Fixed layout: when the page is the design
There are two kinds of EPUB, and choosing the wrong one is a decision you feel for the life of the book.
A reflowable EPUB is text in a container. The reader picks the size, the typeface and the margins, and your words re-wrap to fit whatever screen they are holding. You do not control where a line ends, because you are not the one deciding how big the letters are.
A fixed-layout EPUB is a set of pages. Every element sits at a coordinate you chose, at a size you chose, on a page of a shape you chose. It behaves like a PDF that a reading app will open: the reader can zoom the whole page, but nothing moves or re-wraps. What you made is what they get.
Most books should be reflowable. A small number genuinely cannot be.
The books that need a fixed page
The test is not "does my book have pictures." It is whether the position of things on the page is part of what the book says.
- Picture books. Words and pictures are one composition. The line of text sits in the sky above the character for a reason, and the page turn is a timing device. Reflow that and you have an illustrated document, not a picture book.
- Comics and graphic novels. The panel grid is the storytelling. Panel order, gutters, the full-page splash and the placement of every balloon are all authored. There is no meaningful way to re-wrap a page of comics.
- Cookbooks with real page design. A single-column recipe reflows perfectly well. A spread where the ingredient column, the method, the timing sidebar and the photograph are arranged against each other does not.
- Workbooks. Anything with answer spaces, worksheet grids, rules to write on, or a form to complete depends on a page that keeps its shape.
The pattern is the same in all four. Lose the arrangement and you lose information.
In the Interior Formatter. It builds the reflowable EPUB 3 that almost every book should ship — structured chapters, accessibility metadata, alt text carried across — alongside a print PDF that handles the page-shaped work: full-page plates, bleed images and two-page spreads. Start a book → · about the Interior Formatter
What it costs you
Fixed layout is not the premium option. It is a trade, and the bill is real.
The reader cannot resize the text. This is the big one. Every accommodation your reader relies on — bigger type, a different face, more line spacing — stops working, because the size is baked into the page. Someone who reads at 18 pt is now pinching and panning.
It fails on a small phone. A page designed at spread width, shown on a six-inch screen, is a postage stamp. Some reading apps offer a panel-by-panel mode for comics, which helps that one genre and nothing else. Assume a meaningful share of your readers will be on a phone, and design the page knowing it will arrive small.
Accessibility depends entirely on how the text is made. If your words are real text positioned on the page, a screen reader can read them and assistive technology works. If the words are part of the artwork — baked into the illustration file — they do not exist as text at all. Nothing can read them, nothing can search them, and no amount of metadata fixes it. Keep text as text, and write alt text for the pictures. Accessible ebooks, and why they are now everyone's problem covers what that obligation now looks like.
The files are much larger. You are shipping full-page images instead of a few kilobytes of marked-up text. Stores cap total file size and some price your book against it, so the size question stops being academic — see What makes an EPUB pass validation.
Support differs by store and by device. Fixed layout is not one thing implemented identically everywhere. Stores accept different flavors of it, apps render it differently, and features like read-aloud or panel navigation are present in some places and absent in others. Check the guidelines of each store you sell through rather than assuming what worked in one carries to the next, and open the file on more than one device before you publish.
A novel in fixed layout is simply a worse novel. No upside, every cost. If you have been told your book will "look more professional" this way, the opposite is true — you are handing the reader a file that ignores their settings.
The rule that decides it
If the page could be re-flowed without losing meaning, reflow it.
Not "could it be re-flowed without losing the look." Looks are not the test. Meaning is. A novel with a map at the front loses nothing when the type grows; the map is one image in a stream of text. A picture book where the text curls around the illustration loses the composition, which was the book.
Everything about the reflowable format — reader choice, accessibility, small files, predictable store support — is a real advantage. You give it up only when the page is the design.
Two editions, set separately
If your book does need fixed layout, plan for two builds, not one file reused twice.
A picture book needs a fixed-layout ebook sized for screens, and a print edition set to a trim size with bleed, a gutter that swallows part of the inside margin, and a spine computed from the real page count. Those are different geometries, and neither exports cleanly into the other. Set the page once for print and once for screen, from the same artwork. Treating the print PDF as the ebook is how you end up with crop marks and a gutter on a tablet.
In the Interior Formatter. For an illustrated print edition it checks every image against its printed size, supports bleed images and two-page spreads, and passes the final page count to the Cover Maker so the spine is computed rather than guessed. Start a book → · about the Interior Formatter
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Links in an ebook, and where they should point · More: EPUB and print PDF are two different books · Putting images inside a book · Kindle, EPUB and the format alphabet