- Specimen book for Buddy August 24, 2010
- New release! Buddy: the sans companion to Contenu August 24, 2010
- Classes mess up Opentype Glyph generation August 9, 2010
- A history of the alphabet August 9, 2010
- Going after the look of old fonts? Not likely August 7, 2010
Category: On-Demand Publishing
No, this is not a step by step. It’s a discussion of the realities of dealing with publishing in the second decade of the 21st century. Specifically, I want to talk about dealing with graphically intensive books in multiple channels.
One of the Linked-In groups I’m in has been debating the role of XML in “future-proofing” documents. They are mainly coming from employment at large publishing houses with hundreds or thousands of legacy books—many from before the e-reader age, many from before the digital age entirely. That’s not what I am talking about either.
This is redesign not conversion
That’s the first thing you need to accept—like it or not. There is no way to convert a typographically excellent, graphically intensive book from PDF to ePub. There are too many limitations with ePub. Here’s a list of the things you’ll need to get rid of as you make the conversion:
- Fonts: All you have to work with are a limited portion of the originally limited Web palette of fonts
- Vector graphics: at this point you need to convert everything to JPEG.
- Anchored graphics: Everything must be inline.
- Columns: This is all single column stuff.
- Nested styles: You’ll need to hand format run-in heads with character styles
- Styles in general: Depending on who you use to distribute your masterpiece, you’ll probably need to convert to the H1-6, p, ol, ul choices of HTML [I'm thinking Kindle here].
It’ s a very different way of thinking
I keep on hearing that some types of books will not convert. That’s not true. What is true is that some designers are not willing to work within the given limitations as we wait for our options to improve. For one of my new bloggin acquaintances, I made a couple of comparison pieces [PDF vs. ePub] this morning. I thought you might want to take a look and see what I had to change. Yes, the ePub version is hideous. But, it is selling as well as the PDF version—though the printed version is still outselling both.
The PDF sample • The ePub sample
Does this miss the mark for you?
What experiences are you having that suggest my choices are bad or wrong?
As we go through the hype of eBooks, how many do we really want to buy? What I want is an excellent reader that lets me rent books, sorta like on the NetFlix model. Here’s a link to an excellent article that talks about this from a conceptual view. I’d never thought about why I haven’t bothered to buy my iPad yet (other than lack of sufficient extra money laying around).
It’s not the device or the file—it’s the internet, stupid!
One of the interesting things about the new paradigm of publishing is the lack of exclusivity. As I publish works for Radiqx and clients, I am continually struck by how many places I normally release things. My norm now is to start with Lulu, then do a Createspace version, then make an html version for Kindle, then a Word version for Smashwords, an ePUB version on Lulu for iPad, a PDF of one of the versions for Scribd, and others yet to be discovered.
Part of this is to see what sells and who checks it out, and what action develops. This is all in flux as far as I can see. So far, Amazon are doing the best [both CreateSpace, and Kindle], closely followed by Lulu—but these results are changing weekly. As far as traffic is concerned, Scribd seems to do the best. But, Smashwords has more people checking out samples. It is a real interesting mix. As far as I am concerned, it is much more interesting than my old relationships with a giant publisher back East somewhere.
It takes constant redesigning
This is where InDesign and the Creative Suite 5 in general, really shine. InDesign CS5 has really helped out the workflow. Some sites require separate insides and covers (Lulu & CreateSpace), some require HTML (Kindle), some require ePUB (iPad), some require Word (Smashwords), some work best with PDF (Scribd). They all take specialized designs. However, with layout adjustment turned on and a complete set of styles (paragraph and character) set up, all of this goes relatively quickly.
Of course, “they” all say you must get into the code. But you should know of my code challenge by now. If it requires code [beyond HTML and CSS], I’m not going to do it. My hope (and constant feature request) is that some app in CS6 will enable me to drop the need to be constantly playing with HTML and CSS also. Already, I am using Dreamweaver CS5′s CSS dialog boxes to edit my CSS—even for my WordPress templates.
It’s a brave new world
I’m really having fun learning to work in this new world. I’m gradually finding friends and sources of help. Liz Castro and Joel Friedlander regularly offer good advice on their blogs, for example. It’s really going to be interesting to see where it all goes from here.
it’s been a surprising year. I never would have expected to be forced into going into what the government calls retirement. That has been a huge adjustment.
For a man, retirement is close to what housewives experience if circumstances keep them from being able to clean their home. it attacks the core of our being. I have been amazed at how much of my self identity is tied up in what I do.
On the other hand, it has been a joy to get back into personal creative endeavors. I’ve designed dozens of items for the Radiqx Zazzle site (buper stickers are doing well so far). I’m getting ready to release my first novel. I find it is a much better escape to write the novels I read. It’s not as much fun as the new Baldacci, Clancy (if we ever see one of those again), Cussler, de Brul, Dale Brown, Brad Thor, Daniel silva, W.E.B. Griffin, or any of the other authors I love to read. But the involvement is incredible and the ability to create new realities is really fun. I think you’ll find it a good read.
On-demand Publishing
I’m still focused on this for several reasons.
- My lack of capital makes it the only real choice
- it keeps works available to limited audiences like those of you who follow what I am doing
- It allows me to easily generate multiple versions of a work with no additional expense
- It allows me to generate eBooks which seem to growing incredibly fast in use
However, it’s hard to be competitive on-demand. The book prices are higher (at least for mass-driven competition). The printing options are much more limited.
It is greatly ramping up my skills at book design, though. That I really like. There is still nothing ( to me) like the feel of a new book and a potentially good read. i realize that this is becoming a lost art to many of the young. But I’m not sure how well Kindle, Nook, and the others will hold out in the long run. How comfortable are they to use? If you have one, I’d love to hear your opinions. Amazon just announced agin that Kindle is their best-selling product of any type in their entire company. Nook is already sold out and demand is outstripping production. Clearly, people want something like this.
I guess when my ship comes in, I’ll get one.
I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season.
Adding anchored objects can be a little tedious. One of the most painful aspects of making anchored frames to hold illustrations, sidebar notes, or headlines is the tediousness of the repetitive filling out of the anchored object dialog box.
The simple solution is to make those settings in an object style.
Then all you do is place the object as an inline graphic and hit the shortcut to convert it to an anchored object and to offset it where you need it. Or place it, hit the shortcut and then insert it into the text where you need it. It will automatically be anchored and offset as you designed it.
Let’s make a style to automatically offset a frame into the sidebar area next to the column on a single column page
Make a new Object style with all the options turned off . Turn on Anchored Object and set it up like you see below. We’re assuming a four-inch column on a 7.5″ wide page. You can adjust to fit your page size.
Basic settings for an anchored object
TIP: Once you have your anchored style set up the way you like, save the document you are working on.
Then close all documents and go to the Object Styles palette (with no document open). Choose Load Object Styles… from the Option Menu and add the new object style from the document you just saved and closed. Close InDesign and reopen it to save your new application default.
From then on, all new documents will have this style available. In most cases, all you will have to do it modify the offsets to make it work for any new project.
Believe me, you’ll use this (or your version of it) a lot!
The other day I went through a common scenario> I had a 408 page book set up at 6×9. I found out that I needed it formatted to 4.25″ x 6.88″ for a different printer. How long do you think it took me? It became a 540 page book.
It took less than an hour.
How did it go so quickly?
Everything was formatted with styles including all the graphics. The graphics were all formatted as anchored graphics and object styles.
That hour included checking every page for orphans and widows and fixing all of them. That meant eliminating all paragraph fragments of two lines or less and all paragraph ending sentence fragments of two and a partial word or less.
The procedure
- Turn on Layout Adjustment… under the Layout menu in InDesign
- Change the page size in Document setup… under the file menu
- Change the margins in Margins and Columns… under the Layout menu
- Adjust the paragraph styles, character styles, and object styles
- Proof new layout from page 1 to the end eliminating orphans and widows
Like I said, it took less than a hour to convert a 540 page book. It was really fun. Yes, it was a novel we’re publishing for a new author in Peralta, New Mexico. But it doesn’t take much longer for a graphically intensive book like Practical Font Design.
I ran across this in my Christian professionals group at Linked In this morning. It is a visually exciting presentation to be sure. My only question is:
Can it really be used?
I saw no place to add notes, new crossreferences or any of the other things necessary for a real study bible. I’ve included a scan of one of the pages in one of my bibles to show you what I mean.
It may be that Glo can handle this, but I couldn’t find it in the promo pieces on their fancy Website.
It is gorgeous though—unlike this bible that has actually been used. I’ve got to admit I’m suspicious when they don’t give you the version and the typography looks so bad on the screen. I’m afraid it’s NIT or worse.
My guess is (judging by past history) that Zondervan has it locked down tighter than a drum so it can’t really be used as a teaching tool.
A used study bible
This is the new Lulu version of the 2nd edition of the original Publishing with InDesign released in 2000 for version 1.5.
There will be a createspace version with an ISBN# that should be out in a couple weeks.
The Lulu version has a $7 download. Both of the perfect bound 108-page printed versions are $13.95.
These are training materials for the apprenticeship program here at Radiqx Press. This particular book covers setting up IndEsign for production speed, covering: defaults, styles (all five types), anchored objects, form design, and so on.
There are many reasons. I was talking with one of my friends on Facebook this morning. She wants to get into teaching what she knows. She asked my opinion, and I went into my standard long lament about the state of graphic design and typography education in America. It’s bad, and it has been bad for years.
I first learned this as an art director for one of the largest printing companies in town. One of our greatest difficulties was dealing with design school graduates. This was true whether I was trying to hire a new graphic designer or dealing with a client who was a graphic designer. They had NO practical knowledge. This is why I originally I got into teaching. I felt so sorry for those poor students trying to get work out of college. They were in so far over their heads that you couldn’t even talk to them. They didn’t even know the professional language.
The worst were the clients. You know what happens when a person is responsible and has authority in areas where they know very little — most get nasty and arrogant to cover the fact that they are so ignorant. Obviously, this does little to help them learn what they need to know.
Why don’t schools teach this stuff?
There are many reasons. This is not the place to cover them in depth. If there is an interest, I’ll post on each reason later. But here they are in no particular order:
- Schools are judged by their employment statistics. The problem, of course, is that many (in fact a majority of) graduates freelance so there is no hiring statistic. Around 65% freelance according to the Department of Labor.
- Schools are judged by graduation statistics. Many students only want to upgrade their skills. They got a degree as a fine artist, but could not make a living doing that. They have no interest in a degree.
- Bureaucrats cannot understand creatives. This sounds harsh, but it is absolutely my experience in several schools.
- Schools are controlled by IT. Information technology personnel are running our schools and they are almost completely Windows people or Linux. Neither of those platforms work well for graphics or typography. Even if they did, our industry is 95% Mac.
- Writing skills are necessary. Our basic core skill is typography. Most desktop publishing programs are directed at “artists” not writers.
- Publishers need top end computers and software. Although we can get by with $1500 Macs, we need $2000 PCs to do what we do. Our software is the Creative Suite and that runs around $1000 (unless educational or non-profit rates are available). Schools live on $500 computers and school-wide licenses for software.
- Graphic designers and professional desktop publishers are a rare breed. The highest figure I have ever seen is 250,000 (only a quarter million) nation-wide. Locally, schools are regularly dealing with a dozen students or so. I was blessed to have a couple hundred at TVI in Albuquerque.
- Creatives are not good at working within a bureaucratic environment. Schools rival governmental organizations in organizational complexity and waste. Creative people tend to get very frustrated with meetings, group think, and such.
- Schools are never current. I just left a “lean & mean” school where we could actually approve curriculum changes in less than a year. In Albuquerque, we were working three years in advance. By the time anything is approved, it is seriously out of date.
Hopefully this will give you something to think about… It’s depressing to me.
A journey with an experienced font designer through the creation of a new OpenType font developed for release. This is also part of the training materials for the apprentices of the Hackberry Font Foundry.
That’s the blurb on Lulu. This is the first limited release on my Practical Font Design book. It is limited because it’s done on FontLab 4.6 and FontLab 5 has been out for quite a while.
As you know, Hackberry Fonts is a low-budget operation so David has simply not had the capital to invest in the latest version of FontLab. When that happens, we will be releasing a major effort (probably with ISBN#s and everything). However, I’m not sure we’ll bother with ISBNs there either because it makes the books twice as expensive for little added benefit to the reader.
We believe the book is helpful to graphic designers who are thinking about dipping their toe in the waters of font design.