We all expect to see a copyright notice in every book. But where the notice appears and how it appears can vary tremendously. In this article we present a gallery of creative copyright notices for you to admire and maybe emulate. We’re hoping to inspire you while also saving you hours of browsing time at the library! [Read more…]
Typesetting
Below you'll find links to all the information about typesetting that’s available on our website, book, videos, and blog.
Get started with Part I of Book Design Made Simple, where you’ll learn how to lease and install Adobe InDesign, create a document, and import your manuscript from Word. Download Part I for free by subscribing to our blog—simply use the form below.
Excerpts from Book Design Made Simple
- Running heads — what to include in your novel or nonfiction book
- Typeface vs font: what’s the difference?
- Hyphenation and justification settings: make your text look fabulous
- Baseline grid: aligns the text on all pages throughout your book
- Unequal column widths: how to set up a page layout with unequal column widths
Video tutorials
Blog posts
Below are all the blog posts in the Typesetting tag, starting with the most recent post.
Designing book running heads
What are running heads, anyway? And running feet? And should you care about how they are designed? Yes!
You might know a running head as a “header,” and a running foot as a “footer.” In fiction books, the running heads announce the author and book title on each spread. In nonfiction and anthologies, they help readers find their way around. [Read more…]
InDesign book template by Book Design Made Simple
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…]
Advanced live index features in InDesign
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…]
Create a live index in InDesign
It’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…]
What type size should I use?
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…]
How to fix book typesetting and layout issues in InDesign
Book typesetting and layout tips are usually about the small stuff—fixing awkward hyphenation, using special characters for symbols, and so on—but most of the questions we get are about the BIG issues. How can I balance the number of text lines on facing pages? What if the last page of my chapter only has two lines? If my chapter has to end on a right-hand page, can I leave it blank? These issues arise all the time during book typesetting. We’ll explain the best ways to resolve them. [Read more…]
Design a workbook
Want to design a workbook? Who uses those any more?
Lots of folks, actually. Even though there are apps for practically everything these days, children still enjoy workbooks for mazes or drawing or learning practically anything. Adults can use them for recording their latest bird find or geocaching location, or for word or number puzzles, for instance. A coloring book can be considered a workbook, too.
We’ll help you design a workbook that will work well for your audience.
Combining serif and sans serif fonts
Combining 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…]
A review of Affinity Publisher
Why, 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 $0 (yes, it’s free) for the full line of Serif’s products: Publisher, Photo, and Designer. We both got 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…]
