Look and Feel: Publication Type, Page Turn and Covers
Choose a publication type, then adjust the page turn, its speed, the covers, the sound and the reading views, with a live preview.
Look and Feel: Publication Type, Page Turn and Covers
Everything about how a publication looks and moves is in one window, Look and feel, with a live preview of your own pages beside the settings.
Where to find it
Open your publication in the editor
Click the Settings tab (gear icon) in the left sidebar
Click Edit on the Look and feel card at the top
Change anything you like and watch the preview. Turn its pages to try each setting. Nothing is saved until you press Save; Cancel leaves the publication as it was.
Publication type
Start by picking what the publication is. Each type sets the settings below to suit it, and every setting can still be changed afterwards.
Type | Starts with |
|---|---|
Magazine, Catalog, Brochure, Newsletter, Portfolio, Other | Soft paper pages and soft covers, a 3D curl, Relaxed speed, the Paper sound, and the front cover on its own |
Book, Report, Whitepaper | Stiff covers with soft pages inside, a 3D curl, Relaxed speed, the Crisp sound, and the front cover on its own |
Board book | Every page turns as a stiff board, with the Hardcover sound |
Presentation | Opens in Slide view, one slide at a time, with no page-turn sound |
A setting you change is marked with a dot and a Reset link, which puts it back to the type's default. If you change the type later, only the settings you have not changed move to the new type's defaults; your own choices stay.
The type is also the publication's Content type, used to group publications in your library and storefront.
Existing publications keep exactly the look they had. A type's defaults are only applied when you pick it in this window.
Page turn
These apply whenever a reader is in Flip view.
Style
Option | What it does |
|---|---|
Flat | The standard page turn. The page folds in two dimensions, flat against the screen. |
3D curl | The page bends as it lifts off the screen, like a sheet of paper, turning forward and back. |
Stiff | The page swings out of the screen on its spine, like the board of a hardcover book. |
3D curl needs a two-page spread. On a phone, or anywhere the book shows one page at a time, it falls back to the flat fold. Stiff pages work on desktop, tablet and phone.
Speed sets how long a page takes to turn when a reader uses the arrows, the keyboard or a click.
Speed | Paper page | Stiff page |
|---|---|---|
Brisk | 0.8 seconds | 1.6 seconds |
Relaxed | 1.1 seconds | 2 seconds |
Slow | 1.4 seconds | 2.4 seconds |
Brisk is the speed every publication had before the setting existed. A page a reader drags by its corner follows their hand at whatever speed they move it. Read aloud waits for the turn to finish before it reads the next page, and automatic page turning is never shorter than a turn plus a second.
Sound
Option | What it sounds like |
|---|---|
Paper | A full page of book or report paper turning. The sound every publication had before the choice existed. |
Soft | Thin stock such as newsprint: duller and with almost no settle. |
Crisp | Coated magazine stock: a quicker, brighter snap. |
Hardcover | A board turning over: low, with a little weight as it lands. |
None | No sound. The mute button is removed from the reader's toolbar too, since there is nothing to mute. |
All four sounds are set to about the same volume. Readers can still mute any of them with the speaker button in the toolbar or the M key.
Covers
Stiff covers. On, the front and back covers turn as boards, like a hardcover book, even when the pages inside are paper. Off, the covers turn like the other pages, the way a magazine's do. With stiff pages, the covers are always stiff.
Front cover on its own. The front cover sits alone in the middle, and the pages after it open as two-page spreads. If you never set this, a publication with an odd number of pages gets a single cover, so its last page still pairs.
Book
Spine shadow. The shading down the middle of a spread, where the pages meet. Turn it off for flat spreads.
Tilted 3D view. Tilts the spread back so the book reads as an object resting on a surface. Desktop and tablet only; it flattens while a reader is zoomed in.
Reading
Views readers can use. Flip, Scroll and Slide. At least one stays on.
Opens in. The view a reader lands in. It is always one of the views readers can use; picking the Presentation type turns Slide view on if it was off.
Right-to-left Slide view. For Arabic, Hebrew or manga. In Slide view, pages advance to the left and the arrow buttons and keys swap to match. Flip view is unchanged and still opens left to right, with page 1 on the left, so for a right-to-left book let readers use Slide view (and consider making it the view the book opens in).
Auto-flip every. Turns the page automatically every so many seconds. Leave it empty for off. Readers always get a button to pause it.
Does this affect anything else?
No. These settings change how the book looks and moves, nothing else:
Text stays selectable and searchable
Screen readers, keyboard navigation and the Text view are unaffected
Links, hotspots, videos and ads work exactly as before
Analytics are unchanged
Readers who have asked their device for reduced motion get Scroll view, whatever these settings say.
Troubleshooting
I saved and the reader still looks the same. Reload the reader view: the viewer reads these settings when it loads the book. On a phone, the 3D curl and the tilted view do not apply.
The preview blinks when I change a setting. The page turn, speed and covers are set when the book is built, so the preview rebuilds the book for each change. It stays on the page you were on.
The page looks soft while it is turning. A page drawn at an angle is rendered at a fractional scale for that moment. It sharpens as soon as the page lands.
Readers say it is too much movement. Choose Flat or a slower speed for that publication. Every setting is per publication, so the rest of your library is unaffected.