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 →
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 →
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 →
Today, in this third post on formatting, I want to talk about many things which have been lost in the rush toward ebooks: self-publishing front back matter. This is an excerpt from my book: Book Publishing With InDesign CC Many reader services are no longer written or included. Most of this is simply because of the inexperience and lack of training by the normal self-publishing novelist and writer of devotions. You should take a look and seriously … Continue reading →
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 →
I found this today, going through my emails. It is beautiful and wonderful. About five minutes… Dan Nelson’s delightful Cross Hatching library teaching ink illustration Does this take a lot of time? Duh! Is it satisfying? Yes. How does it compare to knitting, embroidery, painting, and all the rest? It’s just another opportunity to learn to get in touch with the things which matter in your life. It can be cathartic therapy, all the way to gentle … Continue reading →
CREATIVE PRO HAS AN EXCELLENT ARTICLE TODAY on poster design. I mention this because authors without the trained eye of the designer make embarrassing design mistakes because this knowledge is not part of their understanding. Self-publishers must train their eyes Books like Ellen’s shown above are a real help as you expand your knowledge beyond the narrow confines of writing and editing. What writers are normally not aware of is the constant visual input which is the … Continue reading →
There’s a good article in Book Business today called Why Ebooks will eventually replace books. Caleb makes some very good points. Many people don’t look at the situation and see what a radical thing an ebook is. Like I mentioned in the title, you can still buy a buggy whip—but it’ll be hard to find and very expensive. The same will be true of books before too long. Even now, a paperback is several times as expensive as … Continue reading →
You should check out audio books There are many reasons for this. A large part of it is that many of the youth [people under 40] have spent a huge amount of time with iPod (or the even earlier WalkMan) earphones stuck in their ears. In addition, many of them spend large amounts of time driving or riding to and fro. For example, the last job I had before I became a full-time writer-designer-publisher required an hour and a … Continue reading →
Click on the image to find links to download the free trial, buy a subscription, or whatever. This is always a big day for me. I’ve been working getting ready for the changes, so I can help you with any questions. Again, this go-round, there’s not much for book production. OpenType and Glyph Features There are new features to help with OpenType glyph choices. They are available from the Font Menu, from contextual menus when selecting characters [right-click], and there’s … Continue reading →