My handbook for the new breed of self-publisher is out! Why do you need to read this book? As I have become involved with the amazing variety of the new breed of authors—self publishing pioneers, it has been stunning to watch and listen as they discuss the problems they are having because they are working in Word. If they are dealing with quality issues, Word rarely has an answer. In fact, it’s sad to see that there … Continue reading →
The book is due out in May, 2013. It will be called: Practical Professional Self Publishing Handbook The book is written for those authors who recognize that professional production is key to having their books taken seriously. They are also tired of paying hundreds or thousands of dollars every time they release a book. In addition, they are sick of the need to be constantly contacting their designer to get special previews, gift editions, updates, and all … Continue reading →
This morning I am reading an article by Marc Coker (the founder of Smashwords) about what’s coming in near future for authors and publishers. He has some very good things to say. Here’s a quote that is particularly relevant to us. As a self published author, you’re the publisher. You’re running a business. The lifeblood of a business is profit, because profit generates cash. If you run out of cash, you go out of business. Since profit … Continue reading →
Most of you have probably read one of my rants about the difficulty and absurdity of producing finished books in Word. Except for Smashwords, where this is required, you should never use Word for final output. So, what are your options? Do it yourself or pay someone else There are several factors involved here. You need to carefully look at your needs and choose what works best for you. But the bottomline is certain. Sooner or later, … Continue reading →
I just tried something and was surprised by the result. After learning this morning that I don’t actually buy books from Kindle, but lease them, I wanted to see what my options are if I actually buy an ePUB. More than that, as a font designer, I wanted to try an ePUB with embedded fonts. So, I simply exported an ePUB with embedded font from my KF8 version of the book and emailed it to myself. Then … Continue reading →
How have things been revised: This piece you are reading did not appear first as a book in the traditional sense. These paragraphs were first released as the first posting of a new series on my blog, The Skilled Workman, in April of 2011. There was a link to a free downloadable PDF version at Scribd. The intention was a fully developed book after I was given the complete vision to share. I ended up with six of … Continue reading →
Document size [page size] In traditional publishing, there were many more options. This is one reason why traditional publishing costs so much more. Virtually all traditional printing is custom work—to meet the needs of the individual designer & various paper and press sizes. We give up some of that freedom to control costs as we move into on-demand printing. For my purposes here, I am talking about Createspace and Lulu. For the on-demand print publisher, many costs … Continue reading →
This is the dialog box which opens when you choose New from the file menu or type Command+N. Many of the choices found in this dialog box are based on your experience. I’ll use my current choices, just so we can talk about the issues involved. The first choice is that I always start with print chosen as my intent. There are many reasons for this. But I can state it simply as I start out. Print … Continue reading →
What skills do you need? The idea is that InDesign can be learned and you can become comfortable enough with the software so that it becomes an extension of your creativity. For example, as I started this chapter in the Writing In InDesign book, I hit the shortcut to set my headline. This started the chapter on the next odd page (which is the norm). When I wrote the headline and hit the Return key, InDesign changed to … Continue reading →
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 →
