Category Archives: Recent Posts

Curation: a main focus of your blog

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Book business has a good article today entitled: Are content curators becoming more important than content creators? In many ways they are, especially in niches for non-fiction. For example, on my companion blog, Reality Calling, it’s main purpose has become the curation of Christian speculative fiction. These books are hard to find because the major book sites like Amazon, Nook, iBooks, and Kobo have no way to effectively search for them. So, my constant book reviews provide a way for … Continue reading →

Returning to InDesign CC (2014)

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Some of you have wondered why there’s been no update to CC (2015) in the book. Basically nothing was changed, I thought. So, I found no reason to update though I was using the new version for my production. It works very well. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to temporarily go back to (2014) for InDesign. I’ve been working a very limited schedule lately due to other things I need to get done. … Continue reading →

Readability is the prime virtue of book design

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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 →

Amazon is not the enemy, it’s the pathfinder

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Get off your lazy butt—it’s a jungle out there! The only way to beat the leader is to be better at what the leader does. I was reading yet another excellent article this morning from Mike Shatzkin about the current state of affairs in traditional publishing. He makes good points, which also apply to indies and self-publishers. We need to keep our head in the game. Amazon earned their place in publishing They are dominant in ebooks, not … Continue reading →

On a lighter note: we have a legal replacement for Comic Sans…Comic Neue

Skilled Workman Posted on by

One of the most maligned fonts in recent years is Comic Sans. I’ve never really understood why people (especially type pros) hate Comic Sans so bad. But then, it’s really not a part of my life. This is the new solution: Comic Neue! If you click on the image above it will take you to the page where you can download this for free. The change is fairly radical, but it does have a similar feel to … Continue reading →

A good article on kerning in InDesign magazine for July

Skilled Workman Posted on by

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 →

A long-term analysis of publishing by Shatzkin

Skilled Workman Posted on by

How big will self-publishing get? Mike has written another excellent article you should read: Over the long run, things will almost certainly change in very big ways because of the inexorable forces eroding publisher margins described above. I wouldn’t be surprised to see only two or three big trade publishers as soon as ten years from now. I’d expect that the two recent plateaus we’ve reached, with ebook sales stabilizing in relation to print and with bookstores … Continue reading →

DPS lives! BUT at a price…

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Adobe’s DPS was originally released as a solution for magazine designers. It can do some amazing things with layouts, turning a magazine into an app. The problem has always been making it available for individual designers, and its considerable expense. Rumors have been flying that Adobe might move it to a solution named Adobe Publish. Now we find out that this idea’s dead also. What they’ve done is retain the DPS name and tied it into CC … 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 →