Category Archives: Recent Posts

What is the good of a newsletter? Should you start one?

Skilled Workman Posted on by

  I have a unique perspective on this because it was one of my primary skills as a graphic designer for many years. This was in the pre-digital bad ol’days where everything was done by hand [type, photos, graphics] and pasted up on large mechanical boards with 2-16 pages per board. Now, I certainly realize that digital has changed the industry a lot.  I taught digital printing production for well over a decade—wrote textbooks about the process. Email … Continue reading →

Brick & mortar bookstores continue to be in trouble

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Yes, I know this is not news to many of you. But it serves as a good reminder to see the Publishers Weekly article this morning showing that Books-A-Million is still diving with sales of books & magazines down nearly 10% over the past year. Our local Barnes & Noble has become irrelevant because they have nothing but best sellers and traditional publishers in their store here. In fact, the store is now barely half books. It’s very … Continue reading →

Practical Font Design video course is up on Udemy

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I’ve finally gotten my practical font design video course up online and available for you. This is just practical stuff without any fancy theory or stuffy rules. This is just basic procedures to make a font with minimal effort. I let you watch as I design several fonts. I provide sample fonts. My goal is to help you get some fonts produced so that you can make your own designs with confidence. You’ll find many of my opinions, but … Continue reading →

Where have I been? Learning video production

Skilled Workman Posted on by

 This is what we expect in the next week I’m sorry I haven’t been around for awhile. I’m producing a Practical Font Design video coourse for Udemy. First issue, the old computer couldn’t handle it. New computer. get everything set up. Oh hi! Haven’t seen you in a while. The course should be up next week. I’ll be back.

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Mark Coker nails it again: we’re tired of the whining, just let us publish everywhere

Skilled Workman Posted on by

The Indie author furor! Big publishing isn’t dead, but it may be preparing to shoot itself in the other foot. 2014 will be quite a year. Mark’s article is real good—from Publisher’s Weekly.

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Book Production speed becomes more important…

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Mark Coker makes the following prediction for 2014: Production takes on increased importance in 2014 – One of the most important secrets to ebook publishing success is to write more books. As a writer, your writing is your unique creation. It’s your product. Authors who write great books (and produce more of them), are the authors who build sales and platform the fastest, because each new book represents an opportunity to please existing fans and hook new … Continue reading →

Reminder: PostScript fonts do not work in ePUBs

Skilled Workman Posted on by

 Click to enlarge This capture shows you some of the different characters available in an OpenType font. This font, Contenu Book, has oldstyle figures [lowercase], lining figures [caps], & small cap figures. It also has true small caps, discretionary ligatures, ornaments, ordinals, and more. These things are always supposed to be used in print, even though only InDesign and Quark support such a thing for page layout AFAIK. I assume most of you know this, but I … Continue reading →

New Release: Writing In InDesign CC Producing Books

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Released, January 15, 2014 for InDesign CC9.2 By now many of the sites have listed the book. As usual, we are still waiting for iBooks approval. But it’s up at Amazon in print and Kindle. Kobo has it listed. The rest are all in process. The best option for ebooks is the link below where you can get an archive with a downlaodable PDF plus a DRM-free ePUB with fonts embedded. This will enable you to load … Continue reading →

Why does list quality matter in your ePUB?

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Yea, I know, here goes David off on another of his “professional quality” rants again…. But this one’s important! Lists are #3 in reading importance The studies I’ve seen [and please prove me wrong if you know better] show that, after picture captions and headlines, lists are third in reader importance. Many readers look for lists as they start skimming when they get bored. They assume that a list will give them a synopsis and let them … Continue reading →

Walmart looking to best Amazon, with B&N?

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Maybe you saw my unfounded rumor posting the other day. I simply seemed to me that Wal-Mart could do well to buy B&N and Smashwords. Since then I have seen two other mentions of the possibility of buying B&N. The most recent one was this morning from DBW. In a post entitled “Amazon: A Cheetah Hunting Gazelles (Publishers)” we read this Real Competition From Barnes & Noble?  Industry consultant Joseph Esposito has also been studying Amazon and … Continue reading →