wondering. If it can be made into an ebook, could I use Vellum for the formatting? I think it would look better in a larger format than the normal ebook. Is that possible?

I assume that it would be very expensive to do POD, but if anyone has any ideas on that, I would be interested to hear that too.

Yes, you can add photos on Vellum. If the book is black-and-white, POD is actually the same price.

[sandree]

Thanks - these would be color photos...

[Denise]

Thanks - these would be color photos...

Oh, yes, then it'd be a fortune to print POD...

[Tom Wood]

The download fee at Amazon is 15 cents per MB, I think. Color photos may create a large file.

[Denise]

The download fee at Amazon is 15 cents per MB, I think. Color photos may create a large file.

Not really. For ebooks, the important thing is the size of the files and the compression rate. I'd suggest using this to make the images as small as possible:

https://shortpixel.com/online-image-compression 

It makes a big difference.

[sandree]

That should work - it’s not a long book - I could format it and see how big the file gets...

[Tom Wood]

Thanks Denise - I forwarded that site to a friend who wants to include a lot of graphics in an ebook.

sandree - Let us know how it works!

[sandree]

I’ll do that!

[Maggie Ann]

Yes, I've done it in a cookbook. Denise is right. It's the size of the files that count.

It is a bear getting everything to line up right.

And Denise is also right about POD costing a fortune. I made two versions. One in color and one in B&W. Then I eliminated ED to get the cost down even further. But when the print book sells, it inevitably sells in color despite the higher price.

[sandree]

Can I ask what your color version is priced at? And what does ED stand for? Interesting that it is the color version of the POD book that sells better.

[Maggie Ann]

Can I ask what your color version is priced at? And what does ED stand for? Interesting that it is the color version of the POD book that sells better.

It's 56 pages and sells for $8.99. ED stands for Expanded Distribution. It was more important to me to keep the price low. Libraries are most unlikely to buy a 56 page cookbook anyway. It's a companion piece to two previous books, a novella and a novelette. The bundle sells (on the rare occasion that it does sell) for $22.99.

Cookbooks are a hard sell so I had to keep the price down as low as possible.