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Which Software for My Book Design Project?
Many people have asked and argued with me
about what software to use for book design. I’ll give
my recommendations here but instructions on how to use the
applications are way beyond this article. There is no shortage
of manuals, however if you have a specific problem e-mail
me and I will give you my thoughts.
I
use InDesign for page layout, Photoshop for pictures and Illustrator
for vector art.
Although I’m no longer a fan of Quark, it will do the
page layout job OK. Quark does not handle long documents as
well as InDesign. For long text heavy documents it’s
hard to beat FrameMaker particularly if you’re working
with XML text mark-up.
This
is also an Adobe product and they continue to support it separate
from InDesign. If you’re building a thousand page computer
manual FrameMaker might be the best tool. However if your
project is a full colour text book with lots of graphics then
InDesign is the way to go.
In the past I’ve used Corel extensively
for vector art. It’s a good application and always worked
fine for me. I switched to Illustrator because of its integration
with the other Adobe applications. The latest X3 version of
Corel gets good reviews.
Photoshop is the top of the heap of photo
manipulation applications, by a wide margin.
This
is by no means an exhaustive list of applications and I can
hear TeX users fuming. TeX page layout software is capable
of excellent typography and excels at mathematical equations.
It’s also true that InDesign uses the same or similar
text formatting kernel. TeX however does not have a good graphic
user model so you don’t see the typographic result until
the page is printed.
I haven’t used it extensively but I’ve seen it
used to good effect. It’s not for me, and I won’t
recommend it to a new user, but the final result can be very
professional with an operator who knows what he/she is doing.
The big things going for this software are that it is free,
and there are a large group of TeX users and forums that can
provide help!
Don’t
use Microsoft Word to layout your book! This includes any
other word processor that you happen to be using. There is
a great deal of information available about how to use these
applications for books but the results just don’t measure
up. I’m writing this in Word because it is the best
tool I have for putting my ideas into words.
But
Word’s ability to handle text for print does not compare
with any of the page layout applications and it shows in the
final product. Given two pages, one laid out in Word and the
other in InDesign, the type structure will be different, text
lines will not be as even and word spacing will not compare.
If you want your book to look professional you need to use
professional tools.
If you have decided to self-publish your book
you have an up-hill battle. The book marketing process can
be daunting enough without a prospective distributor opening
your book and thinking ‘amateur’. Some might not
notice the quality of your book design and typesetting, but
many people in the industry will. Do you really want to put
your project at that kind of disadvantage? Either hire a professional
to lay out your book or buy the software and learn how to
do it correctly yourself.
About the Author
Michael Dyer has been a full time graphic designer for
over 15 years. He has designed all manner of communication
but his first love is a good book finely bound. Michael Dyer
Graphic Designer http://www.mocabookdesign.com/
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