Tag Archives: page layout

Some free font design resources

Skilled Workman Posted on by

This is just a quick note about some free font design resources which provide good typographic knowledge. I’m mentioning this because a large portion of my readers don’t come out of a professional graphic design or typographic background. These things are often not known by authors whose background is mostly found in Office and free design apps. The longer you work in page layout, the more important fonts and font design become for many if not most … Continue reading →

New InDesign update arrives with nice feature upgrades

Skilled Workman Posted on by

The new InDesign update arrives with more than just a bunch of fixes. It gives us new controls for shading and borders in consecutive paragraphs. You can now export a document as individual page PDFs. There are several other things which might interest you. You can find them at Adobe’s What’s New page. Dealing with consecutive paragraphs As you probably recall, if you had shading or borders applied to consecutive paragraphs, you were forced to have a style … Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

New release: InDesign CC Book Production, putting books together

Skilled Workman Posted on by

With this final release, InDesign CC Book Production, Putting the book together, my video coursework for book production is complete. This course removes the difficulty and relives the complexity of producing excellent quality, professional books. This is a very practical course. There is a lot to learn, but none of it is very difficult. It is very complex though. It is the goal of the course to make the complexity easy to understand and relatively simple to execute. If you have … Continue reading →

Book design needs titling fonts

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Creative Pro has a good article today about titling fonts. Book design needs titling fonts to make your chapter heads, section titles, and such much better looking, easier to read, and provide a more comfortable reading experience. In general, titling fonts use letterspacing which is too tight to be used at body copy sizes. They are carefully crafted to be more elegant. And often they are condensed—though I usually don’t do that. Book design needs titling fonts & … Continue reading →

The importance of designed books in the self-published future

Skilled Workman Posted on by

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

Skilled Workman Posted on by

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

Skilled Workman Posted on by

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

Skilled Workman Posted on by

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 →