Tag Archives: Book Design

Using styles enables global control of your book’s typography

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Today I’m mentioning the basic structure of typography. There is one concept which enables typography as we know it in modern book publishing. This is the concept of styles. These styles are contained in styles panels. InDesign has five of them: paragraph, character, object, table, and cell. Styles are also available in word processors—even though they are not nearly so powerful there. What is a style? A style is a collection of specialized typographic defaults that can … Continue reading →

Fonts are not typography, fonts are used to create typography

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Before we can get into this, though, we have to start with terminology. Typography requires a new language. Much of this is based on historical printing usage and the font design process. Without at least a few of these terms you will be lost. This has been complicated now that all of the digital terms have been added to the mix. So, we really need to start with a little of font design. Not only the different … Continue reading →

Get a grip about Amazon! They’ll sell your books.

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Writer Folks – Time to “Man-up” about Amazon. You don’t matter that much. « Andy Holloman – Novel – “Shades of Gray”. Andy has nailed it here. Amazon is too large to personally deal with each one of us. We need to be thankful that they’ll let us in—at all. Lulu is just as bad for the same reasons. The point is: You do not have to use them!  

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Getting set up to freely create your type

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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. I’m assuming that you have your preferences set up; and that you have designed a good, efficient workspace that fits your style of … Continue reading →

Review: iBooks Author, the hope fades

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I spent much of last weekend designing a book in iBooks Author. It was a horrendous experience. But then the application wasn’t designed for my use. A book design tool for amateurs giving away free books First of all, I must mention that the process of dialing back from InDesign to less than Pages is a huge leap backwards. Like Liz Castro, I was excited about the possibilities suggested by the hype. She found ten reasons why … Continue reading →

Typography for ministry: The reality of picking fonts

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The basic parts of type Again, we need some more basic language definitions. Without it, I can not help you in your ministry. You can see above how the point size of the type relates to the ascender, cap height, x-height, baseline, and descender. More importantly, you get a glimpse of things that are important in the world of typography. This illustration is from an introduction to typography in publishing found in Appendices A & B in … Continue reading →

Self-publishers need excellent typography

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Things have changed so much in book publishing, that you must understand the new paradigm and why this means you must understand typography. Self-published authors must learn the art of communication with type. This is an excerpt from Writing In InDesign 2nd Edition which will be released as soon as possible. Here’s a link to the 1st edition _________________________________________ Writing within InDesign Here I am again recommending a road less traveled by—not unusual in my life and work. … Continue reading →

Readability: the most important aspect of typography?

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If you ever took one of my classes, you know how much I harped on readability—especially the importance of aperture and other page layout factors concerning readability. Aside from the kindness issue (blessing your readers), this is governed by the realities of modern living. Everyone has too much to read. If you give them any excuse, they will quit reading your work and go on to the next piece in their long list of things they have … Continue reading →

If Apple launches their Self-Publishing Program? | Good E-Reader – ebook Reader and Tablet PC News

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What does it mean for Aggregator Companies if Apple launches their Self-Publishing Program? | Good E-Reader – ebook Reader and Tablet PC News. I would assume this must be good, right? More options for we the authors. But that remains to be seen. How will this affect you? I’m not sure it will affect me at all—unless, of course, Apple uses this like Amazon is doing, to cut off competition.

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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 →