Tag Archives: desktop publishing

What desktop publishing did to graphic designers, self-publishing is doing to authors

Skilled Workman Posted on by

OK! I’m a little punch-drunk I’ve been through this before. In fact, I’ve been through it five times now. it’s been pretty much non-stop since 1991. My life and career [yours too, probably unless you’re a kid born after 1980—especially after 1990] has been radically transformed on a continual basis since 1990 with five major paradigm shifts. Hand-drawn art and metal type to photo-production [Offset Lithography]—the 1960s & seventies:  I started in the midst of this change. My … Continue reading →

Book Production Charges are often ridiculous!

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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 →

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

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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 →

New Release: InDesign Ebooks Conversions, 2nd Edition

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Updating the ebook conversions techniques to InDesign CC Your book is ready to print How do I produce my ebooks? Here’s a set of workable techniques: InDesign Ebook Conversions for $2.99 If you had enough sense to fully format your book in InDesign, the answer to how to make ebooks is “easily, though not simply”. The largest problem most graphic designers have is that this whole “ebook thing” is a confusing mishmash of options and possibilities. This book … Continue reading →

Multiple linked TOCs in ePUBs for CC

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One of the new changes to InDesign CC is an innocuous checkbox at the bottom of the Table of Contents dialog box for: Make text anchor in source paragraph. What this does is make sure that any TOC has functional links in the exported ePUB. As Ron Bilodeau commented, “You can now have multiple ID-generated TOCs within your document(s) and they will all exist with correct links within your exported ePub file.” Now you can have custom … Continue reading →

Writers designing their own books in InDesign? Of course!

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I posted last week about the dangers of allowing your ebook to degenerate into a Website. After all, “An ebook is just encapsulated HTML & CSS.” It was basically a plea to design your ebooks in InDesign. I missed making my core point. I wasn’t saying that code geeks cannot design ebooks. I was saying that most coders are not designers, but technicians. One of my commenters (Tom) suggested that writers are just as bad as coding … Continue reading →

Drop caps

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Drop caps One of the typographic devices used to indicate the beginning of a story or chapter is the drop cap. In this use, the first letter or letters of the first paragraph is (are) made large enough to be three, four, or five lines of type tall and inset into the paragraph. The first-lines of that paragraph are tabbed around the letter or letters. First of all, this is very easy with page layout software. InDesign’s implementation … Continue reading →

You must learn to produce your own book

Skilled Workman Posted on by

For the past two decades, I have taught digital publishing skills. For the past fifteen years I have written and published books, both traditionally and on-demand. I have taught skills to present digital content transparently, effectively, and gracefully. I’ve learned how to present reader-centered books to my students and followers. But Word [and word processors in general] cannot do this. There are skills and capabilities that are necessary which are simply not available in Office. Here’s a … Continue reading →

Typography: Type has nothing to do with typing

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It is obvious that even the terminology is different. However, we have hardly begun. Much more significant than the new language are the actual mechanics of typesetting. The rules have changed! In fact, one of the difficulties in teaching publishing classes today involves a paradox. Writing classes are secretarial. Classes all teach writing using Word: but Word cannot produce professional typography or the formatting services required by the reader. Writing groups assume Word: if you give them … Continue reading →

Writing in InDesign gives you layout power

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I’ve been working on a new expanded version of “Writing In InDesign” for my peers in ministry. (I haven’t figured out how to add the updates into the first edition.) I may write “Drawing In InDesign” first. Then I’ll do a radically expanded 2nd edition of “Writing In InDesign”—but that’s all in flux. I also received this in an email this morning: From Don in Colorado: I was up until 3:am reading Writing in InDesign. I can tell you’ve put … Continue reading →