Tag Archives: Portable Document Format

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 →

New release: Designing ePUBs With InDesign by David Bergsland

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Ebooks have been a mess until now. Actually, they still are in many ways. However, InDesign CC 2014 has truly solved most of the problems. It always did export the best PDFs. Now it exports very good ePUB FXL (fixed layout), reflowable ePUBs, and because Kindle will upload the reflowables converting easily, the Kindle problem is solved also. Wonderful that all our problems are solved, right? Well, you know better than that. Each format requires a redesign … Continue reading →

InDesign CC ePUBs now handle floating graphics fairly well

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There are always going to be complaints. But I can do everything I want to do with anchored graphics right now. With one major exception: It’s hard to predict what will happen with a graphic crossing a page break. If it’s floating, it may just not render. I can understand that. I really don’t have any idea how to handle that. But I can simply change my graphic so it doesn’t float and the page break will … Continue reading →

Don’t toss your Pages 09! It’s needed to open RTF files

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One of the more irritating things about Mavericks is how some capabilities have been lost in the transition to newness. I do like the new free versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. I like them a whole lot more than Office, for sure. But some puzzling things have appeared. The one which affects me the most is the inability of the new Pages to open RTF files. This doesn’t sound too bad, but many of the word.docs … Continue reading →

Book Production Services

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I regularly provide production help to Christian authors, as led by the Spirit. Feel free to contact me. What I want to do below is give you some idea of the options I offer. We can also negotiate custom relationships. Radiqx Press Production Charges Most of my books are done as a whole, so editing, proofing, formatting, exporting for upload are all part of the same process. I normally charge $60/hour for my billable time. To prepare a … Continue reading →

Graphics In InDesign: an excerpt from “Practical Professional Self Publishing Handbook”

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This is the first portion of the new Practical Professional Self Publishing Handbook due out before summer this year. InDesign is the true replacement for FreeHand Many designers are still upset that Adobe took FreeHand off the market. We remain convinced that FreeHand was a far superior vector drawing program to Illustrator. Actually, I bring good news. InDesign is actually more closely related to FreeHand than it is to Illustrator. Ole Kvern and I have commented on this many … Continue reading →

Starting at the beginning: Document Setup…

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This is the dialog box which opens when you choose New from the file menu or type Command+N. Many of the choices found in this dialog box are based on your experience. I’ll use my current choices, just so we can talk about the issues involved. The first choice is that I always start with print chosen as my intent. There are many reasons for this. But I can state it simply as I start out. Print … 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 →

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 →

A look at the ebook revolution: known & unknown

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Four years into the ebook revolution: things we know and things we don’t know – The Shatzkin Files. I received a link to this from Joel this morning. It’s a good review and an eye-opener, if you haven’t been paying attention. Mike says: “One could say (and I would) that the ereading revolution is coming up to its 4th anniversary since it was late November 2007 when Amazon first released the Kindle. There had been dedicated ereading … Continue reading →