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You are here: Home / Archives for Glenna Collett

Your copyright page: Everything you need to know

March 8, 2018 By Glenna Collett 56 Comments

copyright symbol arraySome people say that the first page 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 because it’s probably the first page that a librarian, bookseller, or distributor looks at. And that makes it an integral part of your book marketing program.

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…]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: book marketing, copyright, ISBN

Optical margin alignment

February 13, 2018 By Glenna Collett 6 Comments

quotation marks to indicate optical margin alignmentSome InDesign functions have names that you would never be able to guess, and that makes them really tough to discover and learn. One of these is Optical Margin Alignment (I’m calling it OMA), which is InDesign’s formal name for hanging punctuation. I used to see this effect in other people’s work and then try to imitate it, but I couldn’t because I had no idea what it was called. So this article explains what it is and how to do it. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: typesetting

InDesign footnotes: an alternate typesetting method

October 8, 2017 By Glenna Collett 14 Comments

asterisks for InDesign footnotesIf your book has footnotes, you’re probably using automatic InDesign footnotes in your layout. And that’s great! But what if you compiled your footnotes in a separate Word document or didn’t use the automatic footnote feature in Word or InDesign?

Before Word and InDesign added their automatic footnote features, and well before Fiona and I met each other, we both invented a way—interestingly, the same way—to lay out InDesign footnotes manually for print books. In this blog post, I’ll explain the layout method that we both used—it still works perfectly.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: footnotes/endnotes, paragraph styles, text frames, typesetting

Book marketing to libraries: a scheme that really works

August 7, 2017 By Glenna Collett Leave a Comment

Book marketing to libraries - library books on shelvesBook marketing to libraries can be tricky, but here’s a scheme we tried that worked for us.

How many people can you count as friends? You will soon find out when you ask for their help with this book marketing technique that works for even the most shy of authors.

With a little work and a big ask, you will soon find your book listed in public libraries all over the country. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: book marketing, ISBN

Mixing colors for 2-color printing in InDesign and Photoshop

July 10, 2017 By Glenna Collett 15 Comments

two colors mixed in a patchwork design for 2-color printing

In my previous blog post, I mentioned mixing two colors to use for 2-color printing. 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…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: book printing, color, Photoshop

Devising a color palette for your book

June 12, 2017 By Glenna Collett 4 Comments

Pantone colors for devising a color paletteDo 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…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: color

The Saga of the Second Edition

May 9, 2017 By Glenna Collett 8 Comments

books with "second edition" on coverBy 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!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: book marketing

It’s YouTube time!

March 13, 2017 By Glenna Collett Leave a Comment

author working on a YouTube videoMy 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…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: InDesign updates

The evolution of a book cover

February 13, 2017 By Glenna Collett 6 Comments

book cover wtih question markDoes 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…]

Filed Under: Book Cover Design Tagged With: color, images

Adobe Creative Cloud 2017

December 12, 2016 By Glenna Collett 2 Comments

cube with CC2017 spelled outIn 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…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: footnotes/endnotes, InDesign updates, typesetting

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