In my previous blog post, I mentioned mixing inks in a 2-color book. So now I’m back to explain how to do that in InDesign, plus how to make a 2-color photo (duotone) in Photoshop. And I’ll let you in on the simple way to make a fake duotone right in InDesign, too.
So let’s start with what we can do in InDesign. [Read more…]
Do you have a favorite color?
If you’re a designer, I hope your answer is no. Every color can look good or bad, and be valuable or useless, depending on where and how it is used.
In this blog post we’ll help you find colors for your next book project. [Read more…]
By now you all know that Book Design Made Simple is in its second edition and that we also have an ebook edition on the market. We’re going to reveal how it all came about, and we hope you can learn from some of our stumbles . . . yes, even seasoned publishing professionals can make mistakes, foul up, and generally just muddle through. Read on!
My chair creaks. Start over. I sneeze. Start over. The phone rings. Move it out of the room and start over. “Ummm.” Start over. Someone comes in the room and rustles around. Start over. If I had a dog it would definitely be barking about now. Start over, start over, start over!
Such are the interruptions when I sit down to make a five-minute video about using InDesign. [Read more…]
Does the prospect of designing a book cover make you feel anxious? Jittery? Terrified? Do you start to contemplate cleaning out your basement instead? Don’t worry! You’re not the only one. [Read more…]
Let’s say you are working on a book with lots of images and/or chapters. And the file sizes are enormous. In fact, they are so big that you thought it would be smart to divide the book into separate documents for parts or chapters. That is exactly what we did with Book Design Made Simple. It was more convenient for us to swap smaller sections back and forth than to send the entire book each time. All the parts or chapters were linked together at the end using InDesign’s Book feature. So this blog post explains how to create a Book file, or as we call it, “book” a book.
In early November, we all woke up to find Adobe Creative Cloud waiting to be updated. What—again? Well, it turns out that this update, CC 2017, does provide some InDesign enhancements that might help you work more effectively and improve your design. We’ll discuss the significant ones here. [Read more…]
Some people say that the first sentence is the most important one in any book—and that is probably true as a means for hooking a reader. Others say that the cover is the most important. But I contend that the copyright page wins the prize, and it is probably the first page that a librarian, bookseller, or distributor looks at.
Many self-publishing authors find the copyright page to be horribly confusing. All that legal language! All those numbers! What does it all mean? [Read more…]
Last fall and winter, we entered Book Design Made Simple in some independent publishing book award contests. In mid-April, we got word that our book had won gold at the Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Awards. Nine days later, we won another gold medal, this time at the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
[Read more…]
Dear reader, let me repeat something that you’ve probably heard before: Nobody likes a poorly written book. It doesn’t matter if the message of the book is valid or even excellent or groundbreaking. If it is not well written and constructed, people will not read it.
So please get yourself an editor. Try to find one who has experience in your general topic (science or romance, for instance), or in your form of writing (short stories, screenplay, novel). Ask for samples of work they have edited. Naturally the pieces should be readable and error-free. You’ll find editorial resources at the end of this article. [Read more…]