Category Archives: Recent Posts

What if Walmart bought Nook & Smashwords?

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Yes, this is a totally unfounded rumor just started by me. But what if? Would this give Amazon some competition for Kindle? The iBookstore may be the best quality, but there is no indication that it will ever take off like the iPod did. It goes along with this other unfounded rumor. Why doesn’t Smashwords buy Nook? Other people are obviously having similar thoughts. God forbid that dying Microsoft would do it, or Google. So, what are … Continue reading →

InDesign CC ePUBs now handle floating graphics fairly well

Skilled Workman Posted on by

There are always going to be complaints. But I can do everything I want to do with anchored graphics right now. With one major exception: It’s hard to predict what will happen with a graphic crossing a page break. If it’s floating, it may just not render. I can understand that. I really don’t have any idea how to handle that. But I can simply change my graphic so it doesn’t float and the page break will … Continue reading →

ePUB production just took a major leap upward with InDesign CC9.2

Skilled Workman Posted on by

The new InDesign CC9.2, released this week, gives us much to be happy about as book publishers Most of the changes affect book production. The long-promised TypeKit integration is now available with over 700 Adobe TypeKit fonts freely usable and licensed for print, Web, and ebook as part of Creative Cloud. It runs much faster. There has been a major reworking of the hyperlinks panel to simplify its use. There’s a full featured QR code generator. There is … Continue reading →

Book Production Charges are often ridiculous!

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I received this post today from GoodReads purporting to give reasonable figures for editing and page layout for books. The table is from the original blog posting. While these may be common charges for freelancers living in large cities, they only serve to show how far out of touch the bi-coastal publishing industry has gotten. Let me give you some idea of what we are talking about here. I just finished a non-fiction book today with 124,000 … Continue reading →

I’m teaching a Webinar on troubleshooting the font design process

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Please click here to contact us with any questions Troubleshooting Your Fonts Webinar   Dear David,      Happy New Year and welcome back to the Fontlab webinar series! To start off the new year  (Tuesday, 21 January at 11:00CST) David Bergsland will talk to us about troubleshooting the font design process. For many, if not most, new font designers dealing with the sheer quantity of characters and glyphs is daunting. What is needed is a procedure to get your … Continue reading →

The new flat UIs or the Emperor has new clothes

Skilled Workman Posted on by

We all remember the story. A king is scammed by cunning tailors to walk around naked. The new iOS7 and Mavericks [OSX.9] are clear examples of this type of thinking. The lemming designers, like the Weather Channel, are beginning to run around proclaiming the wonders of the new kingly style. As you can see below, shutterstock claims the lemmings are going wild for the new style. Hey! The emperor is naked!!! Fashion which forgets about the reader … Continue reading →

Author beware! You are responsible to make good choices

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Dave Bricker posted a long article today about the dangers of publishing without knowing the expenses and requirements of book production. You need to read the article if you are ignorant of the scams perpetrated on authors. Most publishers you run across with a quick Google search as you start your hunt for help will be vanity houses seeking to scam the author. There are countless people lusting after your production money This is where you need … Continue reading →

A possible replacement for PDFs or a new type of book?

Skilled Workman Posted on by

This one almost slipped past me. Bob Levine wrote about  it at InDesign secrets. Adobe’s now giving away licenses to the .folio format. This could be huge! Magazines were dying because .folio was so expensive Now maybe we’ll see some more folio readers. Maybe tablet reader apps will be able to handle folio also. Maybe PDF will finally go the way of the dodo. The ability to offer books with multiple columns and portrait/landscape versions gives technical … Continue reading →

One main benefit to self-publishing and ebooks: unlimited shelf life

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Here’s a quote from my new book, Writing In InDesign CC, due out soon. I don’t know about you, but I tend forget this in the heat of the moment as I am launching a new book. “Sales continue to grow: Unless you are publishing very unique time-limited work, on-demand sales slowly grow and continue to grow. Because there are no warehousing issues, there are no reasons to stop selling your books. In many cases, your sales will … Continue reading →