Category Archives: Writing In InDesign

New release: InDesign CC Book Production, putting books together

Skilled Workman Posted on by

With this final release, InDesign CC Book Production, Putting the book together, my video coursework for book production is complete. This course removes the difficulty and relives the complexity of producing excellent quality, professional books. This is a very practical course. There is a lot to learn, but none of it is very difficult. It is very complex though. It is the goal of the course to make the complexity easy to understand and relatively simple to execute. If you have … Continue reading →

New version of InDesign CC 2015.2 released today!

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Click on the image to find links to download the free trial, buy a subscription, or whatever. This is always a big day for me. I’ve been working getting ready for the changes, so I can help you with any questions. Again, this go-round, there’s not much for book production. OpenType and Glyph Features There are new features to help with OpenType glyph choices. They are available from the Font Menu, from contextual menus when selecting characters [right-click], and there’s … Continue reading →

Readability is the prime virtue of book design

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I decided I needed to beat an old drum. Readability is the focus of book design typography. This was the core of curriculum in my digital publishing degree. It’s the center of my graphic design and book design efforts. Without comfortable, readable content, your book has a severe handicap. What is readability? This is all about book design typography. Here’s a little graphic to show you some of the things that influence how easily you can read a … Continue reading →

Guest post: The future of ebooks by Michael W. Perry at inklingbooks.com

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Michael’s comments are worth reading I didn’t ask his permission this time, but this is an excellent comment by Michael in reply to my posting about the probable need to go back to using Amazon’s Kindle Export plug-in in InDesign CS6. Michael’s comments are again right on target as far as I can tell. My only hope is that someone at Amazon reads them. Many thanks for such a detailed explanation. My main take-way is that Amazon … Continue reading →

What desktop publishing did to graphic designers, self-publishing is doing to authors

Skilled Workman Posted on by

OK! I’m a little punch-drunk I’ve been through this before. In fact, I’ve been through it five times now. it’s been pretty much non-stop since 1991. My life and career [yours too, probably unless you’re a kid born after 1980—especially after 1990] has been radically transformed on a continual basis since 1990 with five major paradigm shifts. Hand-drawn art and metal type to photo-production [Offset Lithography]—the 1960s & seventies:  I started in the midst of this change. My … Continue reading →

New release: Designing ePUBs With InDesign by David Bergsland

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Ebooks have been a mess until now. Actually, they still are in many ways. However, InDesign CC 2014 has truly solved most of the problems. It always did export the best PDFs. Now it exports very good ePUB FXL (fixed layout), reflowable ePUBs, and because Kindle will upload the reflowables converting easily, the Kindle problem is solved also. Wonderful that all our problems are solved, right? Well, you know better than that. Each format requires a redesign … Continue reading →

Writing and working in InDesign makes using it easy

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I was talking to a friend a couple days ago. He mentioned the primary trouble he has in using InDesign to format his books: when he gets into InDesign he can’t remember how to use it. Suddenly, it dawned on me that this is a primary reason why writing in InDesign is so effective. Not only is writing fully formatted in InDesign the best method of communicating clearly with your readers [outside of excellent content], the simple act … Continue reading →

New Release: Writing In InDesign CC 2014 Producing Books, more than an update

Skilled Workman Posted on by

CC 2014 virtually redid ePUB export—adding fixed layout & radically improving reflowable ePUBs Indesign has always been the best software for publishing: print & ebook. I have already posted quite a bit about the new software. Most of the improvements seemed to be focused on we self-publishers. But my book is also redone— in places quite radically. A review by Mary Campagna Findley for the CS6 version “David Bergland has challenged me to think beyond the writing, editing, and cover design … Continue reading →

InDesign CC 2014 Reflowable ePUBs are even better

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Although the large changes in ePUB export are seen in the fixed layout variety, what they now call reflowable ePUBs are also improved. They have their own dialog box and they are a separate choice when you export. You now add the metadata in the export reflowable ePUB dialog box. This saves time and hassle. Our control over placed graphics is much better, as long as you stay within the rules. Inline graphics are all rasterized or … Continue reading →

InDesign CC 2014 offers excellent fixed layout ePUBs

Skilled Workman Posted on by

This is probably the big news for InDesign CC 2014. Although there have been many improvements to Reflowable ePUBs, they are incremental. The ePUB FXL has the possibility of being almost revolutionary. So, how big is this change? It is very hard to show the differences because the layouts are so different. But, let’s look at two examples where I did the best I could to get the same content side by side. In this small-sized screen … Continue reading →