Tag Archives: InDesign

Keeping your file size under control for graphic ePUBs

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I was working on my best-selling book this morning, Practical Font Design, Third Edition. It’s an ePUB with 266 graphics in it—almost entirely screen captures—showing what I am doing in FontLab as I design a font. I design my ePUBs in InDesign CS6 & use the export unchanged I realize that’s anathema to many of you code geeks, but the ePUBs out of InDesign are now more than good enough—if you design within its limitations. Now that … Continue reading →

Setting up your book to be read: page layout

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Page layout basics One of the more daunting aspects of book design for the inexperienced is page layout. Most people have Word experience and as I have said countless times already—Word cannot do professional page layout. In fact, it is worse than that because Word’s feeble attempts give you bad habits and poor expectations—which must be corrected. Many settings have to be covered for every document. Many of these are set up as you go through the … Continue reading →

What skills are needed to self-publish?

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What skills do you need? The idea is that InDesign can be learned and you can become comfortable enough with the software so that it becomes an extension of your creativity. For example, as I started this chapter in the Writing In InDesign book, I hit the shortcut to set my headline. This started the chapter on the next odd page (which is the norm). When I wrote the headline and hit the Return key, InDesign changed to … Continue reading →

Benefits of the new self-publishing paradigm

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There are many benefits of the new self-publishing options. I’ll cover the financial at the end. It is very fast! One of the real changes in the new paradigm is the speed with which you can release books, booklets, posters, and so on. If you have proofed copy that is ready to format, you can get it published and released in a day or so. The limitation is only your formatting speed. With the techniques and workflow … Continue reading →

New Review: Writing In InDesign: A Philosophy for Writers In Service to Readers

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Today we have a guest post from a man who is a reader of my work who has become a friend. A while back he told me he was going to write a review. I had no idea he would put so much effort into the attempt. I asked if I could share this and he said to do it. Pastor Dean Williams has been a pastor for over 30 years serving in “a multitude of denominational … Continue reading →

Kindle Export Plug-in for InDesign CS6 Released!

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I probably shouldn’t have put an exclamation mark on the title for I haven’t had a chance to try it yet. I’m still wading through the documentation. But I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. The CS6 plug-in Here’s a quote from their Web page from which you can download the plug-in. Kindle Plugin for Adobe InDesign® (Beta) is officially supported by Amazon to convert files to the Kindle format. We recommend you use Kindle … Continue reading →

But you learn by doing: is your hardware/software good enough?

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You learn by doing, and there is a lot to learn: typography, page layout, printing limitations, ebook limitations, and much more. BUT! You can do it simply, line upon line, precept upon precept, as you grow into the publisher you need to be. How long will it take? That depends on how seriously you take your work and assignments. I used to teach this stuff in two intense semesters to people starting from scratch who were not … Continue reading →

Careful of hyphens and eliminate widows and orphans

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Be careful with hyphens. Because typeset line endings are automatic, so is the hyphenation. You can turn it on or off. Hyphenation is done by dictionary. You can set up the hyphens when you add new words to the user dictionary (see InDesign’s help). Another problem is that automatic hyphenation can create hyphens for many consecutive lines. Here there is sharp debate. Most of us agree that two hyphens in a row should be the maximum (a … Continue reading →

Looking professional: Letterspacing, kerning, and tracking

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Letterspacing Here is another typesetting capability that cannot even be considered by word processors. We mentioned letterspacing earlier. Letterspacing is the built-in spacing between characters in a font. The basic idea is that the white space between letters should be identical for all letter pairs. Obviously, this is not simple or easy. AT, OOPS, and silly have very different spacing problems—especially the ill. The better the font, the better the letterspacing. In very cheap fonts, individual letters … Continue reading →

You must learn to produce your own book

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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 →