Category Archives: Recent Posts

Kindle image size rules change again

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Again, Kindle image size rules change. Not a whole lot, but the new outrageous Kindle image sizes become more understandable. I was reading a Kindle formatting guide, from Amazon, the other day which said full-width images needed to be 3000 pixels wide. This is not that bad. However, in Aaron Shepard’s Publishing Blog today, I read the following paragraphs: But not long ago, I received one of those dread quality notices from Amazon, in this case warning me of … Continue reading →

Old Hermann Zapf film from 1967

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Today I ran across this Old Hermann Zapf film [look at the end of the post]. It’s an old film, 1967. But, it starts out with Hermann freehanding large caps with chalk on a chalkboard. It’s breathtaking. The letters look remarkably like what we finally see in Zapfino. It was produced by Hallmark during a visit Mr. Zapf made there. Here’s a quote from an article on Linotype where they have a lot more info: Hermann’s account of … Continue reading →

Powerful book design font groups are rare

Skilled Workman Posted on by

For the holidays, I set up a 64% Off sale for one of my powerful book design font groups on MyFonts. This includes the font families of Librum, Librum E, Librum Sans, Bookish, Bream, and Bulkr. So, instead of the normal $25 a font/$75 a family, all the individual fonts and families in the Librum Book Design Group are available for $9 per font/$27 per family or less through February 3, 2018. The image on the left links to a copy … Continue reading →

2018 publishing realities are no surprise

Skilled Workman Posted on by

The 2018 publishing realities are no surprise to any of us who have been working and keeping track of sales, books, and so on. Traditional publishers believe they’ve whipped the self-publishing problem. But though there is some stability, they are ignoring many key facts. Mike Shatzkin gives us some insight Here’s a quote from today’s post. He sees tradpub missing the elephant in the dining room—Amazon One “tell” is that Amazon doesn’t believe ebook sales are reducing, they … Continue reading →

Some new year self-publishing trends for 2018

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Sarah, from Marketing Christian Books, has shared some new year self-publishing trends for 2018. There are five things to mull over and I think she’s right. Independent publishing will continue to grow. But this is a mixed blessing. The number of books is growing like crazy, but the number of readers hasn’t changed much since 2012. Amazon will continue to streamline operations for book publishing. There’s good reason to believe that Createspace will disappear and print books will … Continue reading →

2018 ebook conversion guide using InDesign CC

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I thought a good way to start the new year would be a 2018 ebook conversion guide. Things changed quite a bit in 2017. Plus, CC 2018 added some handy new features. Remember, I have a seemingly unusual attitude. I believe that spending a lot of time hand-coding a book is a waste of time. The good news is that InDesign CC now works well enough to make writing code unnecessary. 2018 ebook conversion guide As you know, … Continue reading →

The stupid Kindle argument continues unnecessarily

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I’ve been fighting the stupid Kindle argument more and more lately. Kindle remains stupid, as far as formatting is concerned. Kindle’s immense list of things which cannot be done remains. Worse yet, they continue to strip out a lot of stuff. I’ve come to do a Kindle version with: HTML lists: InDesign does an excellent job of typesetting lists with custom indents and special bullets. They work fine in ePUBs with embedded fonts, but Kindle ruins them. … Continue reading →

InDesign CC 2018 adds borders to shading

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I’ve waited a long time to write this: InDesign CC 2018 adds borders to shading! This is one I’ve been pushing for over the past decade or so. I was excited when they added paragraph shading. I never could understand why the borders weren’t added at the same time. Regardless, the InDesign team added them for this update. Finally, we have a good sidebar solution for ePUBs This has always been a major hassle in ePUB design. Sidebars simply don’t work … Continue reading →

InDesign CC 2018 adds good stuff

Skilled Workman Posted on by

It’s been awhile. But I can actually say InDesign CC 2018 adds good stuff for book designers. We have a ePUB sidebar solution which I have been seeking for years—especially since paragraph shading was added in CC 2015. The latest version of InDesign has several new features which will really benefit book designers and publishers.  The main things are that many of the crashing bugs are gone, launch time is improved quite a bit, and many of … Continue reading →

Bulkr black sans headline font an Impact alternative

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I just released a new font, Bulkr black sans headline font. Over the years, I’ve used Impact a lot. But, not because I liked it—rather because it was the only font I could find with the bulk I needed for a given title or whatever. I finally decided to make my own. It was originally built off Librum Sans Bold, but I quickly made a mask of Impact for the widths, bumped the x-height way up, made the … Continue reading →