Category Archives: ePUB

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 →

2018 ebook conversion guide using InDesign CC

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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 →

The stupid Kindle argument continues unnecessarily

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I’ve been fighting the stupid Kindle argument more and more lately. Kindle remains stupid, as far as formatting is concerned. Kindle’s immense list of things which cannot be done remains. Worse yet, they continue to strip out a lot of stuff. I’ve come to do a Kindle version with: HTML lists: InDesign does an excellent job of typesetting lists with custom indents and special bullets. They work fine in ePUBs with embedded fonts, but Kindle ruins them. … 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 →

Briskly: new font release for Fall 2016

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I’ve put this off for years, but it just seemed time. Briskly: new font release is a font made from one sample of my handwriting. An ASCII font (256-character), it will work well for desktop, Web, and ePUB. The only place you will be able to buy it with included ebook licenses is here on this Website. Briskly: new font release is here! There are some interesting aspects to this font. First, some of the characters have a unique slant … Continue reading →

Converting Books to Ebooks with InDesign CC

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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 →

Book Publishing With InDesign CC: Spiral-bound

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Even after over forty-five years, there’s still that little thrill when you see a finished book for the first time. It’s too bad that Amazon won’t carry them. But, they are the best choice for the classroom or self-study. The spiral-bound workbook I had to cut out the Christian marketing section to get the page count below the 470 page maximum for spiral-bound. The only thing I really miss are the color graphics. To get that (and … 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 →

A short note about ebook licensing for your fonts

Skilled Workman Posted on by

As a font designer, Monotype is the biggest and best. They have all the top sites: fonts.com, myfonts.com, itc.com, and several more. They are the sites used by the pros, primarily. At the least, the pros sell their fonts there also. These places are where my fonts are sold, in most cases. Ebook licensing is very new I have the entire Adobe library and several others, maybe 4000 fonts total. None of them are licensed for anything other … Continue reading →