There are many benefits of the new self-publishing options. I’ll cover the financial at the end. It is very fast! One of the real changes in the new paradigm is the speed with which you can release books, booklets, posters, and so on. If you have proofed copy that is ready to format, you can get it published and released in a day or so. The limitation is only your formatting speed. With the techniques and workflow … Continue reading →
First-line indents I have briefly touched on first-line indents for body copy paragraphs in talks about styles. This is the preferred method of telling the reader that a new topic sentence is being developed—a new thought expressed. I also mentioned my practice of adding a point or two after paragraphs to help the reader see that first-line indent on a busy page. I realize that this is anathema to many, but they should get a life. If … Continue reading →
The concept of on-demand publishing is simple The printer or distributor stores the book on their hard drive (server farm). It is printed or downloaded only after it is ordered and paid for. So, unless there is a demand, it is not printed or downloaded. Much like just-in-time manufacturing, your book is delivered upon demand. You upload the digital files: They are stored on the servers of the on-demand printer or ebook distributor. They print the document … Continue reading →
Use small caps. Small caps are a specialized letterform. They are a smaller set of capital letters (often a bit larger than the x-height), used in place of the lowercase letters, which are designed so they have the same color as the rest of the font. Many of the OpenType Pro font families have real small caps. Faux small caps One of the typesetting options in most professional software (and many word processors) has been the use … Continue reading →
I probably shouldn’t have put an exclamation mark on the title for I haven’t had a chance to try it yet. I’m still wading through the documentation. But I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. The CS6 plug-in Here’s a quote from their Web page from which you can download the plug-in. Kindle Plugin for Adobe InDesign® (Beta) is officially supported by Amazon to convert files to the Kindle format. We recommend you use Kindle … Continue reading →
Having your own publishing house is a decision you need to make In today’s version of the publishing industry, you need one regardless. Even if you sell all your books to the big six, you’ll need a way to market yourself and help your book sales. This is much like the fact that all artists need a studio name. You need a professional interface with the world. On the practical side, you need to think about how … Continue reading →
Use bulleted lists The typographic use of bullets and dingbats is conceptually unknown to typists. Lists are at the core of non-fiction and blog typography. Bulleted lists are an extremely effective means of attracting the reader’s attention—as are numbered lists. In fact, there has been a lot of study to find out what readers see and respond to. There are specific paragraph types you can use effectively to attract the reader’s eye or to re-attract it if it is … Continue reading →
Where do you start? My assumption is that this is something you are already doing. You have been writing and you have a body of work you want to publish. If you are not writing, you are not a writer. This is not for people who say “I really want to write a book about…” some day in the undefined future. Writing may be cathartic therapy for you. It may be sharing the weirdness of life. It … Continue reading →
Letterspacing Here is another typesetting capability that cannot even be considered by word processors. We mentioned letterspacing earlier. Letterspacing is the built-in spacing between characters in a font. The basic idea is that the white space between letters should be identical for all letter pairs. Obviously, this is not simple or easy. AT, OOPS, and silly have very different spacing problems—especially the ill. The better the font, the better the letterspacing. In very cheap fonts, individual letters … Continue reading →
When you’re done writing and editing, it’s ready to print! This is probably the best part of the process. In the traditional scenario, design and formatting does not begin until the book is written and edited. If you are writing and editing in InDesign, when you are done writing, the book is ready to release. If you print on-demand, it can be available to your readers in a couple weeks or less (even today, depending on the … Continue reading →