Category Archives: Author Writing

Christian non-fiction reduced to $.99 per book

Skilled Workman Posted on by

The prices have been reduced on The Narrow Gate and Knowing Jesus As His Bride from the Advanced Discipleship series. Plus, the three verse by verse epistle studies are also at $.99 The Easily Understanding Scripture series $.99 each There are three books released in this series so far. Finding the Power to Believe: A study of Philippians Learning to walk in freedom: A study of Galatians  Godly Leadership & Power: A study of both Timothies The Advanced Discipleship … Continue reading →

When marketing your books, keep it real

Skilled Workman Posted on by

There’s an excellent article today on Site Pro News called How to Create Shareable, Likable, and Organic Content. Of course, as a writer it bothers me a little that there are two typos in the headline. But the points made by Julia are dead on for all of us who are forced to do marketing. The amount of advice available is staggering. After all, what is more obvious for a marketer to do than write a book, about what … Continue reading →

Review: The Self-Publishers Ultimate Resource Guide from The Book Designer team

Skilled Workman Posted on by

It’s hard not to be really disappointed. Joel has been a superb source of data and knowledge for many years. But there is no information here. This book is just a list of resources There is nothing here except a list of people I’ve never heard of. Of course, I live life in a relatively small niche. None of the people I know as resources in these categories are listed. I have no reason to think any of … 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 →

Guest Post: Amazon has put itself in trouble proprietarily

Skilled Workman Posted on by

This posting is a slight expansion of a comment made by Michael Perry of Inkling Books on my “Designing ePUBs With InDesign” New Release posting this morning Michael has been a long-time friend of The Skilled Workman, and his comments have made this a much better blog. He is much closer to a traditional publisher than I. His opinions are worth analyzing and I agree entirely. As you can see in his comment, Amazon is not interested in … 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

Skilled Workman Posted on by

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 →

Why InDesign is even less optional than it was

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Click to enlarge As you know, I am convinced that you are hurting your chances with your book if you do not use InDesign in the production process. This is even more true now that InDesign CC 2014 has added the direct export of fixed layout ePUBs. Plus, no one exports the quality of PDF produced by InDesign for print and downloadable PDFs. InDesign now has five ebook export options Actually, with all the options, there are even … Continue reading →