Tag Archives: Adobe InDesign

The importance of designed books in the self-published future

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I read an excellent article this morning on the importance of designed books. Actually, the article does not mention books, but the concepts apply. Here’s a quote from the interviewee, Dave Snyder Design in the most classic sense is a potent business strategy. That’s not to say it’s only about business efficiency. Everything needs a high level of craft, but even that can’t put lipstick on a pig and make people believe the pig is not a pig. … Continue reading →

Self-publishers trade publishing dreams need excellence

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Self-publishers trade publishing dreams need excellence to provide better hopes. There are realistic, if remote, possibilities of being picked up by a “real” publisher. But only if you can demonstrate excellent sales, a sizable following, or ongoing usage (like coursework, regularly scheduled seminars, and the like). I thought the image of Victorian woodtype might help drive home the concept of tradepub being a step back to a time which really doesn’t exist any more. Traditional publishing as we … Continue reading →

InDesign CC 2017 whimpers in esoterically, under the radar

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Yes, I said that InDesign CC 2017 whimpers in under the radar. Version 12.0 has very little for me. Your usage may vary. But, this is all a normal part of the process as software matures. And, have no doubt, InDesign is matured—the best in the field. To restate things, InDesign can now do almost anything you need. It’s been that way for me since CC 2014. The result is that the engineering team adds features which apply to smaller … Continue reading →

Converting Books to Ebooks with InDesign CC

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Book designers often dread converting books to ebooks — the process of changing a greyscale printed book to various full-color ebooks: downloadable PDFs, ePUB FXL and Reflow, & Kindle books of various flavors from e-ink to large Fire tablet. It often seems a bit like wizard work requiring incantations, lots of smoke, and mirrors. Sad to say, on the Kindle end of things, that’s fairly accurate. Yet things are not as they seem, as InDesign CC has … Continue reading →

Amazon still doing Kindle book modification

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I received this in an email from Aaron Shepard this morning. I didn’t get permission to copy this, but I’ve done what I can to make sure you know this is Aaron’s writing. Evidently, Kindle book modification is still a problem after they are uploaded in the name of “better typography”. Aaron has some serious questions about this process. It is certainly something of which to be aware. The following quote is from Aaron’s email: One of the problems in … Continue reading →

Book typography: The reality of picking fonts

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The basic parts of type Again, we need some more basic language definitions. You can see above how the point size of the type relates to the ascender, cap height, x-height, baseline, and descender. More importantly, you get a glimpse of things that are important in the world of typography. This illustration is from my font design book, Practical Font Design With FontLab 5, which is available in print as well as ebooks at iBookstore, NookBooks, Kobo, Scribd, and … Continue reading →

Book Publishing With InDesign CC: Spiral-bound

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Even after over forty-five years, there’s still that little thrill when you see a finished book for the first time. It’s too bad that Amazon won’t carry them. But, they are the best choice for the classroom or self-study. The spiral-bound workbook I had to cut out the Christian marketing section to get the page count below the 470 page maximum for spiral-bound. The only thing I really miss are the color graphics. To get that (and … Continue reading →

A free sample of “Book Publishing With InDesign CC” is available

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I’ve published a sample of the new book on the Adobe servers. It’s about 75 pages of the various sections of the book. If you are interested in a review copy I recommend the PDF is reader’s spreads with the full color graphics. Let me know if you are interested. Here’s a link to the page with more information and purchase links. If word processor book production is taking up too much time and the results are … Continue reading →

Page Layout Part Six: Designing body copy styles

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Body copy styles The first formatting decisions I will be talking about are for the body copy. This is what Word calls Normal. Many of the Word docs you get to setup will be entirely locally formatted Normal. It is the main content of your book, and it must be comfortable to read. This paragraph style is what produces that smooth type color you need for the background against which the contrasting heads and subheads stand out. … Continue reading →

Page Layout Part 5: Graphic needs of the formats

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Graphic needs for Print, PDF, ePUB, & Kindle KFX For book publishing, what you need to understand about graphics is how usage varies in the different formats. You’ll need to hand-adjust to produce the graphics for the various formats. Automation causes many problems. I’m just going to list the four options and their requirements, best formats, and so on. Greyscale print with color cover Lulu & Createspace, plus professional on-demand like Lightning source: You need to be careful. … Continue reading →