Tag Archives: page layout

Keeping your mind open to creative typographic solutions

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One of the main troubles we have in setting books for readability is the set of largely subconscious rules we’ve learned over the years. In an entertaining and useful article today by Jonathan Hoefler named: How to Use Clashing Fonts He gives us several examples showing why it is necessary to break common “rules” in the interest of both style and readability. In the example he gives above, he shows the use of two virtually identical Dutch Old … 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 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 →

Basic page layout part four: Getting them to read it

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Before I get started with this, I need remind you about the goal: a beautiful book which is comfortable to read.  You need a customized set of styles to enable you to keep your book consistent and give you global control over the entire book as you format. Excellent typography is only possible if you understand how to design paragraphs. Styles make paragraph design possible. We will deal with them conceptually, but you should know this is … Continue reading →

Basic Page Layout: Part 2, Margins & Columns

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This is part two of the new series on page layout from my new book, Self-Publishing With InDesign CC. We continue with two of the most important controls for readability. To the left is an example of bad design. The body text is Berthold Baskerville Book 8/12, while the caption is Adobe Garamond Pro 6/7. So, no one can read it—too small. The columns are so narrow that there are only 7-9 words per line with the average closer … Continue reading →

Basic page layout: Part One, Book size

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As I get ready to release my new book, Self-Publishing With InDesign CC, I want to share some of the basic ideas in the book. Self-publishers rarely know page layout standards So, this little series will help with some of those basic decisions you need to make. Setting up your book to be read: 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 … Continue reading →

Enhanced typesetting and new inaccessible Kindle format?

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Back to scratching mud Aaron Shepherd is convinced that this is true. The .kfx (which Aaron believes stands for .kf10) is a post-uploading process done to your books over the first month or two after uploading. What it means as far as he is concerned is this: In practical terms, this means there is no longer any effective way to proof your book before or after publication. You can get it looking absolutely perfect in a KDP proof, and … Continue reading →

More on Kindle Problems…

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A continuation of the Kindle formatting issues On one of the Facebook groups I participate in, there’s been some general poo-pahing over my most recent posting on the problems with Kindle formatting. I can understand it because many in that group only upload very simple novels. But the problem may be worse than I thought. So, I thought I better give some samples. In the process I found that Kindle has indeed destroyed the Kindle version of this … Continue reading →

Is it time to bail on Kindle?

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Aaron Shephard is close to giving up in Kindle. [You may need to search as I could not find a post-specific link.] He’s found evidence that Amazon might, and probably will, destroy your formatting well after it has been published. As you can read below about the new KFX format, Amazon simply does that to your book. It’s out of our control and we have been given no tools to produce KFX files.   I suspected all of this, … Continue reading →

Why you need an extended keyboard

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writing in English class, silviac I’ve talked many times over the years about needing an extended keyboard. Creative Pro has a good article about the two Enter keys and their different functions in InDesign.  But this is just the beginning of the advantages. The numerical pad on the right must be used for keyboard shortcuts for styles. Applying styles by shortcut is a major factor in production. It can cut your formatting times by 75% or more … Continue reading →