Book Design Made Simple

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Combining serif and sans serif fonts

July 12, 2020 By Fiona Raven 5 Comments

Combining serif and sans serif fontsCombining serif and sans serif fonts successfully can be a challenge, but it’s much easier once you know a few simple rules. It’s worth learning, as combining two fonts can really make your book design look professional. So don’t be daunted by the thousands of fonts available! The font-combining basics explained here will help to get you going quickly and easily. [Read more…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: typesetting

A review of Affinity Publisher

May 11, 2020 By Glenna Collett 54 Comments

Affinity Publisher logoWhy, you might ask, is the coauthor of a book about InDesign reviewing a direct competitor, Affinity Publisher?

Because it’s new and I wanted to check it out.

And because it’s so much more affordable than Adobe’s Creative Cloud: $600 a year for the Adobe suite vs. a one-time total of $150 for the full line of Serif’s products: Publisher, Photo, and Designer (all at half price until May 20). We both bought the Affinity software for desktop, and I must say that for the most part, we love it.

The Affinity Publisher app is for desktop use on PCs and Macs. Photo and Designer can also now be used on iPads, so check back on Publisher to see when the iPad version becomes available.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Design Tagged With: typesetting

Design a children’s picture book

March 9, 2020 By Fiona Raven 81 Comments

Group of children's picture books.Children’s picture books are fun to design! They’re colorful, full of images, and everything is packed into a small number of words and pages.

To design a children’s picture book, you’ll need to consider lots of factors: book size, page count, quality of images, flow of text, color, and more. Let’s take a look at those factors. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Design Tagged With: Amazon, children's books, color, images, typesetting

Using InDesign keyboard shortcuts

January 26, 2020 By Glenna Collett 16 Comments

numeric keypad used for InDesign keyboard shortcutsYou can save a lot of time using InDesign keyboard shortcuts. Many users find that they work faster on their keyboard than with their mouse or trackpad. Does that sound like you? Read on to learn how to use this very handy function for applying styles in InDesign. [Read more…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: typesetting

How much does it cost to self-publish?

January 13, 2020 By Glenna Collett 11 Comments

dollar and pound signs indicating book publishing expensesThe path to a high quality self-published book is strewn with expenses. Annoying, maybe, but necessary. So, how much does it cost to self-publish? We’ve discussed most of the cost issues in the past, but here I’m pulling them all together so you won’t stumble on any surprises as you make your way.

Please don’t let anyone persuade you that you can produce a printed book that is up to publishing industry standards—and also market it—for free, because that’s simply not true.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: Amazon, book marketing, book printing, copyright, ebooks, images, ISBN

Design a coffee table book

November 11, 2019 By Glenna Collett 23 Comments

coffee table books on a coffee tableCoffee table books. Are they a blast from the past? No, actually, folks are still publishing them, and you can, too. Do you have an idea for a coffee table book of poetry and photography? About a specific artist or a place you love? About your local history, or something completely different? With good planning and design, your book could become very successful. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Page Design Tagged With: book marketing, book printing, color, images, text frames

POD Book Publishing

September 9, 2019 By Fiona Raven 61 Comments

POD publishing means print-on-demand and no more book shipping costs.Thinking of POD book publishing? So are we! When we published Book Design Made Simple, we got a good deal for printing both editions at Friesens in Canada. Offset printing cost us about 62% less than print on demand (POD) at Amazon. We also found a book distributor, which has housed our books and handled all of our orders ever since.

But now we’re running low on print books, and we need to decide what to do next. Should we do another offset print run, or switch to POD book publishing? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: Amazon, book printing, ISBN

Book front matter elements

July 8, 2019 By Glenna Collett 11 Comments

Front matter appears in all books, including the hardcover in this image.Every book has front matter elements. A title page and a copyright page are absolutely essential. But many manuscripts have arrived at our desks with a jumble of other pages that are misnamed, out of order, or sometimes simply puzzling. So I’m going to straighten this out for all you indie authors and publishers, because a professional-looking front matter is the best beginning for any book. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Book Design Tagged With: contents, copyright

Error importing Word index into InDesign

May 13, 2019 By Fiona Raven 2 Comments

Import Word index to InDesign errorIf you’re importing a Word index into InDesign, chances are good that the index will import just fine. But what if you get the dreaded “index entries contain invalid characters” error? This happened to one of our readers recently. It’s a tricky issue to resolve since InDesign doesn’t specify which characters are invalid. With a Word index containing hundreds (or thousands!) of entries, how can you find the specific characters causing the issue?  [Read more…]

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: index, typesetting

Your book needs CIP data—here’s why

March 11, 2019 By Glenna Collett 9 Comments

CIP data from Book Design Made SimpleI used to think that a copyright page didn’t really need cataloging-in-publication (CIP) data in order to be complete. But I was wrong.

But wait—what is CIP data? It’s the block of information on a book’s copyright page that resembles a library catalog entry, like the one shown here. If the Library of Congress created it, it’s called CIP data. If a private cataloging service created it, it’s called PCIP (Publisher’s CIP) data. Since they look basically the same on the page, I’ll simply refer to both as CIP data for our purposes. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: book marketing, copyright

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Recent Posts

  • Writing your back cover copy September 11, 2023
  • Our 10-year adventure in self publishing July 10, 2023
  • 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

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