The explosive growth of e-books and digital content in the book industry over the past several years has created myriad challenges for publishers and developers, including the fragmentation of tools, language, and formats used to create content for various reading systems.

One hot-button issue is the creation of static, fixed e-book "pages" called fixed layout. The popularity of fixed-layout e-books is growing, but many people are still unsure why and when fixed layout is a good idea.To make matters worse, there is no single standard for creating fixed-layout products and information on creating them is rapidly changing and sometimes hard to find.

To help address these challenges, The Book Industry Study Group (BISG), through its Content Structure Committee's Fixed Layout for E-Books Working Group, has created a Field Guide to Fixed Layout for E-Books. To download this document, please visit our Publications Page.

The Field Guide is intended to be a brief and handy introduction to fixed
layout, including when it's the most appropriate format to use--and when it's not. In addition, the Field Guide offers practical guidance on the basics of creating fixed-layout formats, current retailer standards for supporting fixed layout, and issues of accessibility to consider before creating content in fixed-layout format.

NOTE: The e-reader ecosystem is fast-moving and changing rapidly. BISG has therefore developed the Field Guide to Fixed Layout for E-Books to be a living, evolving document and as such, BISG intends to update the document frequently. As noted in the Field Guide itself, there is information missing on several key retailers, which we intend to provide in later versions of this document. We also welcome industry participation in keeping the Field Guide up to date. If you know of more recent developments, or have suggestions for other topics to cover within the document, please let us know. Contact info@bisg.org.