Which settings apply to the print book, and which to the ebook?
The formatter builds two files from one manuscript, and they are different kinds of object. Knowing which is which saves a lot of confusion.
- The print PDF is a fixed layout. Every page break, margin, and line ending is decided here and never moves.
- The EPUB is reflowable. The reader picks the font, the size, the line spacing, and the screen — and the book rearranges itself to suit. See What is the difference between the PDF and EPUB downloads?
Print only
Anything that depends on knowing where a page ends is meaningless in an ebook, so these settings apply to the printed book alone:
- Trim size, margins, and the gutter
- Page numbers and their position, and running heads
- Chapters opening on a right-hand page, and the blank pages that creates
- Chapter sink (how far down the page a chapter title starts)
- Page fill, widow and orphan control, hanging punctuation, glyph-width fitting, ligatures, hyphen-ladder repair, and never splitting a word across a page turn
- How far a full-page picture reaches, and which side it starts on
None of these is ignored in the ebook out of neglect — a reading device decides all of them for itself, every time the reader changes their font size.
Both
- Your typeface choice — the ebook embeds nothing, but the style still shapes the markup and the ornaments
- Smart quotes and dashes, and every other change made to the text itself
- Front and back matter, and the chapter structure
- Pictures, including scene-break ornaments
- Hyphenation — in print the formatter decides the breaks; in the ebook the same switch tells the reading device whether it may hyphenate
Ebook only
- Where the book opens, and how deep the reader's contents list goes
- The visible Contents page, if you want one
- The ebook cover image
See Ebook settings.