9.0

Examples of layout view (left) and reflow view (right)
If your content is designed to make a strong visual impression, if you need to maintain
your branding, and if you want to include multimedia components, you might want to
consider creating a custom app, or using App Studio to create content that can be viewed
in a custom reader app.
If your content is strongly visual and you want to include multimedia components, but
branding is less of an issue, you might want to consider creating eBooks for the Blio eReader.
If your content is primarily textual, and you don't have any need for fancy layout, you
might want to consider using a format such as Kindle or ePub. This format provides only
a reflow view, and is compatible with a wide variety of readers.
If it is critical that your content be presented in a way that is uniquely yours, you may
want to consider creating a custom app, either from scratch or using the App Studio
framework. Although this is the most labor-intensive option, it is also the most flexible.
Note, however, that the more custom work you put into an app, the more difficult it is to
recreate that app for multiple platforms.
Another question you may want to ask yourself is, do you want or need to support multiple
device orientations? Do your customers expect this functionality? If this is important to
you, you should probably consider this when choosing a format. Many ePub readers
support this functionality automatically, but not all of them. If you want to vary your
layout when the orientation changes, a better choice would be a custom app or an issue
created in App Studio.
If you're considering using multimedia elements such as audio and video, make sure you
have the resources necessary to produce those multimedia assets. It's easy to get excited
about the idea of using multimedia, but creating and using multimedia properly can
involve a great deal of planning and expense. You may be able to reuse materials that your
organization has already created for other media, such as the organization's Web site.
Some other things to think about:
6 | DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9
DEFINING YOUR GOALS AND LIMITATIONS