Digital eBooks FAQ

Why Malayalam Digital Books? 

An author/writer, reader or an online self publisher may have different types of doubts about digital/ electronic books, so something like FAQ can bring the advantages from this online screen reading world.

1. What is the benefit of digital eBooks?

Very easy to access, fast reading, sharing and download at anywhere, anytime. Global outreach enables quick problem solving nature especially for reference. Also, no pollution compared to print books. It is very cheap. Full time availability with your smartphone, tab, desktop, laptop or e-Reader and it replaces the space of bookshelf. thousands of these can be kept in a single device forever.

Normally big banner companies are marketing their favourite authors or writers for making huge profit. There, newcomers are not well promoted. Thus, self publishing on their own website is a better option thereby they can control the entire things such as online payment, download, making corrections etc,. Do you know, some publishers have a self publishing package starting from Rupees. 10,000 to 1 lakh!

Without considering digital rights management (DRM), one Malayali can opt MS-Word for it's production.

Use page size 6x9 inches for pdf format. Don't forget to add page number, footer names, paragraphs to each page as in print books. Allow justified text without breaking the connected words in two lines. Choose font size more than print size but never mix different types of fonts together.

Minimize your luxury cover page for eWorld. Make it as simple as you can because a large photo cover page requires more time to download, then the reader never waits for this. He usually skips to other search pages.

We should note that, internet surfing is a fast process where the reader has a speedy mind and he is looking for concise, precise subject matter directly hence a maximum of 100 pages is good. However, it is not applicable to novels and stories.

The Unicode consortium has a set of numbers designed for each Malayalam character that can make a uniform display in almost every device.

Swathanthra Malayalam computing S.M.C offers free Unicode for the online needs. Meera, Anjali, old lipi, Keraleeyam, Dyuthi, Chilanka, Rachana, Raghu are some examples. Clickerala also provides Nila and Kaveri fonts.

Noto Sans Malayalam is used in Google Chrome and Android while Microsoft Windows uses Kartika from C-DAC.

World famous format is ePub from IDPF. Amazon has KF-8 and Mobi, these all are working properly with English and other leading languages. Even though ePub has a fixed and flowing format, this is not popular here.

In Kerala government official notifications of PSC, lottery and other various departments, PDF is a common file format. That is why our device needs a PDF viewer or reader to download such files. In other words, this format is more user friendly fixed layout digital reading. In which free Adobe reader is the best one.

No doubt, tab reading is something better than other devices for ordinary people. Kindle devices, iPad, Sony, Kobo eReader is more costlier and no Malayalam support in some devices. Small sized screen of the smartphone and the handling of the laptop is bad. So, a book sized lightweight tablet is the best option.

Intelligent script managers (ISM) are not Unicode in nature hence such coding is not applicable to different devices of uniform display. But some publishers have scanned ISM print pages to PDF but font missing may be the result.

The In-script keyboard is the official one from C-DAC and this is the best choice for long term typing. If you are a fresher or with small works, then go to Google input tools and download Malayalam kit. Windows also has Malayalam index language tools for manglish typing of transliteration.

In 2015, India is now promoting digital textbooks and advanced types of learning. Kerala is also doing the same way. Thus, we can expect better future of Malayalam digital eBook publishing and online reading. Such author or writer can do better things with this FAQ.

2. What are the advantages of self publishing author/writer?

3. Which software is most suited for Malayalam screen publishing?

4. Things to remember with MS-Word

5. How can you prepare a cover page?

6. About the total page numbers...

7. Why the Unicode font?

8. Some free Unicode fonts

9. Default Unicode Malayalam fonts?

10. Which is the better format option?

11. Why should I select the PDF format for Malayalam eBooks?

12. Which device is the best for digital book reading?

13. Can I use the ISM font for eWorld?

14. Suitable keyboard for Unicode typing-

15. Some demerits of digital eBooks? Piracy, plagiarism, no awards or promotions are some disadvantages. There is no book release function and no advertisements or famous critics. Poor people can't afford any devices.

16. What is the future of the ePublishing industry?