Tag Archives: Book Design

Enhanced typesetting and new inaccessible Kindle format?

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Back to scratching mud Aaron Shepherd is convinced that this is true. The .kfx (which Aaron believes stands for .kf10) is a post-uploading process done to your books over the first month or two after uploading. What it means as far as he is concerned is this: In practical terms, this means there is no longer any effective way to proof your book before or after publication. You can get it looking absolutely perfect in a KDP proof, and … Continue reading →

More on Kindle Problems…

Skilled Workman Posted on by

A continuation of the Kindle formatting issues On one of the Facebook groups I participate in, there’s been some general poo-pahing over my most recent posting on the problems with Kindle formatting. I can understand it because many in that group only upload very simple novels. But the problem may be worse than I thought. So, I thought I better give some samples. In the process I found that Kindle has indeed destroyed the Kindle version of this … Continue reading →

Is it time to bail on Kindle?

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Aaron Shephard is close to giving up in Kindle. [You may need to search as I could not find a post-specific link.] He’s found evidence that Amazon might, and probably will, destroy your formatting well after it has been published. As you can read below about the new KFX format, Amazon simply does that to your book. It’s out of our control and we have been given no tools to produce KFX files.   I suspected all of this, … Continue reading →

Why you need an extended keyboard

Skilled Workman Posted on by

writing in English class, silviac I’ve talked many times over the years about needing an extended keyboard. Creative Pro has a good article about the two Enter keys and their different functions in InDesign.  But this is just the beginning of the advantages. The numerical pad on the right must be used for keyboard shortcuts for styles. Applying styles by shortcut is a major factor in production. It can cut your formatting times by 75% or more … Continue reading →

Curation: a main focus of your blog

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Book business has a good article today entitled: Are content curators becoming more important than content creators? In many ways they are, especially in niches for non-fiction. For example, on my companion blog, Reality Calling, it’s main purpose has become the curation of Christian speculative fiction. These books are hard to find because the major book sites like Amazon, Nook, iBooks, and Kobo have no way to effectively search for them. So, my constant book reviews provide a way for … Continue reading →

Returning to InDesign CC (2014)

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Some of you have wondered why there’s been no update to CC (2015) in the book. Basically nothing was changed, I thought. So, I found no reason to update though I was using the new version for my production. It works very well. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to temporarily go back to (2014) for InDesign. I’ve been working a very limited schedule lately due to other things I need to get done. … Continue reading →

Readability is the prime virtue of book design

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I decided I needed to beat an old drum. Readability is the focus of book design typography. This was the core of curriculum in my digital publishing degree. It’s the center of my graphic design and book design efforts. Without comfortable, readable content, your book has a severe handicap. What is readability? This is all about book design typography. Here’s a little graphic to show you some of the things that influence how easily you can read a … Continue reading →

Are you an author, for real?

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I just read an excellent article in CreativePro called Are you a creative professional or a hobbyist?  The article is talking about graphic designers, but it equally speaks to authors and writers. The dividing line is the tools you use Every day I see questions on FaceBook, Google+, and the author groups and forums in which I participate. They are all basically the same. How can I do this or that without bothering to learn how? It’s usually written with … Continue reading →

Marketing tips for fiction and non-fiction: it takes time

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Joel rarely writes for his blog any more, but it is a treat when he does. Today’s article is an excellent example of why his blog is so good: clean, concise, and useful. We can boil down the advice to the following: Fiction authors are unknown Fiction is marketed to a much wider audience who is initially unknown by the author. The new author  needs to work very hard on becoming known. Giving away books is essential as … Continue reading →

Make more with five book sets than 5 single books

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I was talking to my author friend, Guy Stanton III, today and he shared this with me. Many of you already know this, but it’s worth a mention anyway. You know what’s really ironic, David, about combining all the books into one boxed set? I will make more money on the sale of the boxed set than if I had sold the entire series individually, but what’s even cooler is that the customer is going to pay … Continue reading →