Template or software for book design

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by myles murphy on June 5, 2009 at 7:17pm

Permalink Reply by myles murphy on June 5, 2009 at 7:21pm

Rita - is this an example of what you do want, or what you don't want? I'm looking at book design software too. maybe a local publishing co can give advice?

Permalink Reply by Rita Ashley on June 5, 2009 at 7:26pm

I hope to find software that allows me to create something like this, not necessarily this. I am at a loss.

myles murphy said:

Rita - is this an example of what you do want, or what you don't want? I'm looking at book design software too. maybe a local publishing co can give advice?

Permalink Reply by Debra Murphy on June 6, 2009 at 9:33am

Are you planning on self-publishing? What kind of book is it, and what printer are you planning on using?

The best software for "typesetting" a book is Adobe Indesign. But it's pretty spendy and there is a learning curve. I use it for our Idylls Press books, but I'm not sure it's the kind of time/money investment I'd want to make for just one book. ID is up to its 4th iteration, but you might be able to find older versions at a cheaper price on ebay. You might also be able to find someone here in town who will typeset for you for a fee--I don't know any offhand, but I'm fairly new to the community.

Depending on the printer, you could upload digital InDesign files to the printers, however to insure the book prints exactly the way you want it to look, most printers prefer you to export your InDesign files into Adobe Acrobat pdfs, so you'd need that program, too.

We use Lightning Source, and they will take ID files, but prefer Acrobat pdfs generated from ID, which is what we do.

Definitely, if you want a book that looks professionally done, you won't want to use Word. However, if InDesign is out of your budget, there are ways to tweak Word to its max so that it at least doesn't look amateurish--look for Aaron Shepherd's self-publishing blog, and I think he has published a book about it, too.

For anyone thinking of self-publishing, I highly recommend the Self-publishing discussion group on Yahoo.

Hope this helps!

Permalink Reply by Rita Ashley on June 6, 2009 at 9:35am

Thanks. Not a lot of money to spend on yet another cumbersome Adobe product. What tool do you do you think the sample resulted from?

Debra Murphy said:

Are you planning on self-publishing? What kind of book is it, and what printer are you planning on using?

The best software for "typesetting" a book is Adobe Indesign. But it's pretty spendy and there is a learning curve. I use it for our Idylls Press books, but I'm not sure it's the kind of time/money investment I'd want to make for just one book. ID is up to its 4th iteration, but you might be able to find older versions at a cheaper price on ebay. You might also be able to find someone here in town who will typeset for you for a fee--I don't know any offhand, but I'm fairly new to the community.

Depending on the printer, you could upload digital InDesign files to the printers, however to insure the book prints exactly the way you want it to look, most printers prefer you to export your InDesign files into Adobe Acrobat pdfs, so you'd need that program, too.

We use Lightning Source, and they will take ID files, but prefer Acrobat pdfs generated from ID, which is what we do.

Definitely, if you want a book that looks professionally done, you won't want to use Word. However, if InDesign is out of your budget, there are ways to tweak Word to its max so that it at least doesn't look amateurish--look for Aaron Shepherd's self-publishing blog, and I think he has published a book about it, too.

For anyone thinking of self-publishing, I highly recommend the Self-publishing discussion group on Yahoo.

Hope this helps!

Permalink Reply by Kit Crumb on June 24, 2009 at 11:50am

Rita Ashley said:

Thanks. Not a lot of money to spend on yet another cumbersome Adobe product. What tool do you do you think the sample resulted from?

Debra Murphy said:

Are you planning on self-publishing? What kind of book is it, and what printer are you planning on using?

The best software for "typesetting" a book is Adobe Indesign. But it's pretty spendy and there is a learning curve. I use it for our Idylls Press books, but I'm not sure it's the kind of time/money investment I'd want to make for just one book. ID is up to its 4th iteration, but you might be able to find older versions at a cheaper price on ebay. You might also be able to find someone here in town who will typeset for you for a fee--I don't know any offhand, but I'm fairly new to the community.

Depending on the printer, you could upload digital InDesign files to the printers, however to insure the book prints exactly the way you want it to look, most printers prefer you to export your InDesign files into Adobe Acrobat pdfs, so you'd need that program, too.

We use Lightning Source, and they will take ID files, but prefer Acrobat pdfs generated from ID, which is what we do.

Definitely, if you want a book that looks professionally done, you won't want to use Word. However, if InDesign is out of your budget, there are ways to tweak Word to its max so that it at least doesn't look amateurish--look for Aaron Shepherd's self-publishing blog, and I think he has published a book about it, too.

For anyone thinking of self-publishing, I highly recommend the Self-publishing discussion group on Yahoo.

Hope this helps!

Permalink Reply by Kit Crumb on June 24, 2009 at 1:00pm

Self Publishing Hmm I've got a few thoughts on this.
If you plan on giving out a few copies or selling some then yes go the entire route yourself. Find the printer, the layout and cover designer and go for it. However if you want to see your book on a book shelf, on Amazon, Barns and Noble then you might want to go with a small publisher that offers POD (print on demand) A lot of times they will go the extra mile to get ISBN and bar code and help with the marketing a little. But going this route will allow you to make back some money.
Also keep in mind that if you are fiction and picked up by one of the big six publishers you will get almost zero in marketing help. Right now they, the publishers, are fighting for their lives and like every other large corporation they are leveraged to the hilt, one of the big six had even stopped taking manuscripts. They are surviving off their established big sellers.
kit