Category Archives: Book Production

A good article on kerning in InDesign magazine for July

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Kerning is that area of typography rarely talked about. Ilene Strizver has a good article on kerning, both what it is and how to accomplish it, in the July issue of InDesign magazine. One of the sure signs of a pro book designer is in the kerning of the heads and subheads. That along with solid widow, orphan, and runt control are major areas of page layout normally ignored completely by users of Words. Of course, the sad … Continue reading →

Some concerns before installing CC (2015)

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InDesign Secrets has an important posting today. There are some concerns with the new update. Minor stuff. It uninstalls all earlier versions by default That can be fixed by unchecking Remove old versions in the Advanced Options in the CC app install dialog. Mac users must be running 10.9 or 10.10 It may not even update with the older OSes.

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InDesign CC 2015 offers paragraph shading in ePUBs

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Another incremental release? Of course… But that’s to be expected. The whole paradigm of the subscription model is that the applications keep getting better and you get an automatic update as soon as it is released. There’s been a huge amount of work put into InDesign CC (2015), but most of it does not apply to us: producers of the artwork published as books in print and as ebooks. However, one of the new abilities is very helpful. It … Continue reading →

Quick and easy letterspacing in FontLab

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I decided to post this. It’s part of my new book, Practical Font Design Streamlined. I found as I was recording the videos for My Udemy course, Practical Font Design, that I had gradually developed a new, much faster, and more efficient workflow for designing fonts. It takes what was in the original three editions of Practical Font Design to a whole new level. This post is going to offer some pieces which will be referenced in the new book. … Continue reading →

Writing a book title that works

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To the left, you see the cover of a book I wrote which includes some of this information. Marketing your book seems too difficult. One of the major problems is the book title. Many things go into writing a book title that works. But it is an issue I’ve been pondering recently. The basic questions are: Who are you & what is your book? If you are like the rest of us, you’ve discovered (or soon will) that your … Continue reading →

Are you an author, for real?

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I just read an excellent article in CreativePro called Are you a creative professional or a hobbyist?  The article is talking about graphic designers, but it equally speaks to authors and writers. The dividing line is the tools you use Every day I see questions on FaceBook, Google+, and the author groups and forums in which I participate. They are all basically the same. How can I do this or that without bothering to learn how? It’s usually written with … Continue reading →

Beautiful typography has sadly diminished

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There has been a disturbing trend lately of incredibly gorgeous fonts that make bad typography. How can that be? Beautiful typography has become very rare. To understand that, we need to look at what good typography is. I often tell my students and apprentices this general principle. Beautiful typography is not noticed! You notice and absorb the content. If you notice the typography or font, you are missing the purpose of your design. Here’s an example of a new font … Continue reading →

The Kindle fixed layout software moves books

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As I mentioned a while ago, I made textbook versions of my two best sellers: Practical Font Design and Writing in InDesign. The process was very simple and easy. I just uploaded the PDF I had developed for download. It had a bit of color added, but it is basically the print version slightly optimized for viewing on-screen. The conversion was very fast and seemingly flawless. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s just a wrapped PDF so far, with … Continue reading →

Marketing tips for fiction and non-fiction: it takes time

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Joel rarely writes for his blog any more, but it is a treat when he does. Today’s article is an excellent example of why his blog is so good: clean, concise, and useful. We can boil down the advice to the following: Fiction authors are unknown Fiction is marketed to a much wider audience who is initially unknown by the author. The new author  needs to work very hard on becoming known. Giving away books is essential as … Continue reading →