Book Design Made Simple

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InDesign book template by Book Design Made Simple

April 19, 2023 By Glenna Collett 7 Comments

Laptop showing Book Design Made Simple's InDesign Book Template. What exactly is an InDesign book template? It’s a blank InDesign document that has all the background work done for you. When you open a template, you’ll see an untitled document that’s already set up with InDesign preferences, trim size, margins, and styles.

Our InDesign book template is a companion to Book Design Made Simple, the only book that guides you through every step of designing your own book using Adobe InDesign. We believe that anyone can learn to craft a well designed book, and now we’ve created an InDesign book template to get you started more quickly. [Read more…]

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

Self-publishing and book marketing: A success story

March 12, 2023 By Glenna Collett Leave a Comment

Self-publishing and book marketing success showing paperback and ebook editions.In this post we feature a self-published author, Joel Rubano, who has found remarkable success through book marketing. Not only is his book selling well, but he’s made an interesting career shift, too. We hope you find encouragement and inspiration from his story, no matter what your own book project looks like. Here is Joel’s account: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: book marketing

Crop marks and other printer’s marks

January 8, 2023 By Glenna Collett 1 Comment

Purple image with crop marks in corner.Crop marks and other printer’s marks appear in the PDFs you send to the printer. In Book Design Made Simple, we mention crop marks exactly once and never define what they are, so we think it’s about time that we did so.

Simply put, crop marks are chop marks—they indicate where the printer will chop around the edges of the stack of printed pages to make them the correct size, and a nice, neat package for binding. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: book binding, book printing

Advanced live index features in InDesign

November 7, 2022 By Fiona Raven 2 Comments

Live index showing advanced features.InDesign’s live index includes some great advanced features: you can add italics to the index, add bold page numbers for illustrations, and even create a live index across several documents using InDesign’s Book feature.

Be sure to first read our earlier blog post, Create a live index in InDesign, to learn the basics of creating a live index. [Read more…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: Book feature, index, paragraph styles, typesetting

Create a live index in InDesign

September 12, 2022 By Fiona Raven 3 Comments

Start a live index in InDesignIt’s easy to create a live index for your book in InDesign, and there’s a major benefit to doing so: If you move any of your text, the index markers stay with the text and the index automatically updates!

In Book Design Made Simple, we explain how to create paragraph styles for indexes, how to import an index from Word, and how to typeset an index. Here, we’ll explain the simplest way to create a live index in InDesign.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: index, typesetting

Book endpapers: A gallery of ideas

July 11, 2022 By Glenna Collett 3 Comments

collage of endpaper artBook endpapers (also called endsheets) are probably the least noticed part of a hardcover book. But the endpapers are literally what hold the pages and the cover together. And they can add value to your book if you use them well.

If you’re publishing a paperback, take a look at the examples in this article for ideas anyway; you’ll find that the same principles can apply. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Design Tagged With: book binding, book printing, children's books, color

Writing in InDesign: Why and how

May 9, 2022 By Glenna Collett 7 Comments

Writing in InDesign opening graphic.Back when Fiona started Book Design Made Simple, she decided that writing in InDesign would be easiest. (After all, it was her native habitat.) And now one of our readers has admitted to doing the same. So we thought we’d explore the various reasons why anyone would want to write in a layout program. For us it worked perfectly. How about you? [Read more…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: editing, InDesign updates, paragraph styles

Designing a book spine

March 7, 2022 By Glenna Collett 4 Comments

book spine examplesFront covers attract and back covers sell—we’ve said it before. At the same time, a book spine should broadcast.

Most books in stores and libraries are shelved with their spines facing out. If a book has a great title and a well-designed spine, it’ll attract a lot more eyes than its neighbor on the shelf. So here’s how to accomplish that for your book. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Cover Design Tagged With: book marketing, color, text frames

What type size should I use?

January 10, 2022 By Glenna Collett 2 Comments

Graphic showing type sizes for book genres.In Book Design Made Simple, we suggest type sizes that should work in most situations for adult readers. But there are so many other situations! What about children’s books? What about large type books? Reference books? In this article we’ll suggest solutions for these kinds of books. And we’ll only discuss printed books; with ebooks, the reader can enlarge or reduce the type size to whatever works for them. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: children's books, paragraph styles, typesetting

Navigating Amazon KDP ads and keywords

November 9, 2021 By Erika Sharma 1 Comment

Researching Amazon KDP keywords, showing glasses and a notebook.The advent of the internet has changed the landscape of books. Self-publishing is getting easier all the time, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The biggest hurdle you’ll face as an online bookseller is marketing. Every self-publishing author in 2021 needs to know how to do keyword research! We’ll explain the basics of Amazon KDP ads and then show you how to find the most effective Amazon KDP keywords that will sell your books. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: Amazon, book marketing

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Recent Posts

  • InDesign book template by Book Design Made Simple April 19, 2023
  • Self-publishing and book marketing: A success story March 12, 2023
  • Crop marks and other printer’s marks January 8, 2023
  • Advanced live index features in InDesign November 7, 2022
  • Create a live index in InDesign September 12, 2022
  • Book endpapers: A gallery of ideas July 11, 2022
  • Writing in InDesign: Why and how May 9, 2022

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